Drive through Avila Beach on any weekday morning and you will count more framers than surfers. Sixteen spec homes are under construction simultaneously — a number that would have been unthinkable three years ago in a town of 1,600 people. The builders are a mix of SLO-based developers and two groups from the Bay Area who "discovered" Avila during the pandemic remote-work wave and never left.

Prices range from $1.8M to $3.4M. Every one of them is designed to look like it's been there for decades — board-and-batten siding, standing-seam metal roofs, native landscaping. The irony is intentional.