Yesterday, while dissecting the new Silver Lake home of up-and-coming actor/producer Brian Sacca, we mentioned that he has an older brother named Chris who just happens to be a damn billionaire. And we figure that — like all billionaires — the elder Sacca sibling is gonna need a real estate story written about him at some point, right? So today we shall discuss our Mr. Chris Sacca’s baller-style real estate portfolio. By Yolanda’s tabulations, it is worth well in excess of $20 million (possibly much more) and quickly expanding.
Keep in mind Mr. Sacca is still quite young for a billionaire — just 41 years of age as of this December 2016 write-up — so he’s got plenty of time to grow his holdings and enter full-fledged real estate baller territory. You know, the fast lane occupied by ridonkulously-rich heavyweights like Tom Gores and Bill Gross.
First, the cursory background check. Born and raised in upstate New York, Mr. Sacca displayed mathematics proficiency from an early age. He graduated from Georgetown University’s law school with honors and shortly thereafter became an associate at a prestigious law office in the Silicon Valley. His legal career was short-lived, however. Within a year or so he was laid off. But to his credit, Mr. Sacca quickly got to hustlin’ and began networking with angel investors and other assorted Silicon Valley tech folks.
In late 2003, Mr. Sacca scored a job at Google, where he quickly gained the attention of upper-level executives, for better or worse. While he reportedly excelled at various novel projects — earning the favor of Google co-worker Marissa Mayer and co-founder Larry Page — he also developed a somewhat unsavory reputation for showing up uninvited at upper management meetings and then broadcasting his opinion to anyone who would listen. One of the people who he clashed with — allegedly — was current Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who was supposedly the main catalyst that spurred Mr. Sacca’s 2007 departure from Google.
By 2009, Mr. Sacca had struck out on his own and utilized his sixth sense — or whatever — to begin an extraordinarily lucrative career investing in the most promising tech startups. One of his earliest investments was Twitter, where he was aggressive in supporting co-founder Evan Williams (a former Google co-worker) and using a number of innovative investment vehicles to buy up as many shares as he could accumulate. By the time of Twitter’s late 2013 IPO, Mr. Sacca was the largest outside stakeholder in the company. His Twitter investment fund Lowercase Capital has reportedly returned an astonishing $5 billion to investors.
Mr. Sacca was also in early investor in both Instagram and Uber. (He holds 4% of the latter’s stock.) That certainly helps contribute to his estimated net worth of $1.2 billion and has most assuredly also helped stockpile a great deal of wealth for his investors. Enough to land him in third place for two consecutive years on Forbes‘s prestigious Midas List.
Great, right? But along with his rapid rise to billionaire stardom, Mr. Sacca has made more than a few enemies. Although he owns a very significant chunk of Uber stock, Mr. Sacca and CEO Travis Kalanick, once bosom friends, barely speak today. Allegedly Mr. Sacca’s greed and his ruthless conniving to stockpile shares had something to do with that. Allegedly, we repeat. And it was at Twitter where Mr. Sacca’s longtime gatecrasher antics eventually became so tiresome that he and other investors were banned from all employee meetings. But like they say, you don’t get to the top without stepping on a few fat toes.
They say that, yes?
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In recent years, the formerly semi-elusive Mr. Sacca has considerably upped his public profile with several guest appearances on the hit TV show Shark Tank and by granting a revealing interview to Forbes. He’s also become quite the high-profile political junkie. He served as Obama’s finance co-chair and trustee of the Presidential Inaugural Committee back in 2008. More recently, he was a vocal supporter of Hillary Clinton’s failed Presidential campaign, headlining and co-hosting pricey dinner fundraisers for her from Beverly Hills (with Jeffrey Katzenberg, Haim Saban and Sean Parker) to San Francisco (with Mark Cuban, natch).
But we digress.
Nowadays, Mr. Sacca primarily resides in Manhattan Beach — the seaside LA community known for its many good-lookin’ pro athlete residents and for being the home of many powerful figures within the nearby Silicon Beach community. Lots of other tremendously-wealthy tech peeps have homes out there. Oh, did we mention that Mark Cuban parts his Texas keister there part-time, too? Of course he does. But we’re here to discuss Mr. Sacca.
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Our boy currently owns two side-by-side houses on one of Manhattan Beach’s main streets. Way back in 2011, he paid $5,225,000 for the property you see above on the right. He then spent several years — and no doubt many millions of dollars — to raze and reconstruct the structure. When complete, as per his Forbes interview, the property will contain in approximately 5,000-square-feet of modern and eco-friendly living space.
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Above are the “before” shots — what the property looked like prior to the demolition. Although it ain’t on the sand — it’s just a a short one-block stroll to the beach — the house sports stunning bluewater views down to the Palos Verdes peninsula.
