Condo where Craigslist was born sells over asking

The ultimate Craigslist listing nets a pretty penny

By Adam Brinklow Updated Oct 16, 2018, 9:17am PDT

Update: After landing on the market for $1,390,000, the Inner Sunset condo where Craig Newmark birthed his titular site sold over asking for $1,480,000 million, a cool $90,000 over its original price tag.

Millions of people have used Craigslist—the perpetually popular SF-based classified ad service founded nearly 25 years ago—to find a home.

Now the internet has come full circle as Craigslist’s own Cole Valley home is up for sale, as featured on TheFrontSteps. (Sadly, we’re deprived of the gratification of a Craigslist ad for it.)

In reality, the company hasn’t operated out of the three-bed, one-bath, circa-1907 unit at 1010 Cole that listed this week asking more than $1.39 million, for more than a decade.

But according to CNN Money, this is indeed where Craig himself—i.e., founder Craig Newmark, launched the venerable site:

Newmark’s classified-ad site grew from humble origins: a list of notable upcoming events that he e-mailed sporadically to Bay Area friends. He worked out of this two-bedroom apartment on Cole Street for six years; he moved the company to nearby offices in 2000 but lived here until he sold the apartment in December 2005. Now 17 million people visit Craigslist each month.

And a look back at the City Recorder’s records reveal that one Craig E. Newmark did indeed buy 1010 Cole in May of 1994, just about a year before Craigslist (then just an email list) took its first fitful steps into a nascent Internet and became perhaps the most consistently popular and widely used online service in the world.

That trivia doesn’t have much to do with the home itself these days, of course, which realtor Alexander Clark pitches in his non-Craig’s listing as sporting “hard and softwood floors from generations past, two decorative fireplaces, [...and] eastern exposure for amazing morning light.”

This is the bottom floor of a triplex, and if the $1.39 million asking price goes over it’ll be the biggest payday in the building’s 110-plus year history, with the current record being a $1 million-plus sale upstairs five years ago. 110 Cole Street itself last sold In 2007 for $910,000.