When in doubt, write an offer, tie it up, do your research, and hopefully it all turns out. That’s how we got this amazing development opportunity at 1720 Larkin, in Russian Hill, and how we got it WAY below asking. Originally listed “off market” for $6,200,000, I threw this out to a few developers I know, most of whom assumed it was over-priced, and had no potential.

Their loss…we originally submitted a “low-ball” offer just to begin the dialogue, and to our surprise, the sellers didn’t simply tell us to get lost. After a couple verbal rounds of negotiating, we put our intentions in writing, got a counter, countered them, and got in contract with 30 days to figure out what we could do with this beast, if anything, and if we could get a loan. As it turns out…one can do a lot, and our lender agreed!

So stay tuned for the transformation, and relish with me in the fact that we got this property WAY below list price, fought our way through lender headaches, and just closed for $5,200,000 (listed on MLS for $5,500,000, which you’ll note is different than the off market $6.2M list price).

Congratulations to my clients (the buyers) and to all of the sellers. Thank you also to the listing agents who stuck with us, and didn’t lose their sh*t when we kept having to delay the close. I promised we’d get there, and we did.

Onward!