While they await the completion of construction on their dream home, Mr. Sacca, his wife Crystal Sacca, and their three young daughters are currently shacking up in the “guest house”, otherwise known as the house next door. Like all good billionaires, Mr. Sacca buys his neighbors’ houses, you see. Property records show Mr. & Mrs. Sacca paid $4,100,000 for the three-story property in June 2014 and gave it a cosmetic freshening before moving in. Here’s how it looked at the time of their acquisition:
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Yolanda has no inside intel on whether Mr. Sacca will sell his “crash pad” once his larger home next door is complete. We rather think not, particularly because it sits cheek-to-jowl with his new main residence. More likely he’ll use it for guests, staff, storage space for his suitcases full of social media cash, etc.
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All told, Mr. Sacca has spent $9,325,000 on his Manhattan Beach compound, not counting the many millions of dollars invested to essentially build the new eco-friendly mansion from scratch. So he’s spent what — $12 million? More? But let’s move on.
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In October 2014, just a few months after buying his Manhattan Beach crash pad, Mr. Sacca rather unexpectedly forked out another $6,388,000 for a sprawling “Mediterranean villa” in the South Bay, Los Angeles community of Palos Verdes Estates, less than 8 miles from his Manhattan Beach compound as the crow flies. This house — while also not waterfront — also sports Pacific Ocean views and lies on a petite cul-de-sac in the family-oriented and mostly quiet (if peacock-infested) community.
Now, you might be forgiven for wondering why Mr. Sacca would need or want a $12 million+ compound in Manhattan Beach and a $6 million+ house just a few miles away in Palos Verdes. Well, Yolanda will tell you. Ready?
You see, y’all, the Palos Verdes house is not occupied by Mr. Sacca. Rather, we happen to know that the house was acquired to house his parents: retired attorney Gerald Sacca and retired professor Katherine Sacca. The couple currently live here and everything is peachy keen, fine and dandy, and everyone is happy as a damn clam.
Yes, kiddies, Mr. Sacca spent $6,388,000 to purchase a home for his parents. You can do things like that when you’re a (generous) billionaire. Ain’t it sweet?
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The house may look old-timey, but it was actually built in 2002 by a guy named Scott Richland, the Chief Investment Officer of Caltech. And although the residence appears fairly modest from the street, it actually packs in a mansion-sized 7,420-square-feet with 4 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms. There’s a pool, a heated terrace, a media room, and a 2,200-square-foot garage for all the toys a retired couple from upstate New York could want.
But wait, there’s more!
Mr. Sacca loves the beach. Back in December 2014, just two months after purchasing the Palos Verdes house, he dropped another $1,100,000 for a surprisingly modest 3,400-square-foot house in beautiful Carlsbad, CA. The 1966 house, located on La Costa beach just north of San Diego, has 4 bedrooms and bathrooms within its seriously dated walls.
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Check out that kitchen! And how about that dining room? Lawd have mercy. We aren’t privy to Mr. Sacca’s plans for the house, of course, but we are quite certain that he will give it a major overhaul. At the very least.
2014 was a busy real estate year for Mr. Sacca. In addition to buying homes in Manhattan Beach, Palos Verdes and Carlsbad, the billionaire also found time to pay $415,000 for an almost laughably modest (1,212-square-foot) cabin up in Truckee, CA — near the north shore of Lake Tahoe.
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Why would he buy this teensy-weensy place? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that it lies right next door to what may have been Mr. Sacca’s very first house: a 2,240-square-foot wood wood cabin with a loft level and a hot tub that he bought in early 2009 for $631,000 and still owns, per property records.
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All told, Mr. Sacca has paid a total of $1,046,000 for his .84-acre mini-compound up in the woods.
Beyond these five houses, there are also reports that Mr. Sacca spends a significant amount of time at a new house in (or near) Great Falls, Montana. But sorry kids, we don’t have any further about that one.
We do know, however, that Mr. Sacca is still a young whippersnapper with a wardrobe of 70 cowboy shirts and plenty of earning potential left in him. And what Yolanda has observed from her decades of real estate voyeurism is that with a billionaire’s increasing net worth often comes a commensurate, near unquenchable thirst for bigger and better homes and compounds. We shall see.
Listing agent (Manhattan Beach house #1): Lorraine O’Connor, Shorewood Realtors, Inc.
Listing agent (Manhattan Beach house #2): Dunham Stewart
Listing agent (Palos Verdes): Teri Hawkins, RE/MAX Estate Properties
Listing agent (Carlsbad): William Ims, Sea Coast Exclusive Properties
Chris Sacca’s agent (Manhattan Beach house#1): Lauren Forbes
Chris Sacca’s agent (Palos Verdes): Susan Kaminski, Vista Sotheby’s International