Could someone buy that for me as a gift, pretty please?

Maybe crowd-source it!

I'd be very happy there - maybe we could time-share!

Nice!

I saw that this morning! The views are spectacular. The commenters complain about all the white, but that bat cave of an office is pretty grim.

Magnificent . The price is right and reasonable for that property in SF.

The only thing that gave me pause was the garage. Whoa Nelly!

The architecture and views are breathtaking.

All that house, but a very underwhelming front door.

Also, maybe I don't know my period touches, but all those white painted banister railings look like builders grade stuff to me.

Beautiful house and location. SF's Russian Hill is the best place I ever lived and I would buy property there immediately if by some miracle I ever came into a huge amount of money. I lived there for a year during the dot com boom, had a fourth floor apartment with half a GG Bridge view. I never bothered with curtains, never needed screens, never used any heat or air conditioning.

Sitting on the top of a chair at the breakfast table with a cup of coffee on Saturday mornings, watching boats in the Bay below, cool air in the low 60s wafting through the window, it was sublime. That was the 97-98 El Nino, however, and it was dark and rainy for long stretches of that winter.

Certainly keeps your legs in shape climbing up and down those hills...

Lovely. I could move right in, oh wait.....there is the small matter of the price. I am not familiar with the SF RE market but I would think it's a bargain at 12 million.

Just lovely!

I was just there for a meeting and walked around Russian Hill.

A lot of you probably know this but the median house price in SF is $1M.
There are now periods where there is not a single listing under $250K
$700K may get you a nice, small house in a marginal area or a house in terrible shape in a nice area. Under a half-million will push you way to the margins of the city, and some of those listings seemed to be in shell condition, and under 1000 sq ft.)

The thing is that at the $1M price point, it's so competitive that people are often coming to closing with $1M cash. It's not uncommon to put 50% down.

You can qualify for Low Income housing with an income of $56,000.

(they have Low, Very Low, Extremely Low categories.)

$700K may get you a nice, small house in a marginal area or a house in terrible shape in a nice area

No way :-) (because in a nice area, even the lot would cost more than that)

I guess "nice" is relative.

I saw a couple in shell condition that were in that ballpark, but maybe the part of the neighborhood they were in was not that great. It's hard to tell on Streetview. Even the Tenderloin looks pretty good in streetview.

But we have the same thing here. Sometimes the lot holds all the value. A client of mine will probably sell his house for the same price as the recently burnt-out house across the street. And the empty lot (if it existed) may be worth more than a shell because you don't have the hassle of getting rid of anything.

This leads to a situation where, in my neighborhood, for example, an old house on a lot may go for about $500K, but the new construction houses on the same sized lot down the block are $1.6-2.3M. Of course, they are also taller with more sq footage, but they Had to be to make it worth building them.

And while I think I live in a nice neighborhood, I am sure people from the burbs would think otherwise if they saw the regular drug- and sex-trade that occurs outside my door at night when its not pouring rain or freezing. Here,
"nice" sort of means you are not subject to getting shot by accident, muggings are fairly infrequent, and you don't have to have bars on the windows.

Street parking looks like fun. Not that someone with a $12M house with a garage would be street parking. But I've parked on SF streets like that, where the hill is so steep they don't do parallel parking, just perpendicular parking on one side of the street. You have to be VERY careful when you open the door on the downhill side not to whack the neighboring car simply due to gravity.

cawaps, I live in the city, and even looking at cars parked like that makes me anxious!

Got to love the return on that one..
Zillow has it sold in 2008 for 4.2 m

I remember the exterior from the Victorian Home Walk Tour.

Wow, really beautiful. My g-g-grandfather was there about the time this house was being built. Kind of incredible to think about how he might have seen it.

I think it is terrible that the interior has been stripped of all wood character! It looks as if the entire house was just indiscriminately whitewashed, and imo that is not restoration. You can see one of the baronial fireplaces that wasn't sprayed or painted and it is crying out for beautiful polished WOOD paneling and millwork. I love the exterior, and the location is nonpareil, but the interior is a sad case.

I'm with kswl...I love italianate design, but this house was a disappointment as it's lost all its character and charm to white paint. The views are to die for, the grounds were wonderful, but the interior left me wincing at every piece of white woodwork.

