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A stunning townhouse in San Francisco’s upscale Russian Hill neighborhood has sold for just half its asking price of $20 million, as the Bay Area city continues to face rising crime, drug use outdoors and homelessness.
In 2020, technology CEO Leslie Stretch paid $20 million for the more than 10,000-square-foot property overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge.
Stretch took the 50 percent cut off his asking price last month after failing to find a buyer for the four-bedroom, eight-bathroom home at 2626 Larkin St.
According to the New York PostStretch put the house back on the market for $18 million in May 2020. Online real estate listings suggest he began reducing the asking price almost immediately.
Two months after the six-story home was listed for $18 million, the price was reduced to $15 million.
The price has gone down and down until an unknown buyer bought the house in early November for $9.9 million.
The headquarters, 2626 Larkin St., sold for just under $10 million in November. It had originally been listed at about $20 million.
The home, which includes a spectacular helix staircase as well as a media room, wine cellar and elevator, was once appraised at $21 million.
The Real Deal reports that there is also a three-story Venetian glass chandelier believed to be worth $1 million. The house also has a guest apartment and a roof terrace.
Records indicate the home’s previous owner paid $2.7 million for the property in 2007.
As is the case with most San Francisco neighborhoods, crime in Russian Hill has increased over the past half-decade. In 2023 alone, Russian Hill experienced 839 incidents ranging from robberies to drug crimes, according to the SFPD.
In September, red fin reported that one in eight home sellers in San Francisco are suffering losses on their properties as prices fall in the area.
Sellers in San Francisco, on average, expect to take a loss of $100,000 on the properties they sell.
Since 2020, a significant number of stores have closed in downtown San Francisco due to increased crime and homelessness.
In June, a total of 45 of the 97 retailers operating in the Westfield downtown shopping center, as well as 16 of the 36 food vendors, were reported to have closed in just over three years.
Eventually, Westfield announced it would close the mall entirely. The announcement of the closure of the mall’s anchor tenant, Nordstrom, potentially drove the nail in the coffin for him.
Other major retailers that have left the mall since 2020 include: Abercrombie & Fitch, Banana Republic, Microsoft, Tiffany & Co. and Timberland.
The home’s history on Zillow shows its price gradually declining as the seller failed to attract a buyer for more than three years.
The collapse of San Francisco’s Westfield shopping center reflects a larger disaster affecting the city, which broadly includes increases in crime and homelessness rates. Pictured is a map showing that retailers have ceased operations in the area.
Over the summer, Westfield attributed Nordstrom’s exit to “unsafe conditions” and a “failure to enforce measures against rampant criminal activity.” The mall noted that its poor performance in San Francisco came in stark contrast to its other national locations.
The mall’s collapse reflects a larger disaster affecting retailers in different parts of the city.
Whole Foods, Old Navy, Gap and Office Depot are just some of the stores that have announced their closures in recent months.
Of the 203 retailers open in 2019 in the city’s Union Square area, only 107 are still in business, a 47 percent drop in just a few pandemic-ravaged years.
San Francisco is now widely thought to be caught in a vicious cycle that includes the exodus of some tech giants, for which the city has been known in recent decades.
In October, Microsoft began advertising up to 49,000 square feet of its offices for sublease, a business move that has also been employed by LinkedIn and Meta in recent months.
The tech giant is offering space in San Francisco’s tallest tower, 555 California Street, from 4,500 to 49,000 square feet for lease through May 2029.
Companies like Airbnb, Paypa, Slack, Lyft and Salesforce have also abandoned tens of thousands of square-foot buildings in the city over the past year.
The number of homeless people in San Francisco was counted in 2022 at almost 8,000, the second highest number of any year since 2005, according to the official government count carried out every three years.
The city also saw a 41 percent increase in the number of drug-related deaths in the first quarter of 2023 compared to the same period last year, as fentanyl ravaged the city’s homeless population.