This 1-acre vacant lot is selling for $15 million. (Realtor.com)
The latest real estate listing that has everyone buzzing isn't some swanky estate with some Instagrammable infinity pool, in-house disco, or yoga studio in back. Instead it's an empty 1.03-acre lot that has hit the market with a nearly unbelievable $15 million price tag. And no, that's no typo.
The secret to this plot of dirt's logic-bending cost: It's located in Silicon Valley's ultrapricey Palo Alto, Calif, where the median home sale price is $2.7 million. Even so, the price seems a bit exorbitant. So what's up?
The property, about 15 minutes from Google's headquarters, is billed as that rare, ideally located, flat parcel of land that could serve as a blank canvas for buyers or developers seeking to build anything from a villa to, as the listing rather fancily suggests, "an exquisite villa with vineyard." Though the property is in a residential area, it's across the street from the Stanford Research Park near Stanford University.
Still, even in an area where very little vacant land is available, local real estate experts are a bit skeptical about those costs.
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"If you're talking about a dream home ... that price seems to be very high," says Kidder Mathews appraiser Jeff Enright, based in Redwood City, Calif. "It's more supportive of condominiums or a townhouse development [or office or research facilities]."
It's unclear exactly what the zoning will allow: "Offers opportunity for a work/live build," boasts the listing. "Permitted and conditional permitted usages other than residential."
So is it too overvalued to attract a buyer? The property was last sold for $12 million in June 2016, according to Realtor.com records.
"Nothing in that area surprises me," says Kidder Mathews appraiser Bob Dietrich, who works in Los Angeles. "In these urban areas where there’s good, steady population growth and high demand and constrained supply, prices are going up.”