Home on SF’s Presidio Wall Sells for Nearly $30 Million

A 9,000-square-foot home along the Presidio Wall has sold in an off-market deal for just less than $30 million, making it one of the priciest single-family trades in San Francisco this year and a much-needed comp for the city’s slow-moving luxury market.

The wood-shingled 96-year-old home abutting Presidio National Park traded at more than $3,300 per square foot, well above the $2,800 per square foot for the $34.5 million Pacific Heights home that currently holds this year’s single-family sales record.

Definite Dream LLC, which shares a Burlingame address with the law firm Anderson Yazdi Hwang Minton and Horn, bought 3355 Pacific Avenue on Nov. 7 for $29.5 million, according to property records. It has been about a year and a half since the home last traded for $28 million.

The short-term owner was Home Sweet Home Trust, which lists William Butler as its trustee on loan documents. Butler is a Chicago-based attorney focused on estate and wealth transfer planning with McDermott Will and Emery, according to the firm’s website.

Butler is presumably the advisor to the actual sellers, who, like the buyers, remain unknown. What is clear is that the property’s interior looks very different from the last time it was listed publicly for just under $9 million in 2009. At the time, the 1926 Golden Gate Bridge view home had been owned for decades by Caroline Hume, known for her philanthropy to city art institutions.

After she died in the home in 2008 at the age of 99, buyers Jeffrey and Laura Ubben bought it for $9.2 million, according to public records. Jeffrey Ubben was a hedge fund manager until 2020, when he left ValueAct Capital, which he also co-founded, in order to start a new socially responsible investment fund.

The Ubbens put millions into a complete interior remodel of the four-bedroom, seven-bath home on a 60-foot-wide lot, including a structural upgrade, demolition and construction on all three floors, and lowering the slab and patio on the rear first floor, according to city records. The work was completed in 2014.

Shortly after the Ubbens sold the home in 2021, apparently also off market, the new owners took out permits for a further remodel, including the movement of several walls, remaking a stairwell between the first and second floor, and excavating the elevator pit to lower the landing on the first floor, a renovation estimated to cost about $1.2 million. Those permits were issued last fall, while another permit to replace the north-facing windows and add new wind-resistant bi-fold doors onto the lower, south-facing terrace was still awaiting approval when the home sold last month, according to city permitting records. It’s unclear if any of the work has been done.

Nearly all of San Francisco’s biggest deals this year have taken place off-market, including the summer sales of Mark Zuckerberg’s Mission Dolores home for $31 million and the $34.5 million purchase of a Pacific Heights fixer by the billionaire owners of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Manchester United sports teams. With only weeks to go in the year, and nothing remotely close to that price point in contract, it seems likely that the $34.5 million property will retain the 2022 title.

But in San Francisco it’s not over till it’s over. Last year, San Francisco’s most expensive listing — a modern spec mansion in Cow Hollow with a lap pool and an asking price of $46 million — ended up as the second-biggest deal of 2021 when it closed on Dec. 30 for $32 million.