16 ms·

14-bedroom, 11,000 sq. ft castle on 94 acres. Not too bad. By way of comparison, this is what $3.3M buys you in SF: https://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/207

by dewitt 6y ago

14-bedroom, 11,000 sq. ft castle on 94 acres. Not too bad. By way of comparison, this is what $3.3M buys you in SF: https://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/2070-Beach-St-94123/home/2003454 https://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/2070-Beach-St-94123/...

baby 6y ago
This is so absurd, I left SF last month and I still can't fathom why anyone would spend that much money to get a house there. I guess if you are stuck there because of work, and work pays really well? But I can't see any other reason why you would pay that much money for a place that is not that nice.
- teacpde 6y ago
  It is less logical, but when you see all your peers here spend that kind of money for houses, you start to question less. Also, it is a market, which is controlled by supply and demand dynamics.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    ... which, of course, include rampant speculation and wild assumptions about return on investment based on past history that may or may not reflect future performance.
  - octoberfranklin 6y ago
    No, it is a market whose supply is controlled by planning and zoning codes. There is nothing supply-and-demand about improved real estate. Farmland, maybe.
nl 6y ago
> By way of comparison, this is what $3.3M buys you in SF 4 Bedrooms and a yard within 2km of the financial district and 1 block from the waterfront for only $3.3M? Try getting that in Sydney! Edit: To the doubters, this is between $3M and $3.5M (Australian $): https://www.realestate.com.au/property-terrace-nsw-millers+point-134145366 https://www.realestate.com.au/property-terrace-nsw-millers+p... It's an area that is roughly comparable, but smaller, not great condition and a courtyard.
- akhosravian 6y ago
  $3.5 million USD is closer to $5 million Australian dollars. If we’re not accounting for conversion rates let’s find what kind of house 3.5 million yen will get ;)
echelon 6y ago
Absolutely absurd. The comparables are a quarter of the price or less in any other major city. SF as a tech hub needs to die. There are better cities that are far less NIMBY and regressive. If you don't succeed in launching a startup, you're just participating in a meat market. Your salary goes to rent. It's not sustainable. My SF coworkers often have roommates. You can't live like that in your 30's. You can't get married or raise kids like that. I've owned multiple concurrent properties in the heart of a city - historic properties with 25' ceilings - and I still pay less than SF rent. It floors me people put up with SF living conditions. NYC, Boston, Portland, Austin, Charlotte, Atlanta, and Miami have way better adjusted costs of living and aren't so broken politically. You can probably pick two cities and own homes in each for the cost of your SF rent. Let the land owners have what they deserve. A brain and wealth drain.
- swiley 6y ago
  The weirdest thing is that a lot of politicians are holding this up as a model for housing and a solution to what is essentially a national crisis.
- api 6y ago
  I was visiting SF for business a while back and while I was going for a walk the following kind of just hit me: "San Francisco is someone else's house." I can't explain exactly what prompted it, but I got the sense that there exists in SF a deeply embedded property-owning class that owns the city. The city is theirs. If you are not one of them, you are only visiting. The city will never truly be your home. It's possible to buy into this class, but the cost of doing so is intentionally kept so high that it's unreachable to all but the extremely wealthy. Has the city always been like this? I don't know, but I wonder if maybe it has... if the various waves of hippies, post-hippies, ravers, hackers, and tech bros weren't just visitors permitted to crash on the couch for a little while. There are many other cities all over this country where you are permitted to become a true resident, often for a very sane price. I don't get this feeling in most other cities.
  - scottlamb 6y ago
    > Has the city always been like this? I don't know, but I wonder if maybe it has.. It was like this during the gold rush of 1849. [0] Maybe the whole time since. [0] "mining the miners" https://stlukesexpandingwest.weebly.com/mining-the-miners.html https://stlukesexpandingwest.weebly.com/mining-the-miners.ht...
glitchc 6y ago
I believe you’re paying for location there. It’s in the Marina district and a short walk to the yacht harbour where a person buying this house also (ostensibly) owns a yacht.
- three_seagrass 6y ago
  Yeah, this home is a block from the bay and two blocks to the presidio.
tehlike 6y ago
"The oversized flat turf yard" - that's my favorite about sf homes. everything is relative.
ksherlock 6y ago
And property taxes are only $3,900 a year. That's not much more than the monthly property taxes in your California comparison.
- jcims 6y ago
  Note that section of RedFin is breaking down your monthly payment.
