Millennium Tower Corner Unit For $3.7 Million

The 58-story, glass swaddled Millennium Tower was finished in 2009 and is now something of a forerunner for the Yerba Buena neighborhood, a towering residence for the seven-figure set before the city started selling off Transbay parcels for similar buildings.

It broke records by charging as much as $9.45 million for a condo, which makes this 48th floor suite something of an economy package for listing at a bit over one third of that ($3.75 million). The two bed, two and a half bath, 1,664 square foot corner unit boasts such hoity-toity sounding features as floating ceilings, glass floor tiles, and granite pedestal sinks.

It’s also an education in obscure sounding building materials. The walls are "fumed eucalyptus" (the wood is treated with ammonia to give it a darker color). The library fixtures are made out of Macassar ebony (an increasingly scarce, dark wood that grows only on one Indonesian island). The guest bathroom fixtures are equator marble (white marble from certain quarries in Turkey).

This place has an extra foot of ceiling (and, by association, window) space than units on the floors above it, and interiors by SOMA-based designer April Sheldon. Perhaps curiously, this most recent price tag is markedly less than the $4.25 million that this condo last sold for in 2013.

Bidding will most likely push it higher anyway, but of 11 units in the same building to go on the market so far this year, this is the only one that has opened at less than its most recent previous sale price. Sotheby's agent Greg Lynn says that the sellers are keen to find a buyer quickly (it was on the market for nearly a year in 2013), and points out that with all of the similar new buildings coming into surrounding blocks, Millennium demand is not quite what it used to be, both because of the new competition and the changing skyline.

"This unit will not be losing all of its views," Lynn is quick to add. "But it is a factor."

• Millennium Tower 48B [Sothebys]
• Millennium Tower Penthouse, $9.45 Million [Curbed SF]
• What is Fumed Veneer [Eggers Industries]
• Macassar ebony [Wood Database]
• Equator marble [Hot Tiles]