San Francisco’s most and least expensive homes this week

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.

The ad for 3903 Washington dubbed the five-bed, five-bath Edwardian house circa 1922 “Presidio Heights perfection.”

Perfection, of course, is in the eye of the beholder, but in this case the house at least proved the best on the block—or every block, actually—by weighing in as San Francisco’s most expensive publicly home sold this week (not counting some multi-family buildings that traded hands).

Realtor Chelsea E. Ialeggio says this one stayed in the same family for going on five decades. Longtime owner June Lilienthal died last October, she being the widow of noted native San Franciscan banker John G Lilienthal.

John was the nephew of Sam Lilienthal and Alice Haas, of the famed Haas-Lilienthal House. His own home may not have been quite as remarkable a specimen as the noted abode, but sometimes even a degree of separation from history is enough to spice up a potential deal.

Speaking of history, it looks like the late Lilienthals preserved a retro, mid-century decor for their early-20th century house. When it comes to interiors, few decisions are more bold than painting your study red.

This house aimed for a bold price when it lasted back in March for more than $6.49 million. The deal closed this week came up short of that, though, at just $5.8 million.

Meanwhile, the city’s least expensive home this week has no history to speak of and appears quite up front about it. The building at 829 Folsom went up in just 2010, a flagship contemporary SoMa structure covered in a rippling surface of glassy bay windows.

The one-bed, one-bath condo marked number 706 that sold this week also marketed itself as perfection, but in this case the phrase was “perfect pied-à-terre.” (Presumably for buyers taking a break from their other six-figure condo?)

As Curbed SF observed back in 2014, this is a “no surface left gloss-less” kind of building, in contrast to the Washington Street house’s intentionally dated look. Number 706 is not quite so shiny and seamless as some of its neighbors, but it does its best to hold its own.

Listed at $699,000, the place ended up selling for an even $700,000, suggesting perhaps a fierce bidding war over relatively small sums of money.

In the end, it just barely qualifies for membership in Curbed SF’s coveted Under $700K Club—an increasingly elusive laurel.

• 3903 Washington [Sotheby’s]
• June Lilienthal Obit
• John Lilienthal Obit [SF Chronicle]
• 829 Folsom [PMZ]
• No Surface Left Glossless [Curbed SF]