- maxlamb 6y ago
  Not sure where you saw that, I see property tax listed as $3300 a month.
sfkdjf9j3j 6y ago
I wonder how expensive it is to maintain the castle. And since it has some kind of official designation, if you have to use period-accurate materials for repairs.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  I'm not totally familiar with French law on the matter, but, it's likely that, in addition to needing period-accurate materials, you also have to use period-accurate methods. This is what makes it expensive, since very few people are familiar with obsolete, 4-500 year old building methods.
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
  Rather expensive. The walls must be keep repaired and strong, a moat must be filled with water, a forest must be cleared up to a distance of a trebuchet shot, the locker must have enough food supplies. Fail to do any of this, and an eventual siege will end in a disaster. And of course you'll need a retinue to man the walls.
  - hodgesrm 6y ago
    Though as Dumas shows through countless examples in his works the retinue of defenders need not be large if they are very doughty. [1] The works of Goscinny and Underzo also explored the proposition that the defenders might further increase their advantage through judicious use of technology. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Musketeers#Plot_summary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Musketeers#Plot_summ... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix
    - mkl 6y ago
      *Uderzo I always misread it as Underzo when I was a kid though.
      - hodgesrm 6y ago
        Same here. There's probably space here for an off-topic thread on words we misread/mispronounced as kids and how long it went on. In my case it's about 45 years.
chrisseaton 6y ago
To be fair this is also a pretty nice house given the location.
- baby 6y ago
  It's not a nice house :| and the location is quite coldish year round, so I wouldn't say it's a great location either.
  - swampthing 6y ago
    I think the Marina is considered desirable by the real estate market in general.
    - baby 6y ago
      Definitely is a nice district, but I wouldn't live there.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    What’s wrong with being a bit colder? Why do people want everything to be so hot all the time?
    - baby 6y ago
      I guess it depends on people, I need warmth. I want to be able to wear shorts and flip flops more than 1 day a year.
x87678r 6y ago
Here is a nice French Style Farmhouse for $2.5mm in NJ, about an hour away from Manhattan. Only 5 Beds but still 36 secluded acres in a nice town. https://www.trulia.com/p/nj/mendham/375-cherry-ln-mendham-nj-07945--2007158121 https://www.trulia.com/p/nj/mendham/375-cherry-ln-mendham-nj...
- thatfrenchguy 6y ago
  I’m French and this does not look like a house you would see or own in France
  - cromka 6y ago
    This is Northeast realtors for you. French this, Italian that, European these. The listings' descriptions are usually so grandiosely overdone that I barely ever can read them keeping a straight face.
  - gquiniou 6y ago
    Actually you can find this type of houses in Brittany.
  - jeromenerf 6y ago
    It seems inspired by Bretagne to me. Granitic walls, white windows. Nothing too French specific though, if there is ever something French specific about houses. You know, walls, roof, windows and doors. If shape follows function though, I could not tell what this place function is.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  Wow, that house sold for $3.6M on Mar 1, 2001 according to the records on the county's website and is now for sale for only $2.5M, if it can get that. ~$71k in property taxes per year and rising, that's a tough pill to swallow. Also, an hour away with zero traffic to Manhattan means you need to budget 2 hours during non covid times outside of the dead of night.
thatfrenchguy 6y ago
On landfill land too
SilasX 6y ago
Yes, I remember it almost being a meme about SF tourist groups being told the prices of European castles/estates by tour guides and being completely unimpressed.
jointpdf 6y ago
But you could buy a 1902 fixer-upper “castle” in SF for $1.8M. Some of the architectural details in this place (the fireplace, the windows) are insane. Why is this place still available? https://www.castleist.com/1-795m-california-usa-san-francisco-castle-for-sale https://www.castleist.com/1-795m-california-usa-san-francisc... (PS many more historical European castles on this site)
bpizzi 6y ago
The comparison isn't really meaningful thought: this french castle is in the middle of absolutely nowhere. You are 2h away by car from the either Bordeaux or Nantes, which are your closest chances to find an IT job.
- tintor 6y ago
  Doesn't matter if you are Working From Castle.
  - bpizzi 6y ago
    Not even sure there's a decent internet connection down there :)
willcipriano 6y ago
Only 15 grand a month. You would need a household income of 380k to reasonably afford that house.
JoeAltmaier 6y ago
But those 94 acres are hours by train from most anywhere. Usually prices decline the further you go from city centers.

