This week, Leslie Stretch, CEO of customer experience software company Medallia, will list the Russian Hill home he bought with his wife Heather just before the pandemic for exactly what they paid for it: $20 million.
According to public record, the Stretches purchased the home in January 2020 from hedge fund manager Chris Hansen for $20 million.
Listing agent Nina Hatvany of Compass gave TRD an exclusive first peek of the five-bedroom house, which includes a separate guest apartment one level below the main entrance. The home’s centerpiece is a floating helix-shaped limestone staircase with hand-forged railings circling a three-story Venetian glass light fixture hanging from a central skylight. There’s also a walnut-clad elevator that services all floors.
The chandelier alone was rumored to cost $1 million and is an indication of the high-end finishes throughout the home, Hatvany said.
The 10,000-square-foot home at 2626 Larkin Street was the biggest residential sale in the neighborhood when it sold at the end of January in 2020 for $2,000 a square foot, according to Redfin. Hansen built it in 2013. It has six floors plus a bay view roof deck just around the corner from Lombard’s “crookedest” street.
The home would represent the biggest Russian Hill single-family sale of 2022 thus far if it sells for anywhere close to its asking price, although the combined $29 million paid for a pair of penthouse suites owned by former secretary of state George Shultz in July is the bigger overall neighborhood residential sale.
Hatvany, who also represented the sellers when they bought the home from Hansen in 2020, said her clients are selling now because the youngest of their four children has gone off to college and they are moving to a smaller pied a terre in the city. They also purchased several “spectacular” secondary homes during the pandemic, she said.
They made only minor decorative changes to the property during their two-plus years there, but spent hundreds of thousands of dollars upgrading the smart home features of the property, such as the AV system and light switches, she said. They also added two car lifts to make room for five cars in the three-car garage.
Otherwise the home is much as it appeared when they bought it in January 2020, she said, with “glowing” lime plaster walls, french white oak floors and a glass wall off the kitchen-family room that leads out to a backyard with a pizza oven, quartz stone patio and a fireplace bookended by two bronze fountains. The back of the home overlooks the garden, while the front, including the fourth-floor primary suite and fifth-floor family room, has northwest views of the bay. Both have decks to take in the views, and there’s also a panoramic view roof deck with a fire pit.
Even with the SF luxury market seeing millions in price cuts, Hatvany said the home is priced to bring in high-end buyers who she said are still actively house hunting despite the slower market.
“We have other houses on the market in the $18 [million] to $25 million range, and not one of them is as done as this house is,” she said.
Most of those properties are in Pacific and Presidio Heights, which Hatvany said are still tops for high-net-worth individuals with young families, given the proximity to parks and prestigious private schools. The Larkin home’s buyer may not be someone with “masses of children,” since it has a “more sophisticated feel,” Hatvany said, but otherwise she expects it to draw the same well-heeled crowd of house hunters to its “Pacific Heights-ish” location.
“It’s as close to Pacific Heights as you can be on Russian Hill,” she said.