CFAH

830 El Camino Del Mar

It would appear as though 830 El Camino Del Mar quietly sold for $9,990,000 last month with a listing that was “withdrawn” a week its before closing and unreported on the MLS.

As plugged-in people know, the Sea Cliff home had been listed and withdrawn seventeen times without selling since 1998 and had been listed for as much as $18,000,000 in 2008.

Feel free to suggest a final stanza for a reader’s original poem. Then again, the buyer was the rather anonymous “830 CDM LLC,” so perhaps there’s a new poem waiting to be penned.

Comments from Plugged-In Readers

  1. Posted by steve

    wow, someone really wanted this. $2500/sq ft is rare air (but perhaps not the best metric given the lot value).
    the seller has wasted a lot of high-end realtor time with bat-sh*t insane expectations, but he can’t be too displeased with the result. looks like it’s more than 3x the purchase price:
    6/3/1997 $3,000,000

  2. Posted by sf

    My top 5 favorite houses in the world. Congrats to the buyer! Perhaps they will sell it to me one day 🙂

  3. Posted by The Milkshake of Despair

    Is there any chance that “830 CDM LLC” is actually the seller attempting to create an “auto-comp” ?

  4. Posted by formerly%whatever

    That’s $99,000 in transfer taxes plus attorney time at Cooley where the registered agent works.

  5. Posted by [anon.ed]

    “Is there any chance that “830 CDM LLC” is actually the seller attempting to create an “auto-comp” ”
    Can you elaborate on why that might in any way be a beneficial thing to do?

  6. Posted by eddy

    @tmod, I don’t think so. The home had a “Sold” sign on it at one point and I would guess that a buyer emerged for this property and eventually negotiated the recorded selling price of $9.9M. This lot could easily hold a $20M home and it wouldn’t take $10M of investment to get there. I sincerely hope that something awesome gets constructed there. Sucks for the neighbors in the short term though. At least the ones that actually live in their homes.

  7. Posted by tipster

    MoD, it was more likely a very wealthy person who wanted to hide his or her address, or a not-quite-as-wealthy-as-you-think person trying to hide his or her assets.
    This isn’t the typical condo building where the developer pretends to buy two units to generate fake comps to sell the other units at inflated prices, that appears quite frequently in the con game that is San Francisco real estate. There isn’t anything else to sell.
    It’s possible that this is the seller buying it and he will try to list it again next year with this price as the comp, arguing the market only fell 4% so someone should pay 96% of this price, but that seems unlikely, if only because this guy seems too cheap.
    I doubt putting an asset into a wholly owned LLC triggers the transfer tax, and the LLC fee is only $800 per year, so it’s entirely possible anon.ed. This guy certainly has seemed in no rush, so creating a fake comp only to try to resell in a year is entirely possible, but I doubt it’s very likely.

  8. Posted by The Milkshake of Despair

    “Can you elaborate on why that [false sale to self] might in any way be a beneficial thing to do?”
    Maybe the false auto-comp might fool a naive buyer. Say it ends up back on the market this summer listed for the same price. A real buyer comes along, bargains hard, and “wins” the house for $9M, a perceived 10% discount over what the previous buyer paid. A property like this is hard to evaluate though a sale puts a stake in the ground marking what at least one buyer thought it was worth.
    It is an expensive psychological trick but might work. Considering that the assessed value will now be bumped up to almost $10M one would only try this sort of trick as an end-game.
    eddy’s scenario sounds more plausible though.

  9. Posted by eddy

    Anyone have any idea what that structure out in the ocean is all about? I’ve always wondered?
    http://binged.it/H55dOu

  10. Posted by wiger toods

    Considering Eddy’s hypothesis,,,
    Unless someone has been quietly working behind the scenes for approvals, anykind of major site work could easily take a couple years for regulatory and environmental approvals. What are the holding costs on a scenario like this?

  11. Posted by Rocco

    I don’t believe transferring the ownership of one LLC to another LLC triggers the transfer tax if the property is an asset. I’m not sure where registering the deed comes into play.
    It’s an interesting strategy.

  12. Posted by The Milkshake of Despair

    eddy – Perhaps it was a platform for one of the ye olde fashioned wave generators. I don’t know about this location but there were several wave generators built around the corner just outside of Sutro Baths

  13. Posted by Helmut

    eddy – its a type of light house. Automated, serviced by the coast guard. There is a reef out there, in warns ships. Might have a fog horn on top as well.

  14. Posted by Helmut

    Used to or perhaps still does have a helocopter pad on top…
    http://www.us-lighthouses.com/displaypage.php?LightID=24

  15. Posted by johnny

    must not be much action in the luxury real estate market these days

  16. Posted by guest

    Mile Rock — light house (?) and fog horn. One mile from here to the gate, or so I have been told.

  17. Posted by jlasf

    Maybe they will tear down the existing place and build the Morris house that Frank Lloyd Wright designed for this site. That would be the coolest thing ever!
    http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/6493/morrishouse12.jpg

  18. Posted by Debtpocalypse

    Morris House.
    Wow.
    Yes.
    Wow.

  19. Posted by BobTheBuilder

    Can you imagine what the Planning Dept would do if someone walked in there with the Morris House design … ? They’d definitely want that bay window straightened out and trimmed with ogees with a 4″ reveal to the glass. And can you imagine FLW dealing with the “bird ordinance”?

  20. Posted by Dont get it

    Wow, thanks for sharing that. Made my Friday

  21. Posted by tg

    Happy Ocean Outside
    830 CDM LLC
    To Get K1 Today

  22. Posted by eddy

    Thanks for the lighthouse links guys. Shame they took down the original structure.

  23. Posted by tipster

    tg,
    They filed the LLC in 2012, so wouldn’t the K1 not be filed until next April?

  24. Posted by tg

    yes next year. thought id try my tax related haiku today

  25. Posted by eddy

    Figures Business Insider would break the news on Jack Dorsey rumored purchase of this home.

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