by dewitt 6y ago

baby 6y ago

This is so absurd, I left SF last month and I still can't fathom why anyone would spend that much money to get a house there. I guess if you are stuck there because of work, and work pays really well? But I can't see any other reason why you would pay that much money for a place that is not that nice.

teacpde 6y ago
It is less logical, but when you see all your peers here spend that kind of money for houses, you start to question less. Also, it is a market, which is controlled by supply and demand dynamics.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  ... which, of course, include rampant speculation and wild assumptions about return on investment based on past history that may or may not reflect future performance.
- octoberfranklin 6y ago
  No, it is a market whose supply is controlled by planning and zoning codes. There is nothing supply-and-demand about improved real estate. Farmland, maybe.

nl 6y ago

> By way of comparison, this is what $3.3M buys you in SF 4 Bedrooms and a yard within 2km of the financial district and 1 block from the waterfront for only $3.3M? Try getting that in Sydney! Edit: To the doubters, this is between $3M and $3.5M (Australian $): https://www.realestate.com.au/property-terrace-nsw-millers+point-134145366 https://www.realestate.com.au/property-terrace-nsw-millers+p... It's an area that is roughly comparable, but smaller, not great condition and a courtyard.

akhosravian 6y ago
$3.5 million USD is closer to $5 million Australian dollars. If we’re not accounting for conversion rates let’s find what kind of house 3.5 million yen will get ;)

echelon 6y ago

Absolutely absurd. The comparables are a quarter of the price or less in any other major city. SF as a tech hub needs to die. There are better cities that are far less NIMBY and regressive. If you don't succeed in launching a startup, you're just participating in a meat market. Your salary goes to rent. It's not sustainable. My SF coworkers often have roommates. You can't live like that in your 30's. You can't get married or raise kids like that. I've owned multiple concurrent properties in the heart of a city - historic properties with 25' ceilings - and I still pay less than SF rent. It floors me people put up with SF living conditions. NYC, Boston, Portland, Austin, Charlotte, Atlanta, and Miami have way better adjusted costs of living and aren't so broken politically. You can probably pick two cities and own homes in each for the cost of your SF rent. Let the land owners have what they deserve. A brain and wealth drain.

swiley 6y ago
The weirdest thing is that a lot of politicians are holding this up as a model for housing and a solution to what is essentially a national crisis.
api 6y ago
I was visiting SF for business a while back and while I was going for a walk the following kind of just hit me: "San Francisco is someone else's house." I can't explain exactly what prompted it, but I got the sense that there exists in SF a deeply embedded property-owning class that owns the city. The city is theirs. If you are not one of them, you are only visiting. The city will never truly be your home. It's possible to buy into this class, but the cost of doing so is intentionally kept so high that it's unreachable to all but the extremely wealthy. Has the city always been like this? I don't know, but I wonder if maybe it has... if the various waves of hippies, post-hippies, ravers, hackers, and tech bros weren't just visitors permitted to crash on the couch for a little while. There are many other cities all over this country where you are permitted to become a true resident, often for a very sane price. I don't get this feeling in most other cities.
- scottlamb 6y ago
  > Has the city always been like this? I don't know, but I wonder if maybe it has.. It was like this during the gold rush of 1849. [0] Maybe the whole time since. [0] "mining the miners" https://stlukesexpandingwest.weebly.com/mining-the-miners.html https://stlukesexpandingwest.weebly.com/mining-the-miners.ht...

glitchc 6y ago

I believe you’re paying for location there. It’s in the Marina district and a short walk to the yacht harbour where a person buying this house also (ostensibly) owns a yacht.

three_seagrass 6y ago
Yeah, this home is a block from the bay and two blocks to the presidio.

tehlike 6y ago

"The oversized flat turf yard" - that's my favorite about sf homes. everything is relative.

ksherlock 6y ago

And property taxes are only $3,900 a year. That's not much more than the monthly property taxes in your California comparison.

jcims 6y ago
Note that section of RedFin is breaking down your monthly payment.
maxlamb 6y ago
Not sure where you saw that, I see property tax listed as $3300 a month.

sfkdjf9j3j 6y ago

I wonder how expensive it is to maintain the castle. And since it has some kind of official designation, if you have to use period-accurate materials for repairs.

pmiller2 6y ago
I'm not totally familiar with French law on the matter, but, it's likely that, in addition to needing period-accurate materials, you also have to use period-accurate methods. This is what makes it expensive, since very few people are familiar with obsolete, 4-500 year old building methods.
Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
Rather expensive. The walls must be keep repaired and strong, a moat must be filled with water, a forest must be cleared up to a distance of a trebuchet shot, the locker must have enough food supplies. Fail to do any of this, and an eventual siege will end in a disaster. And of course you'll need a retinue to man the walls.
- hodgesrm 6y ago
  Though as Dumas shows through countless examples in his works the retinue of defenders need not be large if they are very doughty. [1] The works of Goscinny and Underzo also explored the proposition that the defenders might further increase their advantage through judicious use of technology. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Musketeers#Plot_summary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Musketeers#Plot_summ... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix
  - mkl 6y ago
    *Uderzo I always misread it as Underzo when I was a kid though.
    - hodgesrm 6y ago
      Same here. There's probably space here for an off-topic thread on words we misread/mispronounced as kids and how long it went on. In my case it's about 45 years.

chrisseaton 6y ago

To be fair this is also a pretty nice house given the location.

baby 6y ago
It's not a nice house :| and the location is quite coldish year round, so I wouldn't say it's a great location either.
- swampthing 6y ago
  I think the Marina is considered desirable by the real estate market in general.
  - baby 6y ago
    Definitely is a nice district, but I wouldn't live there.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  What’s wrong with being a bit colder? Why do people want everything to be so hot all the time?
  - baby 6y ago
    I guess it depends on people, I need warmth. I want to be able to wear shorts and flip flops more than 1 day a year.

x87678r 6y ago

Here is a nice French Style Farmhouse for $2.5mm in NJ, about an hour away from Manhattan. Only 5 Beds but still 36 secluded acres in a nice town. https://www.trulia.com/p/nj/mendham/375-cherry-ln-mendham-nj-07945--2007158121 https://www.trulia.com/p/nj/mendham/375-cherry-ln-mendham-nj...

thatfrenchguy 6y ago
I’m French and this does not look like a house you would see or own in France
- cromka 6y ago
  This is Northeast realtors for you. French this, Italian that, European these. The listings' descriptions are usually so grandiosely overdone that I barely ever can read them keeping a straight face.
- gquiniou 6y ago
  Actually you can find this type of houses in Brittany.
- jeromenerf 6y ago
  It seems inspired by Bretagne to me. Granitic walls, white windows. Nothing too French specific though, if there is ever something French specific about houses. You know, walls, roof, windows and doors. If shape follows function though, I could not tell what this place function is.
lotsofpulp 6y ago
Wow, that house sold for $3.6M on Mar 1, 2001 according to the records on the county's website and is now for sale for only $2.5M, if it can get that. ~$71k in property taxes per year and rising, that's a tough pill to swallow. Also, an hour away with zero traffic to Manhattan means you need to budget 2 hours during non covid times outside of the dead of night.

thatfrenchguy 6y ago

On landfill land too

SilasX 6y ago

Yes, I remember it almost being a meme about SF tourist groups being told the prices of European castles/estates by tour guides and being completely unimpressed.

jointpdf 6y ago

But you could buy a 1902 fixer-upper “castle” in SF for $1.8M. Some of the architectural details in this place (the fireplace, the windows) are insane. Why is this place still available? https://www.castleist.com/1-795m-california-usa-san-francisco-castle-for-sale https://www.castleist.com/1-795m-california-usa-san-francisc... (PS many more historical European castles on this site)

bpizzi 6y ago

The comparison isn't really meaningful thought: this french castle is in the middle of absolutely nowhere. You are 2h away by car from the either Bordeaux or Nantes, which are your closest chances to find an IT job.

tintor 6y ago
Doesn't matter if you are Working From Castle.
- bpizzi 6y ago
  Not even sure there's a decent internet connection down there :)

willcipriano 6y ago

Only 15 grand a month. You would need a household income of 380k to reasonably afford that house.

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

But those 94 acres are hours by train from most anywhere. Usually prices decline the further you go from city centers.