4179%2023rd%20Street%20before.jpg
Listed as a 1,394 square foot Victorian with potential for $765,000 in January of 2010, the then two-bedroom home at 4179 23rd Street sold for $676,000 that May. Following a lifting of the house, downward expansion, and renovation over the past two years, the Noe Valley property has just returned to the market as a three-level contemporary home:


4179 23rd Street After
The listing for the home now touts four-bedrooms on the new garden level, a new two-car garage and family room on the middle level, and an “open floor plan” level atop.
4179 23rd Street: Top Floor
And while the new listing for the rebuilt house on 23rd Street omits the new square footage, it doesn’t omit the new asking price of $3,600,000, a sale at even half of which would give the neigborhood’s median and average sale prices a nice little boost.
4179 23rd Street Living
∙ Listing: 4179 23rd Street (4/4.5) – $3,600,000 [4179-23rdst.com]
If The Median Price Is Way Up, Why Wasn’t The Value On Valley? [SocketSite]

28 thoughts on “Raising The Roof And Neighborhood Median In Noe Valley”
  1. warning…cheesy music awaits
    and OMG this thing is so bland. Hate the doorway straight into the “great room”…no sense of entry at all. No detailing of any interest. And that garden! The updated version of a concrete slab?
    It will be very disappointing if this sells for anything close to the price posted here.

  2. This is a hot mess but I bet it sells. Look for a first-time buyer with more money than experience and an “aggressive” buyer’s agent.

  3. Notice that both of the neighboring houses have also been remodeled in that time. Definitely a sign of the times in Noe Valley.

  4. Sad. I went to the estate sale when the old owner died. It was the quaintest remnant of old SF. The house was a quaint little cottage with the most intriguing items, including an organ which no one wanted to buy. I wanted to buy the massive O’keefe and Merritt stove in the house, but they wouldn’t sell. The new house is a bland monstrosity.

  5. “Bland” can also be seen as a “clean slate” so whomever buys it can easily customize it to their liking.
    That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if it goes for asking or more.

  6. I’m blinded by all the white! Those bathrooms are not going to age well, but maybe the target market can afford paying a maid to attack the grout every week.
    Not sure why so much hate. It’s bland and probably overpriced, but it’s shiny, new, clean, with a low-maintenance yard, desirable location, and has liveable flow. It’s a decent blank slate for someone to personalize with color, as someone pointed out, or not, as the white-and-gray aesthetic seems pretty popular in a review of furniture catalogs.
    If the hate is because SF’s old color is being replaced by yuppie minimalism, well, no comment. I got friends on both sides. I like to think diversity includes yuppie minimalists too.
    Doesn’t look like the neighbors have been remodeled…it just looks like a better photograph for the condos and a white paint job for the garage.

  7. Why would you schedule the open house for 12-2? If you have small children that is prime nap time — which is the crowd you’re marketing to. I’m really just not going to get a sitter to go to an open house.

  8. @MrsL If you have small children, leave them home for this open house, those all wood slippery stairs are an invitation for slips, screams and visits to the ER. This house would have been saved for me if they had done a proper job on the garden instead of making it look like yet another great room.

  9. As has been said many times on socketsite, money and taste do not correlate.
    Also, there is a generation gap.
    The people who like this will have no memory of the “summer of love” and may even consider the Beatles and Beethoven in the same category of “old music.”
    Those who prefer “real SF” will note that this remodel is not “modernist” and not “contemporary.”
    It is just practical. Many people like practical, new, clean, and white. They have no intellectual interest in interior architecture.
    There is one positive aspect of this if you are a buyer: if someone spends this much on this house, it removes a serious competitor for beautiful old (and new) houses in the same price range.

  10. I’m usually a fan of something like this but I am leaving less than impressed. Esp at that price. A bit ‘too’ open for me.
    Yard: is that all flagstone? I generally like that stone but this is quite a lot (and it gets burning hot in the sun, which this yard will get a lot of in late summer/fall). I think they could have done something else with that yard.

  11. I visited the open house yesterday. Unfortunately, the agent doesn’t have the square footage, but she offered somewhere between 3,000-4,000 sq ft.
    Not that anyone asked :-), but I thought the price seems steep for a property without a view. I suppose that the newness and location make up for it for the targeted audience.
    Would be interesting to watch how this one unfolds.
    (ps., really depressed that it’s still “Giants” to post, instead of “49ers”.)

  12. BobN, what is a good stair cover? We have those old terrazo (sp?) that are all cracked and leaking. What do we replace with on an Edwardian?

  13. Are San Franciscans so bitchy and mean, or are those that are all commenting on SocketSite?
    I have nothing to do with this house, but the reason it is so expensive and will likely sell that way is the radical shortage of housing in this city. If there were 100,000 units under construction in SOMA and South Beach, this house would not be so dear. It would have sold for $500K, then be for sale now for $1.7K. The city officials wonder why middle class families are moving to Marin….well, its because the entitlement process is so cumbersome and risky that only the very rich can afford to pay for it. Probably a million dollars of the list price here is due to the risk, time and expertise factor required of the developers to get a project like this approved. It’s always built into the price. I do it for a living and am pretty good at it but I am continually amazed at the roadblocks the city puts up to thwart projects like this.

  14. Chris, no doubt you’re right about development risk, but it’s very easy to hate a very expensive house that has poor design decisions and/or taste. Obviously, those are quite subjective judgements, but most of the commenters seem to be agreed one way or the other on that. For properties at a much lower price point, it’s much easier to forgive some of these basic issues.
    Maybe it’s just me, but the idea of paying $3.6 million for a “blank slate” that I can spend yet more on sets my teeth on edge.

  15. There was a time, not long ago, when you got a real mansion with a view in Pacific Heights for that price, not a fixed up workingman’s cottage in Noe.
    I think we are just getting old; a new younger and richer generation has taken over, with very different tastes.

  16. @conifer, you’re very right about the mansion in PH. It’s the wealth driving these prices. There is too much real wealth and not enough real estate. Probably all cash offers. If financed, for convenience only.

  17. Of course you are right, eddy, it is a matter of supply and demand. I have been following real estate, as a hobby, for decades, and I cannot fathom why anyone would pay $3.6m for this unimpressive, most modest house with an interior that looks like a quickly done contemporary white art galley.
    Aside from supply and demand, the only sane explanation is that the buyer simply has no sense of the previous value of money. That is, that they are young enough not to see a million as a lot.
    My late mother once said to me, “when your father made his first million, we were rich.” Indeed, when my father-in-law made his first million, near Chicago about 1960, they were VERY rich. So it is all a matter of time and place.
    In the current time, in San Francisco, one can now spend $3.6m on what was built as a shack in a neighborhood of similar ones.
    Is it too good to stay true? Will the wealth gap between the rich and the middle continue to expand? Will New York and London property continue to defy the force of gravity? If they do not, what will happen in San Francisco? Is another bubble growing, or is this a measure of true and new value?

  18. There was a property on 25th ave with no parking that sold for a huge number. The recent lake street home, the one on scenic that is now in escrow. Is it a bubble? I guess only if it pops.
    My opinion is that the the wealth gap will continue to increase and these prices will be sustainable. But I continue to believe that its a very fragile balance. I watched NYC prices rise and rise and rise….. There was a pause during 9/11 and again during post-2008/9, but ever so briefly.

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