Everyone needs a break, so Yolanda thought that it might be fun to briefly detour from our normal yaks and digressions. Instead, today we bring y’all a compound from up north, located in the low-key yet enormously expensive Silicon Valley community of Woodside, CA. The 3+ acre property was just listed with an asking price of $8,250,000.
Why would Yolanda choose to write about this home, when it is not owned by a high-profile individual? We’re glad you asked! It belongs to our longtime friend Woodside Woody, whom we have previously mentioned on this blog (he’s the guy who tipped us off about Michelle Pfeiffer’s Woodside estate recently becoming available for purchase).
Woody is generally not an attention-seeking fellow, but he knows as well as we do that all publicity is good, blah blah blah. So after some hemming and hawing, we convinced him and the missus to let us gab about their spread. We know that a substantial portion of our real estate base hails from LA, but perhaps one of y’all might be willing to give up drinking the smog-accentuated Kool Aid for the fresh tech-infused Woodside air. But if this is not your particular cup of real estate tea — different strokes and all that — just sit tight and we’ll have some juicy morsels for you shortly.
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Property records show that Woody and his lovely wife Tanya used an LLC to pay $4,476,000 for the property in 2013. It doesn’t take a math expert to calculate that the current $8.25 million pricetag is nearly double what they paid five years ago, a fact that Woody openly acknowledges. However, y’all, the Woodies have upgraded and updated the house in a light and bright contemporary manner since their purchase. And fact is that prices in general are substantially higher now than they were then.
Woody says he is very serious about selling the house and will gladly entertain any offers that start with an 8 and have two commas. And that price — per Woody — would include most (if not all) of the home’s furniture. Provided the new owner takes a shine to it, of course. And trust us, there are some very nice mid-century and contemporary pieces up in here. Name brand stuff. The Woodies don’t shop at Bob’s Discount Warehouse (no shade at our boy Bob, we’re just saying).
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The low-slung pad was built in 1980 and has since been remodeled into a contemporary confection. Accessed via a gated driveway — much of the house is invisible from the street out front — the mini-compound appears deceptively modest but actually weighs in with more than 5,000-square-feet of living space.
There are a total of 6 bedrooms and 3.5 baths, including the detached one-bed/one-bath guest house that sports its own kitchen, great room, and patio.
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Inside, the house is a mix of contemporary and mid-century elements. There are vaulted ceilings, fluorescent light fixtures, and marble countertops in the kitchen. The kitchen also contains a variety of top-notch appliances — Themador, SubZero, etc — and the hardwood floors that flow throughout the main living spaces are polished to a lustrous dark brown hue. Naturally there are formal living and dining rooms.
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Also in the house is a family room centered around another fireplace, a master suite with a spa-style bathroom that includes a glassy shower and a built-in soaking tub, and several guest/family bedroom. The aforementioned guest house is decked out with its own variety of hardwood floors and includes a generously-sized kitchen (for a guesthouse) plus an eating area.
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Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
A major selling point of the property are the 3+ acres of lush landscaping it provides. The property does not currently have a pool, but the rendering Yolanda posted above demonstrates how the site could easily accommodate one, along with a full-size tennis/sports court and a vineyard, should the new owner be a booze fiend.
According to the listing, the two-parcel estate may also be eligible for a lot split that would allow the new owner to either sell off a portion of the land or potentially use one portion for a commercial office, a very rare and valuable feature in the small town of Woodside.
And yes, though Woodside is a very small town — just over 5,000 residents per the latest US census — it has long been one of the wealthiest residential communities in the entire US of A. Thus our boy Woody rubs shoulders with many high-profile folks. One of his nearest neighbors is billionaire tech entrepreneur Evan Williams — the former Chairman and CEO of Twitter — who in 2014 quietly shelled out $17,250,000 for a large contemporary estate that he is completely rebuilding.
Right next door to Mr. Williams’ new pad is an even larger estate that has been owned since the 1990s by multi-billionaire Texas oil tycoon Robert Bass and his longtime wife Anne. According to Yolanda’s intel, that compound is mainly occupied by the couple’s daughter Margaret Bass, a Stanford graduate.
Also in the neighborhood are billionaire GoPro founder Nick Woodman, Steve Jobs’ widow Laurene Powell, and real estate-crazy bajillionaire Larry Ellison, who reportedly spent an unfathomable $200 million to construct his Japanese-themed Woodside compound, his main residence. And then there’s SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, whose $117.5 million splurge on a Woodside compound remains the most ever paid for a home in California.
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As for their future real estate plans, Mr. and Mrs. Woody have already purchased a new estate at an exclusive golf club gated community in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where they plan to live six months of the year. Once their Woodside estate is sold, the Woody couple will begin looking for a smaller “winter property” some place down south, far removed from those Wyoming chills.
Woody has said he and the wifey will probably buy something fancy in Arizona, but Yolanda is trying to persuade them to check out Malibu or Laguna Beach instead. Frankly, y’all, we need a beach house to work on our tan and a caretaker position suits us just fine. Ever since our vindictive third ex-husband Randall forbade our use of his black AmEx, we can’t even afford a damn rental on the sand.
Listing agent: Greg Goumas, Sotheby’s International Realty – San Francisco