I wonder if it hadn't already been painted. There are a number of houses here where the stained woodwork had been painted dark brown or dark maroon decades before. But for millions I would want the appropriate historical finish.

It hasn't been stripped of all detail; they just disappear under the monochrome white paint job.
The garage will need pruning twice a year at the very least.
But it has a garage!
Casey

Oh, my. That is a stunning piece of property. I hope the right person buys it and takes good care of it.

Yes, that's what I meant, Casey, poor choice of words on my part. Pal is also probably right, all the millwork may have been painted a hideous purple or something in the 1970s. Still, it's a shame someone didnt love the old girl enough to strip the paint off and restore the wood :-(

I am probably less bothered by the white woodwork than I am by all the perforations for recessed lighing, speakers, and stuff like that. I know all that stuff is pretty normal and to most people it disappears, but to me it seems so out of place.

Frankly, you are lucky that the wood is just painted. I've seen many City properties where the woodwork and plaster detail is completely removed.

List prices in SF are deceptive. At the high end, they can be right on or high.... but at the low end, it is not uncommon for the final price to be bid up 10%, 20% or more. Realtors underprice the property to generate a bidding war and a quick sale.

Back to the property -- the interior and views on this property are great, and I'd take it if it was given to me. But for $12M, I have some other properties in the city I'd buy (after my Super Lotto ticket comes through).

At the "lower end" of the price spectrum, I've linked below a home that has had a "whitewash" treatment --- don't click if you don't want to see wood defaced....

Here is a link that might be useful: $2M painted out Spanish

$2.0 on Portola Drive! 7 miles from downtown. Crazy.

This post was edited by sjhockeyfan on Thu, Oct 2, 14 at 16:39

Gooster, I'm not even a fan of wood interiors but what they did to that Spanish Colonial made me want to cry.

Does anyone remember the "townhouse" in Basic Instinct? I liked that one more. :

This post was edited by kitchendetective on Thu, Oct 2, 14 at 16:55

I've done restoration in San Francisco in which I removed layers of paint from beautiful wood walls/wainscotting. I have also lived in houses in SF that had beautiful wood interiors, and I agree that the white washed walls cheapens the appearance in this case. I also think $4.2 million is a better price, since $12 million is more than $3000 per sq.ft., but then the lot is probably the main part of the price, just as it is in the neighborhood where I live now. Three-quarters of the value of my house is from the lot alone, but location is very important for me.

When I lived in SF, I used heating frequently and spent two months of the winter in Mexico and usually August in Vancouver BC, as August is unbearably cold for me in SF, and I am prone to sinus infections. I used to get them twice a year when I stayed the entire year, and finally I decided that I should live somewhere that I could stay for the entire year instead of having to leave in the winter and summer.

I loved living in SF but don't miss it much, although I have frequent dreams about it - often ones that are quite disturbing, especially when I take the wrong streetcar and can't find my way home. I used to have a client on Telegraph Hill whose house overlooked the Bay, and he would redecorate a room each year just before NYE for his black tie NYE parties. He owned silver mines in Colorado, but unfortunately was a coke addict and therefore quite difficult to deal with. I was one of the few people who would put up with him, and that allowed me to raise my rates.

I miss being about to get around so easily on foot and public transportation, but I never adjusted to the cold climate - I found it quite harsh.

Lars

Lars, its not nearly as cold or foggy as it used to be (the years when I wore a raincoat all through July, even though it wasn't actually raining) - climate change, I presume. Still not warm though (except its 81 degrees right now :-) )

Looks like it was once a beautiful home, but I don't care at all for how it was white washed. The views are awesome though.

I am totally in love with this house. The brick terrace at dusk with the skyline view, and the terrace off the MBA are just two of my faves. The price is imprudent to say the least, but oh, wow, I love love this home.

I think the house is beautiful!! I don't particularly care for the location because there are other areas of the city I would prefer to live, but.... I think that the price is probably a steal, and will sell for over asking price. A house we sold a year ago is now selling for 25% more - and at that time it sold for 33% over asking price! Tech is moving everything here.