Real estate mogul acquires “Western White House”

UPDATED, Oct. 5, 2022, 11:00 a.m.: A local real estate investor has acquired Hillsborough’s so-called Western White House for $15 million and will renovate the home’s interior so he and his family can occupy it.

Mehrdad Elie, through a limited liability company, paid $600 per square foot of living area to purchase the nearly 3-acre estate at 401 El Cerrito Avenue, which was initially listed for sale in October 2021 for $25 million. The sellers were Shailesh Mehta, former CEO of credit card issuer Providian Financial, and his wife Kalpa, who acquired it in 1997 for just over $6 million, title service records show.

As the property’s nickname suggests, it was designed to resemble the actual White House in Washington, D.C., from its double-height, colonnaded entrance to an Oval Office-inspired library. Julia Morgan, California’s first licensed female architect whose works included Hearst Castle in San Simeon, redesigned the estate in 1930 after it was badly damaged in a fire three years earlier, transforming it into a neoclassical Georgian Colonial from its original Swiss Chalet-inspired design, according to the San Francisco Examiner.

Cattle rancher William Howard originally constructed the estate in 1878 before selling it to silver baron Charles Crocker, according to the Examiner. Burlingame contractor Charles Lundgren, after buying the home but not the land underlying it in the late 19th century, physically relocated it a quarter mile away to El Cerrito Avenue in 1915.

The property has since played home to a bevy of well-known occupants, including George Hearst, eldest son of newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst who commissioned Morgan’s redesign; T. Jack Foster, Foster City’s founder and developer; and savings and loan heiress Nancy Burris, the Examiner reported.

(Jennifer Gilson, Max Lo and Aerial Canvas)

The four-level home totals 25,000 square feet and has 11 bedrooms, 11 full bathrooms, and four half-baths. The first floor has two living rooms, one of which spans the house’s width, a family room, a formal dining area and kitchen, the Oval Office, and a parlor. The second story is devoted to bedrooms, six in total, including a master suite that spans nearly half a floor and contains “his and her” bathrooms, a bedroom, and an office, Shailesh Mehta told Punch Magazine in August.

The top level has three additional bedrooms, a movie theater, and a sitting room that opens onto a rooftop terrace. The basement contains a wine cellar and a gym built by the previous owners.

The home’s three primary floors can be accessed via an elevator. Its grounds include an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a pool house, a gazebo, and an electronic gate that opens to a paved driveway, which leads to a motor court and the home’s pillared entrance.

The sale is Hillsborough’s second-priciest for a single-family estate this year — behind a newly built, 11,000-square-foot mansion at 950 Macadamia Drive that sold for about $15.5 million — despite a 40 percent difference between the Western White House’s initial ask and what it traded for. The latter appealed to a “narrowed” pool of buyers, and it’s common to have significant price drops in the high-end market, especially for a “legacy estate” like this one, said Jennifer Gilson with Golden Gate Sotheby’s International Realty, who sold both properties. Gilson and Green Banker’s Max Lo co-listed the Western White House for sale.

New property owner Elie plans to completely remodel the kitchen; refloor much of the house; put in new heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems; and redo all of the bathrooms. He expects the renovation will cost between $7 million and $9 million and take a year to complete. Once finished, Elie plans to occupy the home with his wife, two children, and a few relatives. He currently resides in a mansion across the street one third the size of the Western White House.

Compass’s Alex Buljan, who acted as Elie’s agent in the sale, said he believes the already-underway revamp could be the home’s most extensive since the 1960s, when loan heiress Burris commissioned a remodel that included making the basement a more livable space. The project’s goal is to address the run-down portions of the White House’s inside while trying not to deviate from its historical aspects, Elie said. That means replacing the damaged sections of the hardwood floor with flooring that matches the look and feel of the original, and not changing the home’s color scheme.

One thing that also isn’t changing is the house’s exterior. “That’s the legacy of the building,” Elie said.

Before acquiring the Western White House, Elie had amassed a commercial and residential real estate portfolio worth about $250 million, according to his LinkedIn profile. His Bay Area holdings encompass several office, retail and residential properties cumulatively valued at $96 million, spread across Burlingame, San Francisco, Hillsborough, San Mateo, and the San Jose area, he said. He was previously the co-founder and CEO of residential mortgage lender Alliance Bancorp. The company filed for liquidation in 2007, the same year Elie vacated the CEO role after 18 years at the helm.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the total value of Mehrdad Elie’s real estate portfolio.

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