Annie Leibovitz has sold her 65-acre farm estate in the coastal Marin town of Bolinas for $8.45 million, according to property records.
The famous photographer listed the farm at 605 Horseshoe Hill Road, previously a longtime retreat for financier and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival founder Warren Hellman, for just under $9 million in April.
Leibovitz went to the San Francisco Art Institute and became the chief photographer at Rolling Stone but moved to New York City when the magazine moved its headquarters in 1977. She had planned on finally moving back to Northern California when she bought the property in 2019 for $7.5 million and hoped her children would attend college in the Bay Area, she told the Chronicle when the property listed this spring.
But her three daughters ended up staying in the Northeast, and her Northern California estate sat empty instead.
“Things don’t always go as planned,” she said at the time.
Though the move didn’t work out, Leibovitz put $2 million into the property during her five-year ownership stint, particularly in the main four-bedroom home, which dates back to the 1920s. In another connection to famed photographers, Ansel Adams took pictures of the property in the 1930s. There’s also a guest house, workshop and two-bedroom caretaker’s residence, as well as a 100-foot by 200-foot year-round riding arena with a seven stall horse-barn, according to a marketing site for the property.
It’s dubbed The Hideaway and was co-listed by Nick Svenson and Alexander Lurie, both with Compass.
It is located in an architectural zone, and Leibovitz added stone planting terraces with new drainage and irrigation. The estate’s hay and dairy barns were transformed by music lover Hellman into a performance stage, events center and recording studio. During Hellman’s ownership, the “wonderland” was a gathering place for musicians, Lurie said via email.
Hellman bought the property for $1.85 million in 1991, according to public records, and owned it until his death in 2011, when he left it to its “longtime caretakers,” according to the Chronicle.
Leibovitz has sold two New York City co-ops this year, one in February for $10.6 million on the Upper West Side and another in the West Village for $8 million just last month. The buyer for her Bolinas property was Dogtown Farm LLC, according to public records, which is managed by Karen Valladao, a tax partner at the San Jose office of CPA firm Frank Rimerman + Company, which provides family office and private wealth management services.
Svenson and Lurie represented the buyer as well. Lurie, who is the brother of San Francisco’s mayor-elect Daniel Lurie, said that interest was high for the property and that the agents received requests for tours from buyers throughout the Bay Area, nationally and internationally.
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He could not detail what the new owner plans for the property other than to say they are “passionate” about it and “excited to be its next steward.”
“The site of many special events, concerts and weddings over more than a century, The Hideaway has an indelible place in history — both for the SF Bay Area as well as globally — this special space has served as a launching pad of creative inspiration for renowned musical and visual artists of international repute,” Lurie said.