Imprisoned SF real estate tycoon’s mansion status remains up in air (correction)

Update: Not so fast. Although Zillow still holds this home sold on December 20 for $18.8 million, bankruptcy lawyer Ruth Auerbach—who represents Brugnara’s wife in ongoing legal conflicts about his properties—tells Curbed SF that the house has not sold, nor is still on the market. Realtor Mark Allen Levinson, who handled the attempted sale in 2016 and 2017, no longer features the property on Pacific Union.

The six bed, five bath, Mediterranean style house at 224 Sea Cliff Avenue is not your average eight-figure Sea Cliff abode.

For starters, when it listed in December of 2016 realtor Mark Allan Levinson candidly told Curbed SF that the historic and once beautiful home was “in very tired condition” and “more of a shell right now,” listing it without interior photos.

And yet the place still asked an unbelievable $19.6 million, making it San Francisco’s most expensive fixer-upper and briefly its second most expensive home in general.

More eyebrow raising than that, the Sea Cliff abode (and its out of place basketball hoop over the garage) formerly belonged to none other than “Lucky Luke” Brugnara, a local real estate tycoon who proved quite unlucky when the FBI arrested him in 2014 for attempting to steal millions of dollars worth of classic art via mail fraud.

Brugnara, who briefly made the FBI’s Most Wanted list, is still serving a seven year prison term, but despite a long wait trying to finder a buyer and eventually going off the market in August, 224 Sea Cliff will not have to wait quite so long for deliverance as it closed a sale on December 20 for the commanding price of $18.8 million.

Note that it was Brugnara’s company, Brugnara Properties, that held the deed on the home these days, rather than the imprisoned “Lucky Luke” himself.

• Imprisoned Tycoon’s Mansion Lists [Curbed SF]
• SF’s Most Expensive Homes [Curbed SF]
• 224 Sea Cliff Avenue [Zillow]