SELLER: Tom PerkinsLOCATION: Golden Gate Avenue
PRICE: $20,500,000
SIZE: 7,535 square feet, 7 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms (as per assessor)
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Today we're going to spread our celebrity real estate wings a little bit and discuss Bay Area bizness tycoon Tom Perkins, a filthy rich financier who recently put his big house in the super swank San Francisco suburb of Belvedere Island on the market with an asking price of $20,500,000.
For those not familiar with Mister Perkins let Your Mama give you the Reader's Digest version of his rather extensive and impressive rezoomay. After helping to steer Hewlett Packard into the personal computer bizness in the 1960s, Mister Perkins went on to make mountains of money as a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who provided start up cash for companies such as AOL, Amazon.com, Netscape and Google. Some of the more quirky elements of his life story include being convicted of involuntary manslaugher in France due to a death that occurred in a yacht racing accident and his brief marriage to ridiculously prolific romance novelist Danielle Steel who may have inspired him to write his own tawdry novel in 2006 called, not surprisingly, Sex and the Single Zillionaire.
Mister Perkins also spent a rumored and reported $100,000,000+ to build Maltese Falcon, the largest privately owned sailing yacht on the planet that includes a staggering 11,000 square feet of interior space and requires a crew of at least twenty. However, only two short years after dropping the luxe and lavish boat into the water he has put the 289-foot feat of oceanic engineering up for sale at a figure some yacht brokers are whispering is somewhere around $150,000,000€, a grotesquely large number that Your Mama's bejeweled abacus tells us converts to $187,360,500 at today's rates. Nothing like having a little pocket change to indulge one's hobbies.
Anyhoo, we're not here to blather on about a boat but rather to wag our tongue at obscenely expensive real estate. Not only is Mister Perkin divesting himself of his big boat (so that he can get into sports submarines, whatever that is), he is also looking to unload his spectacular mansion on Belvedere Island with it's crazy intricate paneling and enviable views across the San Francisco Bay and towards the gorgeous Golden Gate Bridge.
Located on the choicest section of Belvedere Island's Golden Gate Avenue and just down the block from mining mogul Robert Friedland's $65,000,000 residential extravaganza, property records show Mister Perkins' palatial digs measure in at 7,535 square feet and include 7 bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms. A closer look-see at listing information reveals that the bedroom breakdown is more complicated than it sounds. The main floor includes a good sized guest suite and private pooper, the second floor has two wings, one for the master suite with its dual bathrooms and commodious closet space and the other for three family bedrooms, two bathrooms and laundry facilities. The lower floor features the sixth bedroom and attached terlit and has been designated as a "maid's quarters," while a "chef's apartment" rides astride the three car garage.
Although the day-core is not our cup of tea, we find the living and dining rooms to be elegant in the way that only the houses of the very rich can be and we're absolutely breathless over the manly looking library with its hidden wet bar and we're faint with glee over the dee-voonly detailed linenfold paneling and intricately carved mantel in the living room. These rooms reveal the subtle hands of a skilled tradesman and the very expensive vision of a deft decorator, nice, gay or otherwise. However, what in heaven's name happened in the study with its upsetting cacophony of visually vexatious fabrics? And do not even get Your Mama started on that bedroom with its rose colored carpeting and disturbing balloon curtains surrounding the four poster bed. Lawhd have mercy children, that room has us pouring an early morning gin and tonic to get through to the next hour.
Other rooms and amenities on the meticulously renovated and maintained main floor, according to listing information, include a temperature controlled greenhouse (for the orchid lovers, natch), a powder room, and a kitchen with attached butler's pantry and laundry room. The lower floor features a large entertainment room, a second full kitchen, full service wet bar for all the boozy types to sidle up to, a temperature controlled wine cellar (almost all rich people require wine cellars nowadays), and access to the stone terrace which leads down the hillside to the swimming pool and pool house, a real rarity in this neck of the woods due to the damp and chilly climate. The almost one acre grounds include rose gardens, level lawns for drunken games of croquet, stone paths meandering up and down the sloping lot, flowers, vegetable gardens and fruit trees. A damn Garden of Eden, children.
Additional features that will please and impress potential buyers is the alarm system, the fire hoses designated for each of the three floors and the two safes, because let's be honest children, when your pockets are deep enough to fork over twenty million clams for a house, one safe is simply not enough to stash and secure the family jewels. Okaaay?
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