San Francisco Mansion With the ‘Pacific Ocean as Your Backyard’ Lists for $32 Million
A San Francisco mansion on the edge of the Pacific Ocean is set to hit the market Friday for $32 million.
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The 7,540-square-foot home is located in the city’s Sea Cliff neighbourhood, and offers more than 100 feet of water frontage, according to the listing with Neal Ward of Compass. That means almost every room has a view of the water and the Golden Gate Bridge, with Marin County in the distance.
“Sea Cliff is such an exclusive, private enclave,” Mr. Ward said. “There are only 25 homes on the cliff, which is literally on the edge of a cliff looking out onto the ocean. When people buy here, they live here for a lifetime.”
Indeed, the home is on the market for the first time in 35 years.
Built in 1941, the house was the former residence of the late Michael Taylor, the interior designer who was famous for developing the “California look.” The style was “hailed as the new look in decorating in the 1950s and 1960s” and is defined by open spaces, neutral colours and “the light, airy, casual California style,” according to his obituary in The New York Times. He bought the house in 1970, the listing said, and died 1986 at the age of 59.
The home was purchased in 1987 for $2.35 million by the late Arthur Ciocca, and his wife, Carlyse, according to records with PropertyShark. Arthur Ciocca founded The Wine Group in 1981, which is now the second largest wine company in the U.S. He died in December at the age of 84, according to his obituary in the Wine Industry Advisor.
“We bought it in 10 minutes after seeing it with no contingencies. That is how special it is,” Ms. Ciocca said in a statement. “Where else in San Francisco can you live with the Pacific Ocean as your backyard and be anywhere you want to go in 10 minutes?”
The couple brought the home down to the studs, “while retaining both the integrity of the original architecture and Michael Taylor’s iconic ‘California Look,’” the listing said. The couple worked with Porter and Steinwedell on the redesign, the same architects Taylor had employed.
The home retains its original exposed ceiling beams, and boasts herringbone-wood flooring, according to marketing materials. The living room also has a fireplace and a picture window looking out over the bay, and the formal dining room overlooks the water as well.
“We really wanted a California feel with an Italian influence to frame the view as it comes into the house,” Ms. Ciocca added. “At night, the view becomes like black glass, and you see
the running lights on the ships coming into the Bay and the lights of the Golden Gate Bridge.”
Other amenities include a library lounge with a wet bar that leads to the garden terrace, an upper level main bedroom suite with two bathrooms, each with a dressing room; two private offices; and a lower level with a lounge area, a wine tasting room and a terrace with views through mature cypress trees.
The pool was designed by Taylor, and there’s also a gated stairway to the beach, which only a handful of homes in Sea Cliff have, Mr. Ward noted, adding that the home has been meticulously maintained.
“For a property on the ocean, that’s so important,” he said. “This is in extraordinary condition. Someone may want to change some of the finishes to match their own tastes, but it’s move-in ready.”
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Vacationers scratching their travel itch this season are sending prices through the roof. Here’s how some are making trade-offs.
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Capri Coffer socks away $600 a month to help fund her travels. The Atlanta health-insurance account executive and her husband couldn’t justify a family vacation to the Dominican Republic this summer, though, given what she calls “astronomical” plane ticket prices of $800 each.
The price was too high for younger family members, even with Coffer defraying some of the costs.
Instead, the family of six will pile into a rented minivan come August and drive to Hilton Head Island, S.C., where Coffer booked a beach house for $650 a night. Her budget excluding food for the two-night trip is about $1,600, compared with the $6,000 price she was quoted for a three-night trip to Punta Cana.
“That way, everyone can still be together and we can still have that family time,” she says.
With hotel prices and airfares stubbornly high as the 2023 travel rush continues—and overall inflation squeezing household budgets—this summer is shaping up as the season of travel trade-offs for many of us.
Average daily hotel rates in the top 25 U.S. markets topped $180 year-to-date through April, increasing 9.9% from a year ago and 15.6% from 2019, according to hospitality-data firm STR.
Online travel sites report more steep increases for summer ticket prices, with Kayak pegging the increase at 35% based on traveler searches. (Perhaps there is no more solid evidence of higher ticket prices than airline executives’ repeated gushing about strong demand, which gives them pricing power.)
The high prices and economic concerns don’t mean we’ll all be bunking in hostels and flying Spirit Airlines with no luggage. Travellers who aren’t going all-out are compromising in a variety of ways to keep the summer vacation tradition alive, travel agents and analysts say.
“They’re still out there and traveling despite some pretty real economic headwinds,” says Mike Daher, Deloitte’s U.S. transportation, hospitality and services leader. “They’re just being more creative in how they spend their limited dollars.”
For some, that means a cheaper hotel. Hotels.com says global search interest in three-star hotels is up more than 20% globally. Booking app HotelTonight says nearly one in three bookings in the first quarter were for “basic” hotels, compared with 27% in the same period in 2019.
For other travellers, the trade-offs include a shorter trip, a different destination, passing on premium seat upgrades on full-service airlines or switching to no-frills airlines. Budget-airline executives have said on earnings calls that they see evidence of travellers trading down.
Deloitte’s 2023 summer travel survey, released Tuesday, found that average spending on “marquee” trips this year is expected to decline to $2,930 from $3,320 a year ago. Tighter budgets are a factor, he says.
Too much demand
Wendy Marley is no economics teacher, but says she’s spent a lot of time this year refreshing clients on the basics of supply and demand.
The AAA travel adviser, who works in the Boston area, says the lesson comes up every time a traveler with a set budget requests help planning a dreamy summer vacation in Europe.
“They’re just having complete sticker shock,” she says.
Marley has become a pro at Plan B destinations for this summer.
For one client celebrating a 25th wedding anniversary with a budget of $10,000 to $12,000 for a five-star June trip, she switched their attention from the pricey French Riviera or Amalfi Coast to a luxury resort on the Caribbean island of St. Barts.
To Yellowstone fans dismayed at ticket prices into Jackson, Wyo., and three-star lodges going for six-star prices, she recommends other national parks within driving distance of Massachusetts, including Acadia National Park in Maine.
For clients who love the all-inclusive nature of cruising but don’t want to shell out for plane tickets to Florida, she’s been booking cruises out of New York and New Jersey.
Not all of Marley’s clients are tweaking their plans this summer.
Michael McParland, a 78-year-old consultant in Needham, Mass., and his wife are treating their family to a luxury three-week Ireland getaway. They are flying business class on Aer Lingus and touring with Adventures by Disney. They initially booked the trip for 2020, so nothing was going to stand in the way this year.
McParland is most excited to take his teen grandsons up the mountain in Northern Ireland where his father tended sheep.
“We decided a number of years ago to give our grandsons memories,” he says. “Money is money. They don’t remember you for that.”
Fare first, then destination
Chima Enwere, a 28-year old piano teacher in Fayetteville, N.C., is also headed to the U.K., but not by design.
Enwere, who fell in love with Europe on trips the past few years, let airline ticket prices dictate his destination this summer to save money.
He was having a hard time finding reasonable flights out of Raleigh-Durham, N.C., so he asked for ideas in a Facebook travel group. One traveler found a round-trip flight on Delta to Scotland for $900 in late July with reasonable connections.
He was budgeting $1,500 for the entire trip—he stays in hostels to save money—but says he will have to spend more given the pricier-than-expected plane ticket.
“I saw that it was less than four digits and I just immediately booked it without even asking questions,” he says.
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