Fridays bring the High & the Low, a Curbed column chronicling most and least expensive homes sold in San Francisco in the last seven days. (Sales information was gathered from Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com, etc.) It was a big week of buying, so let’s see what all the fuss was about.
Mr. Wurster is calling again. Back in September, we called the William Wurster-designed house at 10 Normandie Terrace a "modern masterpiece" and suggested that even purists might warm up to its recent remodel. Apparently at least one person agreed with us, because the Wurster place sold on Tuesday for a big $7.6 million (up a smidge from the asking price of $7.25 million).
If we had a Mount Rushmore of Bay Area architecture then Wurster, formerly the dean of UC Berkeley’s school of architecture, would be on it. And yet, as the Silicon Valley Metro opined 20 years ago, his name has fallen a bit into obscurity, at least relative to many of his peers.
"It's difficult to walk through a typical California neighborhood and not see some design element that was borrowed, cribbed or copied from [Wurster]," author Gordon Young wrote at the time. So does the new Wurster House on Normandie borrow or depart from that long-running Wurster rep? In either case, it was enough to impress at least one deep-pocketed buyer.
This now-three bed, five bath house last sold in 2003 for $3.25 million.
And the cheapest home sold this week is, once again, a micro condo that went for a little over $500K and a little under asking--in this case $515,000, down a touch from the $519,000 asking. The trend this year has remained pretty consistent: If you want to get break into market rate homebuying in San Francisco, get half a million and think small.
In this case, the little place in Symphony Towers (750 Van Ness) is a little under 400 feet, and a studio all the way. Rather than a bedroom, there’s simply a crook in the corner created by the bathroom. Still, be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home, and having a toehold in this little place is surely a relief to someone.
- Wurster Remodel Asks $7.25 million [Curbed SF]
- Wurster Arguably California’s Most Significant Architect [Metro]
- 750 Van Ness, 602 [Realtor]