According to the agent for the 22-acre “Fieldhaven” estate at 7 Country Oak Lane in Alamo, David Duffield, the co-founder of PeopleSoft and Workday, invested over $135 million in building out the property, a build-out which was completed in 2013 by a team of over 200 craftsmen over the course of three years and at the center of which is a nearly 21,000-square-foot home which was designed and crafted by Remick Associates Architects + Master Builders.
In addition to the seven-bedroom master home – which features imported European stonework, four kitchens, an old-school wine cellar, a 14-seat cinema painted Evans & Brown, a vault and two panic rooms – the estate includes a detached 1,115 square-foot guest house, a designer tree house and a 1,404 square-foot one-bedroom loft above the estate’s custom 15+ car “barn.”
And having first hit the market in 2016 priced at $39 million, the proceeds from which were slated to be donated to Maddie’s Fund, the nonprofit pet shelter founded by Dave and his wife Cheryl, and to which they have since endowed over $300 million, the Fieldhaven estate has just returned to the market with a significantly reduced $28.5 million price tag.
And the sale of 7 Country Oak Lane has now quietly closed escrow with a contract price of $19 million and an official “80 days on the market,” having been re-listed anew this past June, with the proceeds, less commissions, earmarked for Maddie’s Fund.
The adjacent 101-acre estate at 10 Serenity Lane, which hit the market priced at $42 million in early 2015, remains on the market with a reduced $19.5 million price tag.
Nothing says taste like painting Pirates of the Caribean Johnny Depp on the walls of your multi-million dollar home.
That’s their theater. Why not?
This estate seems like it would be lonely to live in. A huge house and property where finding loved ones could be hard. No neighbor interaction to speak of. I could imagine whoever lives here having all the physical possessions they could ever want, and being sad. I’ll take the density of SF / Berkeley / even Walnut Creek any day over this.
Sounds like a tax scam
What kind of tax…property? Income? Inheritance ?
If your inference is they (somehow) underpaid to minimize the first of these, then wouldn’t they lose out somewhere else ??
This was likely structured as a non-cash contribution to a donor-advised fund. And if so, the value of the deduction would have been set at the “fair market value” of the property at the time of the donation, such as when professionally priced at $39 million back in 2016, not the actual sale price of the property when liquidated.
I agree something is super fishy. This project doesn’t look like a $135m project. $20-$40m seems more reasonable for a project of this size.
Probably money laundering.
And how would THAT work…exactly?? As I understand it, most laundering is done by running phantom revenues thru cash oriented businesses; so how would that work here…does the person who had this built call attention to himself by spending all kinds of money s/he’s not supposed to have?? or the contractors claim all kinds of income they didn’t really receive, for the purpose of overpaying their taxes?
I must be missing something.
I don’t know about money laundering. To me it looks like very rich people spending a lot of money on local craftspeople. I’m sure their contractor charged them an inflated rate. Good!
Now, to me, the outcome is both ridiculous and hideous. If I was going to spend $19 million on a house, this is the absolute last place I would buy. But that’s just personal taste.
It is like living in a hotel, not a home. But a bargain for the right person.
Nah. Like living in some kind of Mad Bavarian King palace with better mod cons. I mean, a Software Mogul is just like royalty in the Bay Area, no?
Can’t figure out which is more difficult to comprehend – somebody spending $135 million on a house or somebody finding this place to be anything but fabulous.
Gluttony is not really my definition of “fabulous”. And a 21,000 square foot house (main house only. There is MORE!) is gluttony worthy of the character in Monty Python who ate so much that he exploded after one more thin mint.
Looks like the future campus for a group care home to me.
My favorite feature of this property is that the garage/barn is so far away that you’d be likely to drive there from the house.
It appears from the overhead photo that there is an attached garage to the house for “everyday” cars. The barn is for a private collection of cars for limited use and provides a setting for much admiration. 🙂
Right, because you need a place for a car to drive to your cars. Kind of like those megayachts that have a mini-me yacht to sail from the pier to the anchorage.
As of earlier this week, 7 Country Oak Ln in Alamo is back on the market asking $35,000,000 with the property history indicating a sale at $10 million earlier this year following the above-described August of 2020 sale at $19 million. A tip of the hat to Anna Marie Erwert earlier this week, who added this interesting nugget (scroll down to ‘graph eight):
I can’t imagine this will trade for more than $19 million, and probably a lot closer to $10 million, but I don’t know the East Bay luxury market.
If the 2023 sale was a legitimate change of owner to the current seller, then even if the property doesn’t close for asking, this looks to be the most lucrative flip in the entire Bay Area over the time since the onset of the pandemic.
UPDATE: The property did not trade $10 million last year. But with over $25 million having been invested in the property over the past four years, not including holding costs, the list price for 7 Country Oak Lane has just been dropped to $29.5 million.