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San Francisco

Harvard real estate lecturer to sell Pacific Heights home

1907 property was designed by architect Edgar Mathew as his private residence

Nori Gerardo Leitz and 2980 Vallejo Street in San Francisco (Harvard Business School, Redfin, Getty)
Nori Gerardo Leitz and 2980 Vallejo Street in San Francisco (Harvard Business School, Redfin, Getty)

Real estate advisor and Harvard Business School senior lecturer Nori Gerardo Lietz is asking $11 million for her Pacific Heights home, a historic 1907 property designed by architect Edgar Mathews as his personal residence.

Neill Bassi of Sotheby’s, who has the listing for 2980 Vallejo Street, did not reply to a request for comment. The price works out to more than $2,100 per square foot.

2980 Vallejo Street in San Francisco (Redfin, Getty)

2980 Vallejo Street in San Francisco (Redfin, Getty)

Lietz bought the 5,100-square-foot four-bedroom, five-bath in 2012 for $6.55 million, according to public record, just one year after she left her long-time position as the chief strategist of private real estate for Swiss-based asset manager Partners Group. She also published an oft-cited report on the lack of women in the upper echelons of real estate and private equity that, she wrote, “may annoy many people.”

She started her own real estate advisory firm, Arete Capital, based out of her Pac Heights home.

2980 Vallejo Street in San Francisco (Redfin, Getty)

2980 Vallejo Street in San Francisco (Redfin, Getty)

Built in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake, the home has the peaked-roof English cottage style with which its architect is closely associated. Mathews even won a court case in 1908 against a Marin client who didn’t want him to design similar houses for any of his neighbors because the judge ruled that: “If this injunction were granted it would have the practical effect of putting architect Mathews out of business, because his personality expresses itself in a certain type of house, and this injunction seeks to restrain him from constructing that type.”

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Mathews and his family lived in the home until 1935, and then moved to another he designed across from Ocean Beach on Great Highway. While he lived on Vallejo Street he was the architect of many nearby residential properties, as well as several Christian Science churches and PG&E’s old Union Square headquarters, now used as the Philippine Consulate. After he moved out, another notable architect, Earle Bertz, known for his many Sea Cliff homes, was responsible for the property’s late 1930s expansion.

2980 Vallejo Street in San Francisco (Redfin, Getty)

2980 Vallejo Street in San Francisco (Redfin, Getty)

Just before buying the view home just off the Lyon Street steps and the Presidio, Lietz published a report called “Cloistered in the Pink Ghetto.” Her research showed that although women make up nearly 40 percent of the graduates from major business schools and appear to want to enter the private equity and private real estate sectors in the same percentages as men, they are not hired in the same proportions and when they are, it is only in the “pink ghettos” of accounting, human resources, client services, marketing or investor relations.

2980 Vallejo Street in San Francisco (Redfin, Getty)

2980 Vallejo Street in San Francisco (Redfin, Getty)

“The numbers are shameful,” she wrote in the November 2011 paper, which highlighted the fact that only 4 percent of senior investment roles in real estate firms were held by women, a number that has improved only “marginally” since, Lietz told the New York Times in 2019.

At Harvard, Lietz teaches classes about real estate private equity and how to start a private investment fund.

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HistoricPacific HeightsSan Francisco