An extraordinary home in Atherton, Calif., isn’t surprising. It is the country’s most expensive zip code, after all: home to “high-profile residents who want to keep a low profile,” as I once wrote. But it appears “the Atherton,” a stunning, sprawling mansion, mirrors the idyllic town it’s named after.
The home sits on Tuscaloosa Avenue, atop a 1.42-acre lot. Newly built this year, it has nine bedrooms and 15 bathrooms.
But it’ll run you $55 million.
“88 Tuscaloosa really is the showpiece, the grande dame, or whatever you want to call it” of the opulent Northern California town, Butch Haze of Compass, who is one of the listing agents, told Fortune.
It demonstrates a new style of living, he added: a house and resort. It has artisan hand-painted doors, a Bocci chandelier, and floor-to-ceiling windows.
If that doesn’t mean much to you, it has a movie theater with leather chairs, an equipped gym and spa, a tennis court, and a pool and accompanying pool house, as well as a lounge with a small bar and pool table. Basically, everything you could want—all naturally gated by stunningly tall trees.
Not only that, it’s located near some of the best private schools, the downtown area, and an exclusive club that apparently everyone belongs to. And it isn’t far from Silicon Valley and San Francisco.
“Everything is conducive to the lifestyle that people in this price point expect,” the other listing agent, Omar Maissen, also with Compass, said.
"Lifestyle" is definitely a defining term in all of California. In Southern California, the ultrarich are digging deep for it. “Lower levels,” rather than basements, is how the wealthy prefer to refer to them, Ernie Carswell, a luxury real estate agent with Douglas Elliman, previously told me.
They house billiard rooms, wine caves, bowling alleys, movie theaters, gyms, and spas—not too different from the posh home we’re talking about.
Those sorts of “iceberg homes” were a thing in London, too, long before now. Maybe the people of California are inspired by architecture from beyond. A mansion built by a billionaire, or a “cliffside Palace of Versailles,” as the Wall Street Journal called it, recently went up for sale in San Diego, with a price tag of $108 million.
For its part, the Atherton has been for sale for about 30 days and has had around six showings so far.
The seller is actually a developer; his firm did everything from the design to the build itself, which isn’t typically how things are done. He’s a technology entrepreneur too.
This was kind of a passion project for him, Haze explained. But it isn’t easy to build in California, let alone Atherton, where it’s predominantly zoned for single-family homes.
Atherton is actually home to a multimillionaire basketball star and a billionaire venture capitalist, among other elite, of course, who on two separate occasions opposed change that was coming in the form of multifamily homes.
So the seller who happens to be a developer had some challenges along the way. Maybe that’s part of why it’s priced so. But paying that price brings you into an affluent club, as Haze pointed out.
And it just so happens that supercar maker Ferrari is borrowing the house this weekend for an event for its top clientele to showcase some hot rides. A breathtaking home filled with remarkable cars—what could be better?
The broader housing world turned upside down over the last couple of years or so mostly because of high home prices and mortgage rates; sales have been depressed, to say the least. But according to Haze, it could be changing and maybe this house will be a sign.
“Atherton seems to be a bellwether for what’s coming down the road for real estate,” he said. “It’s always been that way, where we see the high-end luxury market move first and then everything follows. We saw a lot of properties in Atherton sit on the market, and in just the last 30 days start to move.”
