140 Saint Germain: Living
As we wrote when the finished 140 Saint Germain first hit SocketSite four weeks ago:

It’s another high-end home that’s not yet listed on the MLS. But as a plugged-in reader notes, the new 140 Saint Germain no longer only exists in renderings, but has been finished, photographed and priced at $5,000,000.

As we wrote about the property in 2008: “It’s truly a fixer, but with the requisite bones, big city views, and two atriums (not to mention decks and parking).”

And while it never hit the MLS, according to a plugged-in tipster, the sale of 140 Saint Germain has closed escrow with an unreported contract price of $5,200,000 ($912 per square foot), the highest of three offers.
140 St. Germain: From Renderings To Reality And A $5,000,000 Ask [SocketSite]
140 Saint Germain: Rendered Meat On The Bones And Coming Soon [SocketSite]
A Fixer With Big Views And The Requisite Bones: 140 St. Germain [SocketSite]

9 thoughts on “140 St. Germain: From Renderings To Reality To Sold For $5,200,000”
  1. You would need a net worth around $15M to buy this place with some comfort. Probably, and most likely the buyer is in the $20M+ category. Wealthy individuals that have this kind of money generally take decent financial risks in life and their net worth can swing 5-15% pretty fluidly with the markets and other financial decision. And prime wealth builders are probably still adding to the coffers. So buying a place like this and taking the risk that you might lose $1M is just another business decision made where the risk is appropriately calculated to individual tolerances far beyond what a individual or family making $800k/year can even conceive.
    Surprisingly, there haven’t been that many blood baths (Fillmore) and the rising / stable tides are keeping this asset class seemingly afloat despite the fact that the upper tier is unquestionably down from the peak. Just another justification for why the RvB metrics are skewed here in SF.
    But the buyer here get an awesome home. Congrats to all.

  2. “You would need a net worth around $15M to buy this place with some comfort.”
    Consider the implications of a 3:1 ratio of net worth to home price. Do most people buying $800k places in Bernal have a $2.4M net worth? People buying $2.5M Noe houses having $7.5M net worth?
    As you mention households with lower net worth may have less tolerance for financial error so could need to err on the higher side of your ratio to be comfortable. Contrast this with the report by a poster on a previous thread that many of his cohorts had to resort to getting downpayment money from their parents.
    Rather the illustrating something about rent vs buy perhaps this illustrates something about price vs income/wealth.

  3. Hah! I imagine the typical 800k Bernal buyer has a net worth that is not too far from $0.
    Eddy is right that the $5mm+ segment is its own world and rent vs. buy essentially does not weight into it. But that is a tiny slice of the market — only 29 sales in the last year (per redfin). It is a huge stretch to thus infer that rent vs. buy is similarly skewed for the 99% of purchases that are made by working stiffs, where it plays a big factor.

  4. Those 29 sales plus the additional 47 SFHs if you reach down to $3.5M give incredible support and confidence to the top tier where the RvB is essentially disconnected.
    Income and wealth are entirely different concepts. Income:Price will and does have a direct correlation upto around $3M where it just gets plain hard to buy / finance a home w/ leverage on just an “income” without some real liquid assets of value in your portfolio.
    Wealth:Price ratio on a single home becomes largely obsolete at certain wealth levels other than looking at real estate holdings as part of a larger portfolio of assets / investments.

  5. “confidence to the top tier where the RvB is essentially disconnected.”
    Without a rental estimate, I’m not seeing how this sale says anything about price vs rent. Though I would agree that if a house is 1/4 or less of someones net worth the tolerance for error goes up considerably.
    Regarding income and wealth, I agree that there is more margin for error at the upper levels. But that does underscore the point that if a house valued at 1/3 to 1/4 of your liquid net worth is comfortable at the $15M+ level, the vast majority of the market below that would be markedly uncomfortable with lower ratios.

  6. “You would need a net worth around $15M to buy this place with some comfort.”
    Some exceptions to that might be stock option lottery winners, divorce settlement lottery winners, etc.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *