700 Kings Mountain Road

Originally marketed by Sotheby’s with a $47.5 million price tag back in 2012, the asking price for “Woodhaven Manor” – which was built in 1988 and includes a 12,000-square-foot main home, a 1,200-square-foot carriage house and a 1,000-square-foot guest house on over 3 acres of land at 700 Kings Mountain Road down in Woodside – was subsequently reduced and the estate was listed anew for $28.888 million in 2015.

Reduced a few more times over the past couple of years, to as low as $15.99 million in late 2017, the property went to auction this past December in Hong Kong, “in hopes of securing a Chinese-based buyer.”

From the auction site:

“Nestled in an extremely desirable and exclusive region of the United States, Woodside maintains its small-town sensibility despite its proximity to Silicon Valley and San Francisco. Horses are a part of the everyday culture here, with a plentitude of horse trails just outside your gates to indulge your inner-equestrian. A leisurely stroll into the village for dinner will find you at legendary Buck’s Woodside, where you can spy Silicon Valley deals being inked over a bottle of Chateau Lafite.”

And the winning bid for 700 Kings Mountain Road was $8.2 million. But with a required buyer’s premium of 15 percent, we’ll call it an effective sale price of $9.4 million. No official word as to the provenance of the buyer.

25 thoughts on “$47.5 Million Woodside Estate Fetches Under $10 Million at Auction”
  1. Big whoop. Everyone knew it was overpriced and most people didn’t like the aesthetics. Thank you for letting us know, though.

      1. Whoa there. If there’s anything snarky it’s lines like “professionally repriced.”

        I do enjoy your multi-year tracking of these one off weird houses, but IMO there’s not much surprising about the outcome.

        1. There was absolutely no snark intended, at least not with respect to the property being professionally repriced by a Silicon Valley based brokerage in 2015.

          And while the original asking price appears to have been driven by a bit of irrational exuberance and marketing wow, the 39 percent price cut in 2015 was intended to right the ship and be taken more seriously.

  2. It’s not really a 47 million dollar estate, though. That was just it’s asking, and the market wasn’t there. Do we know it’s previous purchase price?

      1. Interesting. The headline isn’t quite right, then. This was never a 47 million dollar house, any more than mine is (if you offer me 47 million dollars for my house, I’ll be out in 20 minutes).

  3. If the new owners want to sell in the future for higher, they will need to gut the interior and redo. For a highest and best possible sale price 5-10 yrs. down, best to tear down and start over.

    1. And let’s hope they don’t make the same mistake: being cheap – or maybe just tasteless – and using the same salmon-coloured paint on several rooms inside that they did outside.

      1. The color salmon is not the problem. It has a long respected history. The great building at 2006 Washington Street is salmon and has been forever. Of course there can be too much of a good thing.

        1. “Salmon” /ˈsæmən/ is the common name for several “species” of ray-finned fish in the family Salmonidae. Other fish in the same family include trout, char, grayling and whitefish. Salmon are native to tributaries of the “North Atlantic (genus Salmo”) and Pacific Ocean (genus Oncorhynchus). Many “species” of salmon have been introduced into non-native environments such as the Great Lakes of North America and Patagonia in South America. Salmon are intensively farmed in many parts of the world.

  4. Wow. So ugly. It looks like it was designed by the same people who operate those stores in Chinatown and Union Square, like Natalies, that sell fake Louis XV “antiques.”

  5. This strikes me as a steal. Yes, it’s ugly. But the changes required are mostly cosmetic. New paint, cabinets/countertops, and light fixtures, remove a bunch of carpet, and get some 2019 furniture. This place goes way up in value with about three months of work.

  6. In spite of all the lame excuses for the new lower price for an enormous lot, right next to a large public park, with three homes, this is an amazing show of a tanking market.

    Any buyer at this price range guts and redecorates to their own taste, so the out of date aspects of the property didn’t hurt that much. When I look at a place like this, I just look right past all those minor issues. $1.6M for a new kitchen and baths, remove the columns and replace the railings, and paint, (while leaving that gorgeous library exactly as it is), $500K for new flooring on the ground floor, and you have just what you want, for $11.5M. You’d have to pay more than double that two years ago.

    This is the type of property that will stay in the same family for generations. Congrats to the buyer: waiting out the market was exactly the right approach, and the property will be absolutely perfect with the right decorator. Of course, it’s more than a year’s worth of work and by then, the market could fall even more, so the developers wouldn’t come near it.

    1. Yeah, I was wondering that too. Sure, anyone who is going to buy this property is likely to gut the house, but wouldn’t a paint job to whitewash away the salmon and teal, and some fresh carpet to get rid of the jade/teal accents be worth the $50K or whatever, and put a halt to the price free fall?

    1. Why do you think the seller held an auction “in hopes of securing a Chinese-based buyer.”? This won’t be a home for anyone and it will probably be lived in for a few weeks out of the year, at most. It’s an asset for holding money outside of China, probably by a member of the red nobility in an attempt to get around capital controls.

  7. Yes, some odd shapes to the rooms, but with a good interior decorator this could be a very comfortable & attractive home.

    1. Lot’s of octagonal spaces: the feng shui reading for this must be something along the lines of
      “Eight will be your good fortune” and what-do-you-know:
      Give or take a few hundred thou that’s exactly what it was !!

  8. this looks like a great relative value, for 3 acres of land between SF and silicon valley with a fully decked out house; when you consider that a “luxury” condo (those larger upper floor ones) in downtown cost as much.

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