Penthouse Condo Listed at $3.3M in Tenderloin Finds Buyer

A 3,500-square-foot condominium that was listed for around $3.3 million in one of the grittiest and most dangerous neighborhoods in San Francisco has found a buyer.

An unidentified buyer scooped up the luxury penthouse at The Hamilton, at 631 O’Farrell Street in the Tenderloin, the San Francisco Standard reported. The contract price and seller were also undisclosed.

It took less than a month to snag an offer for the 18th-floor unit, which went into contract last week, according to listing agent Massimo LoPorto with Vanguard Properties.

The penthouse last sold in 2018 for roughly $3.6 million.

LoPorto admits the neighborhood is “grimy and a little bit rough.”

But that didn’t slow a parade of prospective buyers, including tech workers, interior designers, and an artist who seemed unfazed by the street conditions, according to the Standard.

Some live nearby in luxe apartments on Market Street, so they know about the Tenderloin.

“Most people who have come to see it are familiar with the neighborhood, so it wasn’t a big turnoff,” LoPorto told the newspaper. “I tell people that it’s not necessarily unsafe, and you’re close to a lot of really great things: theater, shopping, museums.”

The three-bedroom, four-bathroom penthouse has a library, two wood-burning fireplaces, floor-to-ceiling windows and two soaking tubs with sweeping views of the city and bay.

The 18-story Hamilton, built in 1930 as a hotel, once catered to actors and opera singers because of its proximity to the arts district, according to its HOA website. Its Art Deco swagger led it to be dubbed “dame of O’Farrell Street” before it was turned into condos in the 1960s.

The penthouse was created by Marcia McDonald, a “wealthy heiress” who wanted a “fantasy apartment” fashioned out of four top-floor units, the HOA site indicates.

While she failed to complete the renovation before her death, it was finished several years later “according to her original vision.”

While public drug use and dealing are common sights on the street below, the neighborhood has improved, local business owners say. Yet the new owners of the penthouse are “comfortable living in an urban environment,” LoPorto told the Standard.

“There’s no changing the Tenderloin,” he said. “It is what it is.”

— Dana Bartholomew