A historic home owned for decades by a prominent commercial developer has set a new on-Multiple Listing Service record for the East Bay enclave of Piedmont, and shows how important unique architectural features are to the upper end of the market.
There were two offers on 65 Sea View Avenue after it came to market asking $14.8 million in April, according to listing agents Anian Tunney and Adrienne Tunney Krumins of The Grubb Company. A multiple offer situation is unusual for an East Bay home at that price point, according to the mother and daughter team. The 11,000-square-foot, eight-bedroom, 7.5-bathroom home with a swimming pool on about two-thirds of an acre sold for $13.9 million on May 15.
“The big prices tend to be in San Francisco, Marin and the Peninsula,” said Krumins, who grew up in the East Bay and has sold homes there alongside her mother since 2009. “It’s good for the health of the East Bay to have these really good, positive prices.”
The home set a new high for a Piedmont property that’s recorded on the MLS, the listing agents said, with the caveat that a home across the street at 26 Seaview sold for $23 million in a private sale in 2022.
That’s the same year the previous MLS record was set, when a 10,000-square-foot 115-year-old Tudor-style home went for $12 million. Sales volume and prices started falling across much of the Bay Area the following year as interest rates rose quickly. The listing agents said now those higher interest rates are “baked in” to buyers’ budgets and that this latest record-breaking sale after just 19 days on the market shows East Bay high-end buyers are ready to make a move.
“People want to be in Oakland, Piedmont and Berkeley,” Krumins said. “That’s what this sale is saying.”
The property has not sold since 1994, when it was purchased by commercial developer Julian Orton for $922,000, according to public records. Orton is the founder of Orton Development, which specializes in historic redevelopments. Last year, Orton agreed to pay the City of Oakland $5,000 to settle allegations he had improperly donated to a city ballot measure in 2018, while the firm was in negotiations with the city to redevelop the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center. Orton’s firm did redevelop the 1915 Beaux Arts building on Lake Merritt, now known as the Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts, under a 99-year lease with the city. It reopened after a $75 million renovation in 2023.
The company is also behind other largescale rehabilitations, like the Pier 70 Iron Works Machine Shop building and the former West Coast headquarters of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, now a Restoration Hardware, both in San Francisco, according to the Orton website.
Orton did not immediately reply to a request for comment. He and his wife Amy had already moved out of their Piedmont home and had rented it out for several years before deciding to put it on the market this spring. The seller gave his input as to the initial asking price of the home, the listing agents said, which was difficult to decide on given the lack of comps for such a singular property.
“You kind of have to go with your gut to some extent,” said Tunney.
The value of history
Like the previous Piedmont recordholder, 65 Sea View also comes packed with history. It was commissioned in 1926 by a founder of Hills Brothers Coffee Company, who hired the famed architects Newsom & Newsom and the same builders as Hearst Castle. Many original details are still intact in the Mediterranean-style home, including its Italian-made green roof tiles and a tiled backsplash in the kitchen featuring coffee pots and steaming cups of coffee.
The agents said the architecture of the “really well maintained” and well-laid out home and its “epic” views spoke for itself, though they did work to create a more youthful look with the staging and redid paint, hard wood floors and carpets.
“Bay Area people love their important architecture, but they also want a hip, cool vibe,” Krumins said.
The buyers were drawn to the history of the home, agreed the buyers’ agent, Jason Mitchell of Compass. They were not looking to buy in Piedmont specifically, but instead cast a wide net for “an architecturally rich home that could serve as a meaningful backdrop for their lives — something with character, but also a layout that fit their day-to-day flow. This home checked both boxes.” Mitchell did not identify the buyers, who bought the property through an LLC.
They weren’t “chasing a view, but it certainly didn’t hurt,” he added.
“What really mattered was the soul of the home — the energy, the craftsmanship, the sense of story,” he said, adding that they plan to “thoughtfully modernize the systems while honoring the original details. A little glow-up but with a deep respect for what’s already there.”
Beyond just his clients, upper-end East Bay buyers more broadly are looking for that “one of one” home, Mitchell said, adding that he is seeing “more decisive behavior” this spring from “well-qualified buyers who are ready to act when the right property hits.” He said he was not surprised to see competition on the Sea View home, even given the price point.
“I’m finding buyers are shopping for story, setting and emotion,” he said. “When a home delivers all three, it moves, even at the top end of the market.”
That search for a one-of-a-kind home is not just true in the Piedmont hills, but across the area at the upper end, according to DJ Grubb, president of the East Bay-based Grubb Company. In addition to the Sea View home, his agents also just represented a Berkeley listing at 54 Vicente Road that he said will show the city’s highest price in years when it closes in a few weeks.
The modern home with a glass breezeway between its private bedroom area and social living spaces came on for just under $9 million last year and went off the market in February. But when it returned at the same price in April it too found a buyer and was in contract in about a month.
“The architectural significance of homes in the East Bay is really a compelling story,” he said. “We are truly rich in history and a great Bay Area value.”
Read more
San Francisco
A cadre of optimistic developers commits to revitalizing one of California’s most challenged cities