Shoehorned Home Without Parking Fetches $3.1 Million
April 30, 2015
Listed for $2.7 million a few weeks ago, the 3,687 square foot Clarendon Heights home which was shoehorned between two existing homes, and built without any legal way to reach it, has sold for $3.1 million with a newly permitted pedestrian path to the home having been poured and landscaped.
The developer had intended for the path across the Stanyan Street public right of way to become a driveway, but those plans were the subject of a heated neighborhood dispute and subsequently abandoned, at which point the garage for 1410 Stanyan was repositioned as a family room.
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Things are getting bubbly.
Yes, but I do not see any outside force that would put this market back to reality. The Nasdaq has just only retraced its Y2K top and much of tech is printing money.
My bet: the old trend of flat national wages is going to be broken. The is means inflation will come soon, and SF prices will rise at less than inflation. Just a guess, since I cannot picture what needle would puncture that bubble.
Twitter and LinkedIn stock each lost 20% on earnings announcements this week.
Wow Just wow.
Bold move by the developer. “Foolhardy” might be another way of putting it.
Now if only there were two pedestrian paths, spaced, say, 80″ apart, leading up to the “living room.” Then I would be really impressed.
OK if you get around on Uber.
It’s still unclear to me how the developer got a permit for the path over public land, despite the huge opposition. Editor? Neighbors?
To memorialize the original intent for the family room to be a garage, find yourself a nice old collectible car, have it craned into the room, set up a giant flat screen, and every night take your kids to the drive in movies.
shza, the public land is undeveloped public right of way, I believe (paper street). Since the property was landlocked, I think they have a right to an easement over the public land. They erred in assuming they had the right to a vehicular easement….perhaps if they’d approached the neighbors differently from the start that wouldn’t have been an issue either, but building the monster home with garage BEFORE going through those motions seems to have been a teensy little issue….. I predict the current or some future owner will get vehicular access if they want it.
Right, but I thought their right would have been to the shortest point-to-point easement possible, which this is not. And a right of way over public land wouldn’t necessarily permit you to lay a concrete walkway — it would permit you to walk through grass to your house. Someone on one of the earlier threads suggested that maybe ADA concerns factor in when the easement is over public land, which would explain it; but I have no idea if this is true.
I haven’t had to think or learn about easements since my first year of law school….
I’m the one who piped up about possible ADA considerations. The more I look at it, the more I think the design was driven (ahem) by what path would most easily convert into a driveway.
I also thought accessibility for the mailbox might be an issue, but I notice it’s on the sidewalk before the pathway. Hmm…
If this is a home for a family, how are you going to get groceries and babies into the house without a car and garage? Even the help will get fed up with the schlepping.
How will they survive the great hardship of having to carry groceries? It seems impossible.
well said
I mean, everyone throughout history has had a car and a private garage space, no?
Someone contact amnesty international. This is inhumane
I’m willing to bet R, asiagoSF and zig are all men. Try getting groceries for a family with an infant and toddler.
I sympathize, and yes, this is probably not the home for someone who actually does their own grocery shopping with two little kids. If it’s a family, the kids are likely older, or, at this price point, the help does a lot of the work. The help might not like it, but hey, that’s what they’re paid to do.
Oh come on, I know plenty of families who live in the mission and other neighborhoods who own a car, have multiple kids, and manage just fine with no garage or on-site parking. And they don’t have enough money to hire help! They schlep groceries and kids all the time. It’s by no means impossible, and in the grand scheme of things not even that difficult.
The Mission is also a much more urban area, with tons of produce and other markets that one can walk to for a day’s or a meal’s-worth of groceries. It’s definitely a bigger pain if you live in an area like this and are likely able to make only 1-2 grocery runs in a week.
We were totally fine having no off-street parking with two small kids when we lived right off Cortland Street in Bernal. We’d just walk two blocks to Good Life grocery every night. But now that we’re in Piedmont, I’ve been very happy to have a garage with interior access, despite my kids being older and more helpful (and despite the fact that our nanny does one of our two major grocery runs each week). This location is more like Piedmont than Bernal just off Cortland.
