The onetime home of tech magnate Larry Ellison in Atherton has sold for $19.6 million, 44 percent below its initial asking price.
The six-bed, 7.5-bath home at 96 Isabella Avenue totals about 8,100 square feet and sits on almost 2 acres on the town’s west side. A limited liability company named Isabella Spring acquired it from Armilin Capital on May 31, according to San Mateo County Clerk-Recorder’s Office records. Mary and Brent Gullixson of Compass were the property’s exclusive listing agents. The Gullixsons declined to comment.
The gated two-story home hit the market with an asking price of about $35 million in September 2020, according to Zillow. The price was cut in October 2020 and again in January 2021, the latter dropping it to $28.8 million, Zillow data show. The Gullixsons relisted it for sale in August for just under $27 million and removed the listing from the market in November.
The estate last sold in 2007 for $14 million. Two years earlier, Mary Gullixson listed it and a one-acre lot next door for $25 million after Ellison, then-owner of both properties, moved into a 10-building mansion in nearby Woodside. After the lot sold for $9 million, Gullixson relisted the home for $16 million. It ended up selling for 12.5 percent below that price.
Ellison acquired the house and adjacent lot in 1987 for about $3 million and spent the next 18 years extensively renovating them into a Japanese-style abode, according to SFGate. Among its features: a teahouse, “strolling” gardens with decks, a koi pond and a waterfall, a swimming pool and a spa. The home includes a master suite with a fireplace and two full bathrooms and two tatami rooms, which in traditional Japanese culture are used to entertain guests or for tea ceremonies.
Armilin owned it for more than a decade before listing it for sale, during which a two-alarm fire broke out in its attic. The 2012 fire resulted in no injuries but caused $100,000 in structural damage and another $10,000 in potential water damage, according to Palo Alto Online. Harold Schapelhouman, then-chief of the Menlo Park Fire Protection District, told the publication that the fire was accidental and that the cause was probably electrical.
The latest sale is the sixth-priciest this year in Atherton, the U.S.’s most expensive zip code where the median single-family house is worth almost $9.4 million, according to Zillow. The town has had a string of high-end deals close this year, such as a 20,000-square-foot home at 119 Tuscaloosa Avenue that sold for about $45 million, the most expensive home sale in three years. In April and May, a 4,000-square-foot residence at 98 Sutherland Drive and a 14,000-square-foot mansion at 49 Tuscaloosa Avenue combined to sell for about $71 million.
As for 96 Isabella Avenue, details on its buyer and seller are scarce. Lingzhi Sun, who Isabella Spring directed the Clerk-Recorder’s Office to email the deed of the sale and its corresponding tax statement, didn’t respond to requests for comment. Sun manages Intelisun Advisory, a financial consulting firm.
Armilin Capital, meantime, established itself in the British Virgin Islands. Its identity became public as part of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ “Offshore Leaks” report, which revealed the names of more than 120,000 companies and trusts in offshore tax-havens. The company invests in real estate but doesn’t have a website or disclose its members’ contact information online.
Attorney Bill McClure, Armilin’s agent for service of process, declined a request for comment.
CORRECTION, July 8, 2:52 p.m. PT: This story has been corrected to reflect that the home at 96 Isabella Avenue and the lot next door were listed for $25 million and that the home was relisted for $16 million after the lot sold.
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‘Most expensive zip code’ lives up to billing: Atherton mansion sells for $36M