If you missed last year’s Decorator Showcase, we just noticed that the listing for 2901 Broadway now features the newly decorated shots (and the virtual tour before and afters).
And there’s good news if you’ve been thinking, “fifty-five is ludicrous, but maybe at forty-eight.” After 322 days on the market, the list price has just been reduced $7,000,000.
Perhaps countering those four offers at fifty-five wasn’t the way to go. Live and learn.
UPDATE: From a plugged-in reader’s comment: “I spoke to a contractor about this property who estimated the substructure and engineering work alone on this house could cost 10 million.”
What the nicer homes on that block worth? $100MM???
I just looked on the tax roll records, and it looks like the owner of this property paid $7,339.66 in property taxes in 2007. The house is assessed at $640,445.00.
How on earth does this happen? I pay more than that for my little 2 bedroom condo in the Western Addition.
Moneylender,
Things were different.
I remember a column in the SF Chronicle by Herb Caen about 1984 or so(a columnist who had a daily column from the like 1940 to 1995) that noted the first real estate sale over 1 million in San Francisco. That was a big deal at the time.
This property has been in the same hands since the 1950’s or so.
How do people get this kind of money?
Relative to some properties we are all Bitter Renters.
Well, the Bay Area does have 47 billionaires…
But seriously, I spoke to a contractor about this property who estimated the substructure and engineering work alone on this house could cost 10 million. I don’t think even the wealthiest families want to spend 4 years and 20 million on a remodel.
And after you finish the restoration (and the un-doing of some stupid showcase house work) you will need the kind of full time staff where a group health plan would be in order.
Goes to show…even the rich need to sell sometimes. No one is immune to this market environment. Yes, even high end properties WILL be affected by the downturn.
I think this will appeal very strongly to a certain type of buyer who is not well represented on this board: the massively wealthy.
If I was a billionaire, for example, I might consider this house or perhaps the as-yet-unfinished one across the street (also asking $55M).
This does have a nice lot and I think you could put a helipad on the roof, which would be cool.
To the international billionaire class, the price shouldn’t be an issue. Lakshmi Mittal (worth $32 billion) spent $128 million on a house in London. And, even to those with $500 million, it’s no big deal. But, having to go through a massive renovation and wait for at least a year, seems like a major problem. They just need to find someone who will put up with anything so that they can end up living on that block of Broadway and saying that they look down – literally – on the Gettys. Good luck.
“To the international billionaire class, the price shouldn’t be an issue.”
The fact that the international billionaire class hasn’t already snapped this up should tell you something…they don’t think it’s worth anything near what they’re asking. I love San Francisco but we’re not London.
Some houses just take a long time to sell — may be priced right. Not a lot of comps at these prices and you have to look beyond SF. Full Townhouses in NYC’s UES / UWS sell for significant amounts of money. This is a serious estate with few peers. Personally, I don’t like the place and the $7M reduction is laughable. The person that wants this place isn’t concerned with $7M. They are concerned with overall value and I’d argue that the value of this place diminishes significantly for every $1M above $30 – 35M.
Seems like owning a place such as this would be a headache.
Right on, Michael. How many billionaires do we know who aren’t at least slightly financially savvy? Isn’t that how they became billionaires in the first place? : )
Is it just me or are a lot of these high end homes decorated in a way that turn people off? That master bedroom looks like it came out of the “Finding Nemo” collection with all that blue.
These “showcases” make the place look more like a museum than a home I’d want to live in. I’d be too nervous to touch anything for fear of breaking it.
Maybe it’s just me.
The real question – how much more do I have to pay to get that VW Bug tossed in?
What? Only two-car garage? Where would you park your collectible car collections?
While it is a spectacular property it does seem over priced. The comparison to full town houses in NYC, while insightful, ignores the fact that a 3BR condo in a building on leased land can run over $6M in midtown Manhattan.
It looks like a huge undertaking to do foundation and structural retrofitting.
While it is quite a spread, that is a high price and if you’ve got that money, why not build a new out in the country and helicopter into town?
Wow, “Decorator Showcase Kitchen looking toward Decorator Showcase Cake Room”…could they say, “Decorator Showcase” any more times? Perhaps it’s to remind us that decorators were actually here? I’m remodeling my house and thinking about hiring a decorator for the first time, but after a look at some of these rooms (Master bedroom, the “Gentleman’s Room”), I think I’m more scared to hire someone than to do it myself! It looks like someone put finger paint all over it, or, in the case of the Gent’s Bedroom, got bored partway through (what’s with the weird, random unpainted arches?).
It’s too bad, because all the comments so far notwithstanding – and I agree with most of them – it’s a showcase house that someone could restore to its original form, but with all the mess in there now it’s awfully hard to see that.