Mystery Buyer Pays $25M for Empty Lot in Atherton

A 2.5-acre lot Atherton has traded for $25 million, tying for the biggest real estate deal this year in the nation’s priciest zip code.

The Real Deal reported the sale on May 2, citing the price as “more than $20 million, according to listing agent Michael Repka of DeLeon Realty.”

A mystery buyer picked up the wooded lot with a meadow at 75 Isabella Avenue, SFGate reported. The seller appears to be a San Francisco unit of Mighty Winner Development, based in the British Virgin Islands, which bought the property in 2012 for $15 million.

The vacant land near the prestigious Menlo School had been listed at $26.6 million since April of last year.

It went into escrow April 15, the second “prime buildable lot” that Repka has sold for more than $20 million this year, he told The Real Deal.

The lot’s size raised the question whether the buyer plans to subdivide it into two smaller lots. But Repka told SFGate that creating two smaller properties wasn’t on the horizon.

“It is my understanding that the purchaser intends to build one very grand estate home on the property,” he told SFGate in an email.

Repka also represented 43 Santiago Avenue, a nearly century-old six-bedroom, five-bathroom house on 2.5 acres that sold in January to Menlo Park-based Pacific Peninsula Group for $25 million.

Before Repka confirmed the land sale, it had been the biggest known real estate deal this year in Atherton.

The 75 Isabella Avenue lot sits close to Menlo Park, Stanford University and Menlo Circus Club, an exclusive country club a few blocks away.

The neighborhood has a median home sale price of $7.9 million, according to a yearly PropertyShark report. Redfin shows that nearby homes, located on similar lot sizes, typically sell for more than $20 million.

Late last month, a 1-acre property with a 1960s home at 150 Isabella sold for just under $11.2 million. That sale suggests that $10 million-an-acre might might be the going rate for the country’s most expensive zip code.

— Dana Bartholomew