San Francisco’s most and least expensive homes this week

Pacific Heights learns to cooperate, while Laguna Heights just drops

By Adam Brinklow Nov 10, 2017, 3:16pm PST

Friday is time for the High & the Low, a Curbed column chronicling the most and least expensive homes sold in San Francisco in the last seven days. Here’s this week’s pageant of extremes.

Realtor Neil Bassi called 2298 Pacific an “esteemed co-op” in the ad for unit #7, a three-bed, two-and-a-half bath hideaway that listed in September.

“The building is detached on four sides,” Bassi noted, cranking up the natural light and the Pac Heights views.

Indeed, it turns out that it’s a little unusual for a building like this to stand so prominent and independent, as its architect, Edward Eyestone Young, made his bones in the city mostly by designing clusters of buildings.

“Edward Young’s output was truly prolific, with almost 600 residential buildings designed, many in interesting groups of two, three, or four adjacent to each other,” realtor David Parry wrote of the early 20th century architect in 2002.

California, Buchanan, and Jackson Streets all feature Young designs side by side or sometimes even facing each other from across the way, as if he built them in litters.

The jaunty confidence of 2298 Jackson and its brick face seems to have transferred over into its market ambitions, leading to a mammoth $6.95 million asking price. Which the place has now beaten, selling this week for over $7.32 million.

On the shorter end of the scale, the week’s least expensive home (not counting some BMR sales) asked for less, and in the end got it.

The co-op building at 1305 Laguna in Laguna Heights—just south of Japantown—featured a one-bed, one-bath number two apartment that listed for just $470,000 in late August. That is, of course, a lot of cash for a home advertised at less than 600 square feet, but any San Francisco listing gunning for less than half a million may raise eyebrows in 2017.

“A central location for an affordable price,” noted realtor Jana Farrell. It may well have been, but not enough for some buyers, it seems, as the final price this week was actually $370,000, a discount of a hundred grand.

That’s quite a take for a lucky buyer, and maybe a shot in the arm for the confidence of anyone hoping to luck into a home sweet home bargain of their own.