Just putting in a plug for sled dogs. Malamutes are excellent with children.
You think this is bad, did you see that apartment building they’re gonna build on Hayes? The lobby is at one end of the building and the apt corridor is almost a block long on the floors above. That is a schlep!
Hat tip to the very considerate host!
Be the first in the neighborhood to have your own funicular.
This home is 3.1 mil. Why pin middle-class expectations to these homes? The owners aren’t going to be doing Costco runs. Grocery delivery services most of the time, likely. For all we know, this is a pied a terre for someone who doesn’t expect to keep a car in the city. Whoever bought it thinks it will fit their lifestyle just fine. Of course, if it’s back on the market in 6 months, we’ll know it didn’t.
C’mon. This would be an absurd location for a pied-a-terre. A large house in a completely residential area?
Sorry, pied-a-terre is probably the wrong word. Maybe “second home” or “third home.” I know a few people who have two or three homes scattered across the world, and sometimes they are in residential or rural areas. But because they aren’t there full-time, the homes don’t need to have every amenity (like a garage).
(Agree with the grocery delivery point though.)
1) Everyone shops at Costco. Friends who live in Presidio Heights and Sea Cliff think it’s just dumb not to.
2) This is a family home, not a pied a terre.
3) Back when I was a poor twenty-something the two things I coveted more than anything were my own washer and dryer and a garage so I wouldn’t have to park on the street. I even put off getting a nice car until I could keep it garaged.
I suppose it does fit the lifestyle of whoever bought it but no garage is a deal breaker for me.
$3.1 is moderately upper middle class in SF. Way back when the price of my house doubled for the first time, Jordan Park was where you lived until you could afford to move into Presidio Heights and you had to use a map to find Noe Valley. Now $5 million isn’t unusual in those areas.
This is a little bit silly. $3.1 million implies an income of at least $700-800k a year. That is well within the top 1% in San Francisco. Obviously not within the top 0.1% buying on Broadway or Pacific, but just as obviously not “moderately upper class.”
The fact that there are a bunch of moderately upper middle class people who have lived for decades in houses that could *now* sell for $3M doesn’t change that.
Yes, it’s amazing anyone bought this.
An awful lot of places in SF have no parking. Parking is easy around here – they will park at the base of the walkway and walk to the house. I know a lot of people that can rarely find street parking within a few blocks of their homes. This place would have sold for quite a bit more were it not for this not-so-rare inconvenience.
One issue – my understanding is the walkway and landscaping are all public, so any bum could camp out there, trample everything, etc. I guess it’s not really a big problem in this part of town, so, in reality, I suppose this will become “private” property as the years go by.
Smart and innovative way to add a nice house, imho.
Yes, but this Clarendon Hts which is not the most walkable neighborhood. Moving small kids around will be a 2 adult operation: one to walk with them, the other to go for the parking hunt.
I lived across the street for 4 years. Parking not that easy around here during the week, since a lot of UCSF workers park up on Clarendon and take the shuttle or walk to the hospital.
Been reading through the history of this place – what a soap opera!
Does anyone know how much the lot originally cost the owner/developer?
500 k, iirc
Maybe the buyer is the owner of the house next door and this one is just for his art collection.
that “walkway” looks suspiciously like a fiat 500 sized driveway.
I wonder as to how a fire truck or other emergency vehicle would gain access.
Same way they gain access to any other house that’s a hundred feet from a drivable street?
Very difficult for the city to deny acess to a legally subdivided lot over a public right of way when there are two houses either side of the lot. They could force them to fully develop the right-of way (sewar fire hydrant street lights etc) but I am sure the neighbors did not want that. There is after all a 5th amendment to the constitution!
This house has been back on the market since February. Asking $3,695,000.
UPDATE: Shoehorned Home on Stanyan Fetches $3.5 Million