Ex-Charles Schwab CEO Nets Just $18,300 on SF Condo

San Francisco’s luxury housing market may be stealing headlines across the country, but not all home sellers are exiting with startling profits.

In a move reflective of how the artificial intelligence industry is accelerating a changing-of-the-guard among San Francisco’s upper crust, David Pottruck, the former CEO of Charles Schwab who now chairs the Woodside-based Hightower Advisors, sold his three-bed, three-bath condo on July 15 for just under $6.7 million — barely breaking even.

Located in the eastern Rincon Hill neighborhood, the 2,700-square-foot pad sits on the 26th floor of one of the Lumina towers, part of a sleek, 656-unit luxury condominium complex that Tishman Speyer completed in 2016. That same year, Pottruck bought his condo at 338 Main Street off the rack for just under $6.7 million, according to property records. After holding the property for 10 years, he only netted a profit of $18,300.

The buyer, Ledion Bitincka, is chief technology officer at the AI data firm Cribly. His wife, Vinela Bakllmaja, is a local oral surgeon.

In the 2026 era San Francisco, this sounds like a confounding sum. The AI boom has generated new wealth and luxury housing demand in equal measure, and home sellers are increasingly walking away with millions of dollars more than their asking price. Yet, that kind of demand has largely remained within the single-family home realm. Condos, even the city’s most luxurious, have yet to catch a similar wave.

After median condo sales in San Francisco reached a peak in 2020 at $1,200 per square foot, the price has steadily tanked. In 2025, the median hit $950 per square foot, the lowest value since 2016, according to Altos Research. Earlier this year, prices rose toward $990 per square foot — a meager gain, but a gain nonetheless, and the first real boost since the pandemic.

“They have a long way to climb again,” Mike Simonsen, chief economist with Compass said via email. “The good news is that this year is the first time demand is improving in a long time.”

Pottruck isn’t alone. In just his building, more than 75 percent of the condos sold since last year went for roughly at, or below, their 2016 price, according to an analysis of property records by The Real Deal.

That includes one anomalous sale from last year, where losses exceeded $1 million: tech veteran Atul Dhablania’s $6.5 million purchase of two of the tower’s penthouse condos.

The condos, which sold for $4 million a piece in 2016, briefly belonged to Samuel Trabucco, former CEO of Alameda Research, the cryptocurrency trading firm founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, which collapsed during the FTX scandal, in which investors were scammed out of billions. In 2025, the condos were repossessed by FTX Recovery Trust, a victim restitution fund, and sold to Dhablania and his wife later that year.