Former home of Janis Joplin in SF attracts multiple bids

WIth a pink facade and a location just off the corner of Haight and Ashbury, Janis Joplin’s former dwelling at 635 Ashbury Street receives a lot of attention. 

It’s a stopping point for many walking tours of the neighborhood and a stream of music lovers also come on their own to take pictures in front of the apartment building where the 1960s music icon lived.

This month, the building is getting a lot of attention from multifamily buyers as well, with four offers already in after only a few weeks on the market, according to listing agent Brad Lagomarsino of Colliers. He did not include Joplin in his marketing materials on the property when he listed it for $3.625 million. 

“Fun anecdote only,” he said. “It’s not accretive to the purchase price.” 

Buyers instead are attracted to the building because it is well maintained, with individual meters and hot water heaters for each unit, and located in a popular neighborhood where many apartment buildings are not as updated. Plus several of the recent tenants moved in during the last few years with COVID-era discounts, so there’s “decent upside on this building,” Lagomarsino said. 

All eight units are currently filled, with rents about $3,500 per month and up for its seven two-bedrooms and one ground-floor studio. The current cap rate is just over 6 percent and the current gross rent multiplier metric is 11.85.

The 7,900-square-foot four-story 1905 building is listed at about $300,000 less than what an affiliate of multifamily giant Veritas paid for the building last August, according to property records. Veritas did not reply to a request for comment and Lagomarsino could not confirm the seller, but he said that in addition to the higher purchase price less than one year ago, the current owners also put in new stairway carpeting and repainted the common areas during their short ownership period.

“Unfortunately, I think some money will be lost in this, but the building should trade pretty close to the current asking price,” Lagomarsino said, adding that the property was priced below its former sales price due to the current “spread between the cap rate and the cost of debt.” 

Haight-Ashbury’s ghosts

Tourists stop and leave flowers in the bars on the first-floor windows, but Joplin actually stayed on the second floor when she was seeing Peggy Casserta, who lived in that unit and had a shop in the Haight at the time. The unit’s current occupants said they didn’t know they were living in a piece of rock-and-roll history until after they moved in, when their neighbor across the hall, who has lived in the building since 1970, filled them in. 

“It’s a funky building in a funky neighborhood. The pink definitely catches your eye on the street,” said renter Justin Grodman of the reason he and his girlfriend were drawn to the building after relocating from New York during the pandemic. “The doors have the stained glass. It’s just a classic old San Francisco Victorian.” 

That said, it made their apartment feel “super fun and special” once they heard the history. The unit still has the original leaded glass dining-room built-ins from Joplin’s time, as well as a decorative fireplace, but the kitchen and bathroom have been updated and the original lincrusta wall coverings removed. 

There’s still music in the unit courtesy of Grodman’s keyboard and guitars, and he said he also likes that the neighborhood still has a connection to its hippie past with the buskers on Haight Street and music that is often floating through the open windows of his unit from his neighbors. 

“Definitely feeling the vibes,” he said. 

His downstairs neighbors have reported an otherworldly presence in the building, he said, with mysterious taps on the shoulder and an occasionally “spooked” dog. He hasn’t experienced anything like that himself, but he said a pair of scissors and a tablespoon measure have gone missing and not reappeared. 

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Grodman doesn’t attribute the strange occurances to the 118-year-old building’s most famous former occupant, but he is trying to learn more about Joplin, who recorded only four studio albums before her death in late 1970 and will seemingly forever be connected with her former Haight-Ashbury home.

“It’s easy for our friends to find it because there’s always people checking it out,” Grodman said.