VC's "House That Apple Bought" Sells in Presidio Heights

The longtime Presidio Heights home of venture capitalist and art collector C. Richard Kramlich, an early Apple investor, has sold for just half a million less than its $19.5 million asking price, going into contract just after Kramlich’s sudden death in early February and closing on May 5.

Kramlich and his wife Pamela bought 3699 Washington Street in the early 1980s after Apple went public. She had fruit-shaped doorknobs attached to the front gate to mark “the house that Apple bought,” she told the Chronicle for an obituary on the New Enterprise Associates founder.

At 89, Kramlich was still very active in the VC world, co-founding Green Bay Ventures in 2017, which invested in Databricks, Dropbox and Docusign. He hosted a board meeting for secure communications platform Movius and showed the couple’s collection of media art the same weekend he died, his son Rix told the Chronicle. He died Feb. 1 after he collapsed and lost consciousness in the Napa Valley home that also houses the private collection while preparing to go out to dinner. He was pronounced dead at the scene, according to the obituary.

The couple’s decades-long San Francisco home came to market last fall. The 10,000-square-foot brick and stone Tudor-style property, originally designed by Albert Farr in 1927 for one of the engineers of the Golden Gate Bridge, was marked “pending” on Redfin on Feb. 17. Appropriately, the elevator home has bridge views from the three main levels, according to a marketing site for the home. The lower level may not have the views, but it does have a 35-foot by 26 -foot “Social Hall” with a built-in stage, wine cellar and full bar, as well as a secondary kitchen, gym area, separate caretaker’s apartment with full kitchen and bath, and two-car side-by-side garage. The detached corner location allows for gardens and terraces with gas lamps, an outdoor fireplace, fountains and a resistance exercise pool.

Compass agent Neal Ward represented the sellers and declined to comment on the sale or the reasons for the long close. The buyer’s agents, Shane Ray and Julie Rogers, also with Compass, did not reply to a request for comment.

The buyer was HSF Property Holdings, LLC, according to the deed, which lists the address of a medical and legal office building in Oakland. The LLC paperwork, filed in February, has the downtown San Francisco address of SSL, a real estate law firm. No financing paperwork has been filed with the city, indicating that, despite the long close, the sale was an all-cash deal.

Though it didn’t quite break the $20 million mark, the sale of the five-bedroom, seven-bathroom home is still one of the biggest in San Francisco so far this year. A seven-bed, six-bath home just across Spruce Street from 3699 Washington sold off-market for $26 million in January, though the majority of the other top deals were in neighboring Pacific Heights.

The top price paid so far this year went to a home long-owned by the Shorenstein family in Sea Cliff, which traded for $30 million in late January. That same month, Sam Altman bought his neighbor’s three-lot street-to-street property in Russian Hill, for $38.5 million, according to the San Francisco Association of Realtors MLS records.