Amazing Home of the Year?

One of the Bay Area's most unusual mid-century modern home listings of the year comes with such sizeable caveats, it's like a good news/bad news joke.

The good news is, the home is an amazing MCM gem, and the parcel has plenty of room in which to stretch out—nearly 60 acres! The bad news? The doctor is in the house, and he's not leaving.

"He's very comfortable there; that's why he wants to stay," said Dan Thomas of Oakland-based Day and Night Realty, who listed 1 Los Arboles in Richmond recently for $4,098,888.

Thomas was speaking of the seller, retired physician Alan Rosenberg, M.D., who bought the 59.15 acres in 1997. That was about the same time he retired after 30 years of treating cancer patients at nearby Brookside Hospital (which was renamed Doctors Medical Center that same year).

The property is being sold as a life estate, complete with a barn, two tractors, the possible inclusion of numerous antiques, and an on-site menagerie.

"There are antiques throughout the house," Thomas said of the home, which has dual master suites in separate wings and is estimated at close to 6,000 interior square feet.

The realtor added that the spacious four-bed, 3.5- bath home was built in 1963 by Ralph and Marie Johnson, owners of a local gravel company, though the architect is unknown. The house comes complete with full kitchen, dining room, living room, family room, library, and home theater.

"Los Arboles means ‘the trees,' and the Johnsons were the ones who planted all the trees on the property," Thomas said with reference to the original owners and a grove of eucalyptus and other growth on the parcel. As for the house, "They sold it to my clients, [who] totally restored it."

For most the past quarter century, Rosenberg has worked the sizeable parcel on his tractors and filled it with animals: peacocks, swans, a pony, a zebra, and others. The past few years, a few broken-down cars have accumulated as well, and Thomas concedes, "He's not taking care of it as he should."