Time To Be On The Move
Prices at chic S.F. address go sky-high
San Francisco Examiner
By Corrie M. Ander, Examiner Real Estate Editor
Sunday, January 17, 1999

Ceiling broke when Russian Hill penthouse sold for $15 million
Just over a year ago, San Francisco art patron Ji'ing Soong quietly let it be known among a select group of society real estate brokers that she would be willing to sell her Pacific Heights penthouse for $10 million.

"Everybody laughed," said one broker who asked not to be identified. The price for the co-op apartment was considered outlandishly high by San Francisco standards, and the Soong family eventually took the property off the market.

But no one is laughing these days. In November, real estate agents Malin Giddings and Richard Weil collaborated on a deal that will likely alter what future buyers will pay for super exclusive addresses in the City.

The two agents sold oil scion Billy Getty's two-bedroom Russian Hill penthouse to radio station entrepreneur Charlton Buckley for $15 million.

The price made it the most expensive home ever sold in San Francisco and was double the previous high of $7.5 million fetched in 1997 for a Pacific Heights showcase mansion.

In a year that saw singer Linda Ronstadt sell her Pacific Heights mansion for $5 million and leave town and Hollywood actress Sharon Stone purchase a $6 million water's-edge manse in Sea Cliff, Getty's deal caused gasps from Beverly Hills to Europe - and left locals pondering if San Francisco prices could rise even higher in 1999.

"It was kind of like the hallelujah sale in San Francisco," said one real estate broker who did not want to be identified. "It's opened up a whole new avenue for prices and it's not an embarrassment to ask for anything anymore."

In 1998, 11 residential properties in the City sold for $5 million or more. But only Getty's reached the lofty eight-figure level - and for a 4,000 square-foot apartment on the 24th floor of a contemporary 1960s building.

Fifteen million dollar price tags for platinum homes could become relatively commonplace, said Weil, an agent with Hill & Co.

"There are some houses on Outer Broadway and on the Gold Coast where the owners probably have $15 to $20 million in improvements in them," Weil said. "So, I'm sure that if any one of those ever came on the market, it would be up there."

Late last year, two separate buyers closed escrow for several residential lots on the largest undeveloped tract of land left in Pacific Heights. Real estate sources said the buyers each paid approximately $8 million for three-lot parcels - they run one block deep from Broadway to Pacific Avenue - where they plan to build estate homes.

"When those homes are completed, the value of those estates has got to be $20 million plus," said a real estate broker.

The parcels were part of a 1.1-acre, surplus public school site with spectacular views of San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. Last May, the San Francisco Unified School District sold the land at a public auction for $13.6 million to Mitch Menaged, head of Historic San Francisco Homes, a builder and renovator of luxury homes who subdivided it into nine lots. Only two lots remain available for sale.

The penthouse deal helped Giddings rack up real estate transactions totaling $72 million last year - more than any other sales agent in the City. But she said she wasn't convinced that the Getty-Buckley deal set new "comps" - an appraisal technique appraisers use to establish value - because the renovated penthouse was so incredibly unique - even by international standards.

The penthouse, in which two apartments were remodeled into a single unit, has 360-degree views of San Francisco and the Bay. Private elevators go directly into the living quarters.
"And the owner had renovated in such exquisite, unusual taste - down to the last minute detail," said Giddings, a TRI Coldwell Banker agent.

One of Getty's distinct touches was a Biosphere-style terrarium containing more than a dozen rare Brazilian frogs. The half-inch long frogs, poisonous in their natural habitat, lived harmlessly in a climate-controlled terrarium.

"I think the penthouse sale will affect prices in the future," Giddings said. "But I think this high will be hard to surpass."

The Getty sale was not the most expensive home sole in the Bay Area last year however. That record was set in Silicon Valley, naturally, where computer and high-tech entrepreneurs have amassed impressive wealth - thanks to a booming economy and a golden bull of a stock market.

The Bay Area's most expensive sale was a completely-renovated, Tudor-style home with several acres of land, a helicopter pad, home theater, swimming pool and tennis court, and "top-of-the-line everything," said Carole Rodoni, president of Alain Pinel whose brokerage handled the transaction. The asking price was $14 million.

"There were three offers on this home - and it sold for almost $17 million," Rodoni said. That means two other buyers still are looking for homes to purchase in that price range.

"For (buyers), it's never about money," she said, "It's about location, security, privacy and something unique. And if they can't have it, they want to be able to take a piece of property and build it."

And that's precisely the route the new owners of a 1919 Georgia-Revival manor have taken to transform their Pacific Heights home in to a palace. At $7.3 million, the former Decorator Showcase mansion home was the second most expensive home sold in the City last year.
"The whole house has been gutted and they're totally rebuilding it after paying $7 million plus," said a real estate agent familiar with the home.

Stanford University professor Myron Scholes, who won the 1997 Nobel prize for economics, purchased last year's third most expensive home in the City. The $6.5 million home on Russian Hill, just across from the former Getty co-op, was in beautiful condition and needed little improvement, according to several real estate sources.

Giddings, a Stockholm native and the daughter of the former president of the Nobel Foundation, is already off to a hot start for 1999.

Giddings found a new abode for Getty - at a price much less than $15 million - and the deal is expected to close soon.