Adobe Founder’s Marina Home Fetches $6.8M in Bidding War

The Marina home owned by the family of Adobe founder John Warnock has sold for $6.8 million — $820,000 over its nearly $6 million asking price, according to public records.

Warnock died at 82 in 2023, but his four-bedroom, five-bath, nearly 4,000-square foot home at 2258 Beach Street in San Francisco was still owned in a family trust by his wife, Marva. The buyer was Shea Sullivan, according to public records. She was represented by Laura Kaufman at Corcoran Icon. Kaufman did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Listing agent Lauren Klapper of City Real Estate would not confirm the buyer or seller identities, but said the sellers put the home on the market because they moved into a larger home in San Francisco.

Klapper said the asking price on the home, which the Warnocks acquired in 2012, was “totally fair,” and not strategically underpriced to elicit multiple offers, as is common in San Francisco.

“It was a beautiful property so I wasn’t surprised by the interest in it,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting it to go as far over asking as it did.”

Making sure that it was among the first to hit the market in the $5 million to $10 million range this year was a strategic gamble that paid off with the “amazing” response, Klapper said.

“We toyed with coming to market the Monday after the Super Bowl,” she said, as the big game typically marks the start date for the city’s spring market. “But there’s nothing like this in the market and I know that all my buyers are itching to get into places. I’m like, why not? Let’s just bring it on and see what happens.”

The home came to market on Jan. 7, elicited 25 requests for disclosures and seven offers, six of which were all cash. After an offer date when Klapper asked buyers to come in with their highest and best offers, an all-cash offer at $6.8 million was accepted on Jan. 17. It closed 13 days later.

Competition on the home was boosted by two buyers from Los Angeles who were either displaced by the fires in Pacific Palisades themselves or had family members who were, she added. More displaced Angelenos also toured the property but didn’t end up making an offer.

Klapper attributed the quick, competitive sale to its location — a block from the Palace of Fine Arts and the Presidio and walking distance to shops and restaurants on Chestnut Street — as well as its size, natural light, large yard, “completely turnkey” interiors, and luxurious bonuses like a wine cellar and infrared sauna.

She added that the election of San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has buoyed buyer morale across the higher end.

“People are ready to invest again,” she said. “It feels like there was a complete shift once he came to office.”

The AI boom and the well-performing stock market have helped as well, she said. But it is too early in the spring season to tell if the Beach Street sale marks a return of the city’s infamous over-asking trend, she said, or if it will end up being just a unique example of the rare home that “checked every box” and came on at just the right time.

“If this is a benchmark of what’s to come in 2025, I feel very hopeful,” she said, before clarifying, “as a selling agent, not as a buying agent.”