Yacht racer buys Belvedere home on the dock for $14M

The house at 27 Bellevue Avenue in Belvedere was built by a competitive yachter and has now sold to “a very seasoned sailor” who paid almost $6 million below the asking price, according to buyer’s agent Shana Rohde-Lynch of Compass. 

Rohde-Lynch declined to name the buyers, but according to public record they are David and Heidi Welch. David Welch is a former fiber optics company founder and CTO who has spent millions funding a lawsuit and more recently a ballot initiative to challenge teacher tenure laws in public schools. He is also a yacht racer, just like the home’s only two previous owners.

Located between two yacht clubs and equipped with its own dock and 12,000-pound boat lift, 27 Bellevue had an asking price of $20 million. The three-bedroom, six-bath house went into contract in the fall and closed at $14.25 million, or about $3,400 a square foot, at the end of January.

The Belvedere Cove-fronting home was built by camera phone inventor and competitive yachter Phillipe Kahn in 2008. He sold it to “another tech titan, also known in international yacht racing circles,” according to the listing site from Bill Smith and Ann Alywin of Compass last year. 

That “tech titan,” who purchased the home through an LLC for $9.5 million in 2013 remodeled it in 2015 and put it on the market for the first time in 2019. It went on and off the market several times over the last few years at different price points. In April, it  returned with its highest-ever ask of just under $20 million, or more than $4,700 per square foot. 

Rohde-Lynch said via email that the home was “truly beyond anything I have ever seen in my career with regard to attention to detail, high-end finish selections and one-of-a-kind style.” But the features, which include a detached top-floor garage connected to the house via elevator, a cove-facing pool and spa, and wood-paneled ceilings, “did not connect with every buyer,” she said. The home’s layout — which has three bedrooms on two different levels — was not conducive to a young family, she added.

That was not a problem for her clients, whom she called “empty nesters” that already live in the Bay Area and were sold on the home’s location, dock and access to the bay. 

Despite selling well below the asking price, Rohde-Lynch said sales in tony Marin Coounty towns such as Belvedere are “picking up more than anticipated and many buyers are actually shocked” by the speed at which the market is already moving this early in 2023. She cited a $14 million Belvedere listing that went into contract this week after getting three offers. 

“Good homes are selling,” she said.

The percentage of Marin listings going into contract was heading higher across all price points in January, according to Compass data, including those priced above $2.5 million, though it is nowhere near the more than 50 percent reported last spring. Overbids in the county are still in a major decline, according to Compass, down to about 20 percent compared with nearly 75 percent at the height of the market last spring. The average sale price was around 6 percent below asking in January, compared with more than 10 percent over the asking price last spring.

“After the craziness of the last couple years, it is refreshing to have what seems to be a normal market stabilizing,” Rohde-Lynch said.