Rebuilt boarding house in SF’s Cow Hollow sells for $16.4M

A Cow Hollow home that had been listed for almost a year sold last week for nearly $16.4 million, the first San Francisco sale over $15 million since May and the fourth biggest sale in 2023.

The buyer on the deed is Jason Reska, acting as the trustee of The Scott Street Trust. Reska is a New York-based partner at law firm Kaplan Fox & Kilsheimer who specializes in real estate, estate planning and private client services, according to the firm’s website. 

The 7,400-square-foot single-family home is a former boarding house, built in 1908, that sold for $3.4 million to Lafayette Scott Street LLC in 2006. According to the deed, the LLC is managed by Santa Barbara-based real estate developer William McKinley, who is also the founder/owner of FrutStix ice pops and has a funeral home in the Inglewood neighborhood of Los Angeles.

The Cow Hollow property was vacant for about a decade, according to complaints filed with the city’s code enforcement section that mentioned peeling paint, broken windows and “landscaping gone wild.” 

Plans for a rebuild estimated to cost $2 million were filed in 2015 and approved in 2019, with O’Neill Construction listed as the contractor, according to city records. The construction finished in the fall of 2022, just as the newly rebuilt home with six bedrooms, seven full and three half-baths was listed for sale at $19 million. 

The property was co-listed by Lori Docherty and Neal Ward of Compass, who also represented the buyers. They declined to comment.

The four-level home was rebuilt from the ground up, including a new foundation and high-speed elevator, three-car garage and dog washing station in the mudroom off the turfed backyard, according to a video tour Ward made of the property. From the top floor “sky lounge,” which has its own wet bar and two terraces, there are views across Russian Hill to the East Bay and North to Alcatraz.

In many ways, the home has tracked the high-end market in San Francisco over the last year. When it first came to the market last fall, prices were coming down from pandemic highs as most luxury buyers stood on the sidelines. The price dropped by $550,000 in March, as the city saw the biggest overall price drop in the nation. More recently, sales, and even over asking offers, have picked up. The home went into contract on Aug. 31 and sold a week later, indicating an all-cash deal.

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