Maximum Luxury is a weekly column where we gander at the most expensive homes for sale in San Francisco, basically for no reason except that we want to.

When 2620 Buchanan Street hit the market 90 days ago asking $18 million, it was actually the end of a long drama around this six bed, eight bath Pac Heights property, although much of it was now obscured.

See, when this place sold for just over $4 million back in 2014, it looked like this:

A lot of timber, a lot of millwork, a lot of, as they say, period details.

However, just two years later it sold again, this time with plans to completely remodel the place; armchair preservationists would prefer the interiors be left alone, but a buyer would presumably guess that redoing the house could lead to an even bigger flip down the line.

So what was the outcome?

As you can see here–and to presumably nobody’s real surprise–the new look won out over the classic details, and the bigger payday is here, or at least it will be if anybody finds $18 million to spend on this deal.

So now that it’s said and done, which version did you prefer?

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