Home in San Francisco’s Buena Vista Heights sells for $14M

In an off-market deal, a home atop Buena Vista Heights sold for nearly $14 million last month.

615-617 Buena Vista Avenue West is one of the few homes in San Francisco ever to sell for more than $10 million outside of the city’s premier northern neighborhoods.

The seller was Casa Martini LLC, according to public records, which is managed by former Prosper Loans CEO Aaron Vermut. He bought the property in 2013 for $5.5 million with his wife Adriana Lopez Vermut, who is the founder of arepa restaurant Pica Pica. The Mission District gluten-free Venezuelan restaurant was open for more than 15 years before closing last year and was featured on a 2013 episode of “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.”

The buyer was 615 Buena Vista Trust, which is managed by Philip Swisher, CEO of a Boston-based wealth management firm that works nationally with “carefully selected individuals and families,” according to his Linkedin profile.

The Vermuts put a lot of upgrades into the home of over a decade at 615-617 Buena Vista, according to city permits. They rewired the 1906 home and undertook a major remodel and addition that wrapped up in 2016. It is technically a two-unit building with 6,000 square feet and six bedrooms and five baths in total. It does not appear to have a garage.

The neighborhood seems to have inspired Vermut’s Buena Vista West Records, a small label he started with Joby Pritzker, according to press around the release of its first album in 2021. Pritzker is the son of former Hyatt CEO Nick Pritzker and cousin to Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

Joby Pritzker also appears to be connected to the ownership of the Spreckels mansion a block away at 737 Buena Vista, the only other eight-digit sale ever recorded in the neighborhood, according to public records. The famed 1899 mansion built by sugar magnate Richard Spreckels, which both Jack London and Danny Glover have called home over the years and where the Grateful Dead recorded a few of their first tracks, was sold in 2014 by Glover’s ex-wife. Graham Nash and Bobby McFerrin both once owned the home next door at 731 Buena Vista.

The 737 Buena Vista LLC used to buy the property has the same address as Tao Capital, where Joby Pritzker has been the managing director of investments at the VC firm his father started since 2014, and media reports about his record label’s 2023 release “Death of the Hoochie Koo” says it was recorded in the same place the Dead recorded their first demos.
Outside of these two Buena Vista Heights sales, the only sale in all of District 5 — which includes Haight Ashbury, Cole Valley, Ashbury Heights, Glen Park, Noe Valley and Eureka Valley — to hit eight digits is 150 Glenbrook Ave in Clarendon Heights, according to Compass data. That view home set a still unbroken district-wide record when it traded in 2021 for $17.5 million. It is currently back on the market asking just under $20 million.