A 3,000 square-foot fixer on a large Palo Alto lot raised a few eyebrows when it was listed for $6.5 million and sold for five million early last year. And with the home having since been rebuilt as a 6,000 square-foot “Napa Style” ranch house for which they’re now asking $10 million, those eyebrows are about to be raised even more.

While $1,667 per square foot at asking might not seem like too much of a stretch considering the home’s Old Palo Alto location and contemporary design, keep in mind that half of the new home’s square footage sits within the basement under the main level of the new home.

And while the old lot at 1935 Webster had measured around 16,600 square-feet, it has since been split in two, and only the half under the home is included in the $10M price tag.

14 thoughts on “From A $5M Fixer To A $10M Ranch, And That’s Just The Half Of It”
  1. This isn’t a remodel…it’s a completely new house.
    They demolished the William Wurster designed house that previously occupied the lot. Sad that they demolished it…it was fine example of his work from that period and could have been restored.

  2. Looking at this and other recent Palo Alto listings reminds me that high psf cost is not based alone on whether or not someone can live a car free lifestyle as is often claimed here. As mentioned in an earlier thread, Palo Alto and Menlo Park have both seen far greater percentage increases when observed over a 30 year period than San Francisco.

    1. What are you talking about? This place is a 15 minute walk to Cal. Ave. Caltrain. And a few seconds further takes you to a nice gourmet grocery store and a decent shopping area. Most of SF isn’t this walkable.

      1. huh? i used to live a 5~10 minute walk from here and all the places i’ve lived in SF have been way more walk-able. 15 minutes? try 15 seconds in SF…

        1. I didn’t say that this place was more walkable than the places you’ve lived in SF. I don’t even know you.

    2. I grew up a couple blocks from this house. The walkability is a major source of value in the neighborhood.

      Old Palo Alto is probably the 2nd most walkable neighborhood on the Peninsula (behind Palo Alto downtown). As a child, I walked and biked anywhere I wanted to go (school, stores, friends’ houses etc). My parents own cars but enjoy walking to cafes, restaurants, shoe repair, farmers market, etc. Midtown (including Walgreens & Safeway) and Cal Ave are both 15 min walks from this house.

      Whoever is buying this house could afford Atherton or Los Altos Hill, but is choosing it for the walkability.

    3. Whether in San Francisco or Palo Alto, there is a huge difference between living in a “walkable” neighborhood and living a “car free lifestyle”. I have always chosen to live in walkable neighborhoods and do not drive on a daily basis — but a car is still essential. I would think this point would be fairly obvious to anyone (particularly anyone with a family), but somehow we still get these debates where people claim that parking is not necessary because an area is walkable; that may be true for some people who live a particular lifestyle, but it is also likely that there many, many people who will take advantage of walkability but still need a car (even if they drive it a lot less).

      1. I agree with you that “walkable” and “car free” are distinct markets, but I think the difference is narrowing. The ubiquity of car sharing services (Zipcar, etc.), improved cycling lanes, along with new, more reliable cab services (Uber, Lyft, etc.) make it much more feasible to be car free provided you live in a walkable neighborhood. If you do a big shopping trip once a week, Zipcar or a cab is far less expensive than owning a car & parking spot. I do concede that car seats for those who need them do remain big barrier to going car-free.

    4. Care to provide some evidence to back up your claims? My memory would dispute it, though I don’t have any hard evidence one way or another.

    1. I’ll tell you who cares, the entire world. The Peninsula and Southbay, and the industries located there, are now part of everyone’s cultural landscape worldwide, and I am always surprised that the first places my friends from Europe want to see when they visit here are not our so-called “quaint” neighborhoods, but the Peninsula and Napa Valley. A lot of foreign visitors find places like Palo Alto to present the California they imagined, and not the grey treeless streets of San Francisco.

  3. Anyone know where the nearest Zipcar is located? I can’t see anyone at the price point wanting their own car. It’s so 20th century.

  4. $10m seems steep.

    I thought bedrooms required a window? I guess that isn’t the case in Palo Alto. I’m not an alarmist but if there is a fire on the main level, I would not want to be in the basement. Maybe I’m missing something. The pics & floorplan make it seem like there is a set of doors leading to an underground patio that has partial exposure from above the main entryway at what seems an effort to get some natural light down there. Not sure exactly how rain / storm water get pumped out and doubt the underground patio gets used too often.

    1. Guessing the downstairs bedrooms’ double doors open up to some sort of above-ground access, and that tiny line you see represents a ladder for emergency egress? Agreed would not want to be stuck downstairs with a fire above. Pretty creative use of space though — the “Londonization” of Palo Alto?

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