A waterfront Belvedere home sold for more than $14 million after a bidding war in which two of the three offers were from “well-known CEOs,” according to listing agent Tracy McLaughlin of Engel and Volkers.
McLaughlin would not reveal the name of the winning bidder on 9 West Shore Road, but said the buyer first put an offer on the home last fall after the price dropped from $17 million in October to $14 million one month later. That low-ball offer and another were rejected by the seller, who McLaughlin declined to name, but who property records show as Norwegian shipping heir and Northern European hotel investor Christian Sundt.
McLaughlin said her client spent years getting approvals and building the four-bedroom, 4.5-bath dock home, which he ultimately decided to sell shortly after it was completed last year because it was a secondary home and he wasn’t using it often. She endorsed her client’s decision to reject the offers on the new-build home last fall, even with luxury buyers in the Bay largely waiting on the sidelines at the time.
“I knew what it cost to build that house and knew that somebody would come along and see how valuable it was,” she said.
The buyer is A. Ascari LLC, which listed the address of family office Epiq Capital Group on the deed. The San Francisco-based investment advisory focuses on “senior executives, founders and early employees of high-profile companies who have significant wealth,” according to its website.
Buyer’s agents Joseph Lucier and Stacey Caen of Sotheby’s International Realty declined to comment on the deal or if the buyer had any connection to car racing, as Alberto Ascari was a famous Italian Formula 1 racer. They also represented the buyer in San Francisco’s biggest sale so far this year, which closed this week. In an interview last month on the early spring market, Lucier said via email that he was “sensing less hesitation from luxury buyers than we experienced last fall.”
McLaughlin agreed that luxury buyer mentality seems to have shifted in the new year, which she said pushed the two fall low-ball bidders to return to the table and be joined by a third offer in February, pushing the property $200,000 over asking.
“They thought they would lose it this time if they didn’t come back,” she said. “This time they cared.”
The Feb. 17 close came only about one week after the property went into contract, indicating an all-cash deal. The sale was a rare feat for several reasons: only seven sales closed in the ritzy Marin town between November and late February, according to Compass data, and those that did sell were, on average, slightly below the list price. The 3,200-square-foot new build also went for nearly $4,400 per square foot, while the median price per square foot in the last four months was about $1,700. The only other Belvedere home to sell near this price point recently went for $3,400 per square foot.
The house attracted so much interest because luxury buyers knew that they would pay more than $14 million for the land and costs associated with high-end waterfront construction, McLaughlin said. Plus, buyers have no appetite for the “very protracted” process of building along the bay.
While a previous generation of the ultra wealthy wanted to build their own “monuments to themselves,” she said buyers today “don’t have the bandwidth to do it anymore” and are placing a premium on turnkey properties where all they have to do is move in.
“They are saying, ‘I just want to open my laptop up and get back to work,’” she said.