The listing at 60 Varda Landing Road in Sausalito includes a studio cottage and an entirely separate two-unit building on a floating barge in the harbor. We wanted to open with a joke about keeping your mortgage from going underwater, but it just wasn’t worth it.
Living on the water is hardly unusual in the Bay Area. It is especially common in Sausalito, where most harbors have a waiting list for slips—i.e., places for boat parking—that can last several months, up to several years.
That makes the $2.95 million Varda Landing Road listing potentially quite attractive before you even get indoors, since it comes with a half dozen slips in its own right. Granted, that’s a lot of money for a lot of saltwater. But prime Sausalito shoreline can be a lucrative investment for an enterprising landlord (harbormaster), before you even add in the three units, one of them land bound and two nautical.
How much could this kind of arrangement net you? SocketSite estimates nearly $100,000/year. But that’s based on seller’s estimates that assume the cottage rents for $3,000 per month. While that’s by no means pricey by Sausalito standards, the place is a bit light on amenities. The watery assets on their own are advertised as renting for $5,200 per month altogether.
The $2.95 million price tag is almost a full million less than the whole deal first listed for back in February 2015. Opening at $3.8 million, it knocked half a million off after three months, then sat (floated) unsold for a solid year before the listing was yanked. (There was a fake out almost sale last summer for $3.3 million, but evidently it didn’t work out.)
Now it’s floating a new offer, knocking off $350,000, a reduction of 22.3 percent over 18 months. Presumably, not every seven-figure shopper in Sausalito wants to deal with a tiny harbor all his or her own. The average Sausalito home costs roughly $2.3 million, by some estimates.
[Update: Seller's agent Mark Rushford points out that the barge is not technically floating anymore, as it's fixed to the pier.]
- Bay Haven Harbor [Coldwell Banker]
- Sitting On the Dock Of the Bay [San Francisco Magazine]
- $350K Cut For Barge Cottage Harbor [SocketSite]
- Sausalito Rents [Trulia]
- Sausalito Home Prices [Realtor]