San Francisco’s most and least expensive homes this week

A clash of contemporary contemporaries

By Adam Brinklow Aug 18, 2017, 2:20pm PDT

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.

In its previous life, 432 Moraga was as nondescript as a house comes in the city, an inoffensive 1923 build with three beds, two baths, and a $1.22 million sales receipt from 2014.

Three years later this home came out the other side as a much more sleek and stark four-bed, four-and-a-half bath bit of business.

True, the interiors, though plush, are predictable with the exception of a few Tetris-like room shapes in the floor plan. But at least sharp, hard angles of its bare and minimalist new curb face are potentially intriguing.

As realtor Pete Brannigan (who did not handle 432 Moraga’s sale this week, for the record) notes, though, this rebuild was something of a roll of the dice. The previous million dollar-plus sale is a big chunk of money but hardly unusual in the city.

It’s recent $2.99 million asking price, on the other hand, was a bit more ambitious. Brannigan quotes a Paragon realtor pointing out, “Builders took a big risk hoping that buyers would accept the $2.5 [million] to $3 million price point.”

Golden Gate Heights is hardly a low-end neighborhood. But of the half dozen homes listed there right now on Redfin, for example, only one asks more than $2 million, and none approach $3 million.

So it may have been an open question quite how much starch was in this potential sale. The final result seems to have paid off, though, closing the deal a week ago for $3.15 million. Presumably, that qualifies as a plan coming together.

And in a handy coincidence, this week’s biggest bargain home opts for a certified contemporary look all its own, and this 11-unit circa 2012 condo collective also was until recently a much less ambitious looking building.

The number 201 studio apartment of this SoMa locale sold for $249,000 when knew and could possibly have doubled that money in the last five years, although the list price stopped a bit short at the $449,000 mark.

And in an admirable bit of restraint this sale managed to keep the final bid under half a million dollars, coming out the San Francisco equivalent of a thrifty deal at $465,000 this week. Even studios that dip below the $500K mark seem like scarce quarry these days, so enjoy it while it lasts.