Purchased for $10 million in 2013, the completely remodeled home at 2755 Fillmore Street has sat empty for the past three years.

And having returned to the market this past May listed for $13.25 million, or $2,577 per finished square foot, the re-sale of the Pacific Heights property has now closed escrow at asking according to the listing agent.

Speaking of the listing agent, the fact that she’s based in the East Bay and a relative unknown in the world of San Francisco’s high-end sales is sure to ruffle some local feathers. And we’ll note that the buyer’s agent is based in Sonoma.

16 thoughts on “Banked Pacific Heights Home Fetches an Eye-Popping $13.25M”
  1. So, this is basically a 4 bed/4 bath investment account?

    Yup, nothing wrong with the real estate market here. Nothing at all. Move along!

  2. I see the agent is fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin. I wonder if that provides a clue as to the buyer.

  3. Its a fact that Chinese buyers have been pausing / canceling real estate contracts in London due to uncertainty. This is good for SF/NY real estate. It doesn’t take a lot of buyers to keep the high end afloat.

  4. It’s amazing how many times this house has been worked over since it was built 30 years ago and it’s still dull. The façade for instance…has no distinction between the entry door and the tradesman door. With the paired garage doors it reads as two narrow townhouses.

    1. It’s an unusual story. Before the first sale, the home totally flooded from a broken pipe, so the owners took to to the studs, repaired it with super high-end finishes and put it on the market. It was bought by a well known local buyer who gutted it and then abandoned it. The Toboni’s took it over, gutted it again and this was the end result (and probably the best possible layout for the place). What’s crazy is the total waste of material. My guess is that this house will just stay this way for 5-10 years, totally untouched and vacant.

  5. I find this very surprising. I have no idea, but I doubt it’s a local buyer. China continues to devalue the yuan (it’s at a 6 year low, I think), so it’s just a different type of rushing to the exit. It’s very unusual for a totally random real estate company/realtor located out of the city to move something like this at this price. This is the most budget staging for a high-end home in ages and it didn’t matter. That’s telling.

    What kills me is the insane ROI on a three year hold. Can someone name another apples-to-apples flip with a 35% increase in three years?

    I can say with some degree of authority, that no one ever went into this place in three years. It was totally empty. Not even a chair. They spent nothing on furniture or upkeep or staging and totally shut it down. I’m pretty sure this is an anomaly, but still. 非常好!! (no ugly simplified characters for me thank you).

  6. I’m reluctant to believe theories of someone “parking” money, dumb-wealthy foreign buyers etc, etc. but this is a hard to believe price for this house. Yes, an anomaly as said above, wont represent too many other deals.

  7. Per the July 9th Economist article, “The long march abroad” on Chinese emigration, (p. 14) …”Others are just moving their money offshore, investing in foreign companies or buying property. Officially Chinese citizens are limited to moving $50,000 abroad a year, but many are finding inventive ways to get round that rule, including overpaying for imports, forging deals with foreign entities and even starting, then losing, fake lawsuits against foreign entities, triggering huge “damages”. Lets see, what kinds of lawsuits could we invent….

  8. The buyer agent is based in Sonoma. Not exactly an agent location that screams conduit for Asian hot money.

  9. If you really want to see where Chinese money is being dumped on real estate, look at Southern California. Affluent areas such as Flintridge, San Marino, and Arcadia have been experiencing massive appreciation caused by Chinese buyers for over a decade. (These communities used to be old money white Republican neighborhoods, now they are majority Asian). I have been following Newport Coast (community in the hills above Newport Beach) and am regularly seeing homes selling for over 15 million to Chinese buyers. The last two sales above 30 million in Newport Beach were to Chinese buyers, the same goes for the top 1% home sales in Laguna Beach as well.

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