San Francisco’s most expensive listing closes for $34.5M

The Presidio Heights home that was San Francisco’s most expensive listing is now the city’s top sale of the year. The $34.5 million sale of 3450 Washington Street also ties the biggest sale of 2022.  

The deal “underscores San Francisco’s continuing appeal as a global city” said listing agent Antoine Crumeyrolle of Compass in an emailed statement confirming the closing price. Joseph Lucier and Stacey Caen of Sotheby’s International Realty represented the buyer.

The agents would not identify the buyer or comment on any of the negotiations around the six-bedroom, 8.5-bath home, which was renovated down to the studs by the sellers, cloud-computing billionaire couple Mark Armenante and Young Sohn. They bought the property for $18 million in 2014 from University of Phoenix founder John Sperling and his son Peter, according to public record.

In a previous interview when the home first listed in September for $45 million, Crumeyrolle did not name the Vlocity co-founders as the sellers but said the home was on the market because the owners have many properties and were not using this one. 

He cut the price by $5.5 million at the end of November, which still made the 1930s-era French-Normandy-inspired home the most expensive residential listing in San Francisco. It went into contract at the end of January and the sale closed March 7. 

With 9,500 square feet, the deal comes out to about $3,600 per square foot. 

The close of the city’s most expensive sale — at a $10 million discount off its initial listing price, but the same amount as the most expensive sale of last year — is another indication that luxury buyers are emerging from their winter hibernation and that sellers are now flexible enough on price to take advantage of the renewed enthusiasm.

San Francisco’s first sale of the year over $10M closed just a few weeks ago. It was listed at $13.5 million in June and closed for $11.2 million in February. Steven Mavromilhas of Compass just listed the Cow Hollow home next door to that one for $8.9 million and said buyers and sellers are looking at these first few sales of the year as an indication that the market might be headed to an equilibrium. That means transactions are likely to pick up, he said, especially compared to the trickle of sales at the end of last year. 

“As sellers start to lower their expectations to be met by the buyers, now there’s a market again,” he said.