We report a facile, room temperature synthesis of nanostructured mesoporous cobalt ferrites using the cationic surfactant, cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB). The synthesis was carried out at various concentrations of CTAB ranging from its pre- to post-micellar concentrations. The pristine and calcined samples exhibit pure cobalt ferrite phase which are confirmed by XRD studies. The morphology of all tricalcined samples was quasi-spherical as shown by TEM images. Nitrogen adsorption - desorption study on pristine samples indicates the presence of mesopores in them. The magnetic properties of the uncalcined and calcined samples were studied by vibrating sample magnetometry. Coercivity and saturation magnetization were found to vary with the concentration of the CTAB employed. Also, the pristine samples were soft magnets, whereas the calcined samples tended towards exhibiting hard magnetism. We have proposed a mechanism to explain the mesoporosity of nanostructured ferrite based the role of CTAB in the present synthetic method.