Purchased for $1.235 million in July of 2018, the penthouse-level unit #903 in the award-winning Yerba Buena Lofts building at 855 Folsom Street features two bedrooms, two baths, 1,230 square feet of space (not including the private terrace) and a deeded parking space in the building’s garage.

Having returned to the market priced at $1,154,500 or roughly $939 per square foot this past November, the “stylish and sleek” condo has just closed escrow with a contract price of $1,155,500.

And while the sale was officially “over asking” according to all industry stats and aggregate reports, the penthouse unit’s value was down 6.4 percent ($79.5K) over the past 17 months on an apples-to-apples basis.

16 thoughts on “An “Over Asking” Sale in the Award-Winning YBL Building”
  1. Wow, these guys didn’t even try to sell above what they purchased for. What does that tell you? Can’t wait to see what happens as inventory increases throughout 2020.

  2. I had a friend who worked for Saitowitz back when this was under construction. I got a tour of the model unit. It is BRUTAL in terms of acoustics and how the daylighting works/doesn’t work. The other thing that I noticed was the pollution fallout from Folsom…..it was pretty bad.

    1. Wait, you think buildings should be hospitable to our biological needs, such as good acoustics and lighting? Get with the times, grampa! Buildings are first and foremost works of art (well, first they are fodder for financial markets upon which to erect dizzying spirals of opaque derivatives that eventually require bailing out…). Stanley is A GOD, and we unworthy humans are worthless swine who should crawl on their hands and knees for the glorious opportunity to inhabit uncomfortably in one of his masterpieces…

  3. Good god what a hideous building. Awful, just awful layouts, like a bunch of stacked concrete culverts. And the interiors are horrific. Like living under a freeway bridge! Are there really people who think brutalist concrete walls make any sense whatsoever for INDOOR living spaces?

      1. Thanks for the link to that thread. I am reading it with interest.

        Saitowitz built something directly across a narrow street from a building I own some years back, and I actually don’t hate it (don’t particularly like it either) at least from the outside, but since then I’ve seen a lot of his other projects, and they increasingly feel like depressing algorithmic interpretations of Le Corbusier, like what might come out if you fed 2,000 Le Corbusier plans to a Generative Adversarial Network and told it to design a building. It looks like architectural sophistication, but it’s not actually a space to live in. Which is after all, what houses are actually for.

    1. I lived in the building for 2 years on the ground floor. Lighting was fine even though the lower half of the windows needed to be covered on account of them facing Folsom St. I loved it.

  4. So many things about this…

    Size: It’s 1,071 sq. ft. per budget. The 1,230 sq. ft. comes from the sale before where a “graphic artist” measures 159 more sq. ft. 159 More sq. ft. @ $X price per sq. ft…

    It’s a RELO – so the agent doesn’t have as much control, for example
    -Listing on Nov. 21st, just 5 days before Thanksgiving…
    -No Staging, hence the virtual staging…
    -Less concern with price…

    1. The square footage number we employed (1,230) is actually based on the tax assessor’s record for the unit which is typically set based on the original condo map of the building when it was built versus an artistic interpretation or subsequent listing.

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