The mansions and penthouses chosen for the annual San Francisco Decorator Showcase are often for sale. But they don’t always find a buyer. And they rarely sell the same month that 16,000 interior design aficionados tromped through them as part of the largest fundraiser for one of San Francisco’s elite private schools.
But this year’s Decorator Showcase home, a more than 9,000-square-foot, eight-bedroom manse at 2935 Pacific Ave. in Pacific Heights, is different. And not just because of its Moroccan-themed dining room, draped in velvet, and Technicolor pentroom with a bar on the roof deck. It was a relatively rapid-fire sale for the city’s $10-million-plus market, in which homes can take months or even years to find a buyer. In this case, an unnamed buyer plunked down $16.2 million through an LLC just a few weeks after the showcase closed in May — about $4 million less than the asking price.
The home was first listed for sale last fall, then removed. It came back to market the day the showcase opened in late April, asking just under $20 million. A few days after the showcase closed in May, it was in contract. Just two weeks later, according to city records, the home changed hands; a quick closing often means an all-cash deal.
The Decorator Showcase takes place in a different home every year, almost always in the city’s most expensive northern neighborhoods: Pacific Heights, Presidio Heights, and Sea Cliff. Each room is decorated by a different interior designer. Begun in 1977, the event benefits University High School’s financial aid program. Today it is the “premier West Coast design house,” according to Elena Britton, the school’s director of development.
Thousands of visitors paid $50 this year to see rooms redone down to the studs by some of the Bay Area’s top interior designers, with discounts for students, seniors, and groups. The five-dollar increase was the first price hike in “many, many years,” Britton said. The showhouse also makes money via sponsorships and direct donations from patrons of the Presidio Heights school, the alma mater of Mayor Daniel Lurie, actress-comedian Ali Wong, and former Giants pitcher Tyler Walker. This year’s showcase brought in more than $1 million.
Last year’s showcase home is still on the market. This year’s successful sale may have come thanks to the home’s approachable style, a contrast to some of the grander, colder estates of previous years.
“It really just felt livable,” Britton said, adding that many visitors told her it was their favorite showcase yet. “A lot of these homes in Pacific Heights are 10,000 square feet or more, so some of them feel really grand, but I think when you walked into this house, there was a lot of warmth, and people felt like they were kind of surprised at how large it was.”
A significant 2009 renovation played a key role in making the onetime investment property for a turn-of-the-century banker’s widow into an attractive single-family home with a bonus garden suite.
“The beauty of that home was not just skin deep,” said San Francisco real estate agent Steven Mavromihalis of Compass, who has represented several Decorator Showcase homes. “There is no doubt in my mind that the agents involved, as well as the purchaser, understood the value of that major renovation.”
The Decorator Showcase offers homeowners free design services and donated materials, providing speedy updates for “pennies on the dollar,” according to Geoffrey De Sousa, who leads the design board for the event and this year designed the living room. The homeowners have to set a budget beyond what comes for free and “be willing to give up the reins a little bit,” he said.
Taking part in the showcase can have an “extremely positive effect, both in terms of exposure and goodwill,” said Mavromihalis, though there can be drawbacks to all the attention.
“A lot of very affluent people would much rather not purchase a home that has been visited by thousands of adoring fans of architecture and design,” he noted.
The majority of showcase homes are for sale, but not all sellers have the same level of interaction with the 20-plus designers involved as this year’s did, according to De Sousa.
“Sometimes homeowners don’t want to put the investment into certain areas,” he said.
These sellers and their agent understood that allowing for a larger renovation budget in strategic areas of the home would pay off.
“If you really pay attention to the rules of real estate — you pay attention to bathrooms, you pay attention to the kitchen, you pay attention to your first impression when you come into the house — I think that it makes for an incredible team to be able to get a home sold,” De Sousa said.
The school estimates that each home renovation gets $500,000 in donated materials, not to mention the free services of high-end designers. Everything donated stays in the house after the showcase ends, as does anything built in, with items like light fixtures, window treatments, and furniture available for purchase from the designer. Even if decor features don’t stay, they make for great listing pictures, with a level of finish well beyond the usual staging, De Sousa added.
When Mavromihalis sold the 2017 showcase home, the buyers not only visited during the showcase but “requested buying as much of the furniture and art as could be purchased,” he said.
Another perk for showcase homeowners: Renovations, which generally require over-the-counter permits, usually wrap up in a matter of months, not years. “The homeowner is really the one who reaps the benefit of this, without a doubt,” De Sousa said, though designers get publicity and, often, new clients out of the deal.
Last year’s home, a nearby Pac Heights brick Dutch Colonial from 1899 with an asking price of $26 million, had “challenges” that went beyond what could be accomplished during the four-month time frame the designers generally have, as well as the budget those sellers set for the renovation, De Sousa said. There is no garage parking or elevator for the five-floor home, and the kitchen is in an unusual upper-level location. Changing those features would have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars and many months, if not years, to get permitted and completed. But, he said, “there really isn’t anything beyond our abilities. We just need the time and money.”
For each Decorator Showcase, De Sousa strives to bring on designers who will reliably get the job done in a short time frame and bring a cohesive look to the home. “It can’t look like a sea of 20 different floors,” he said. However, designers have a much freer hand than they would working for a traditional client.
This year’s rooms included an office with a dramatic desk that melded with the wall and an “Atelier of Dreams” design studio with whimsical, hand-painted wall coverings — choices likely not to every buyer’s taste. But De Sousa said it is part of the designer’s contract that every room be repainted in white or cream if the owner requests it after the showcase is over. This time around, some were repainted and some were left as is, though he declined to specify which rooms were untouched. The new owners are bringing in their own designer to make additional changes, he noted.
The search is already underway for next year’s home, and De Sousa said this year’s quick sale may convince others to turn over their homes for a good cause and a “new, fresh approach.” Of course, the showhouse committee has to agree that the home, and its owners, are the right fit.
“Just like the homeowner is interviewing us, we’re interviewing them to see ‘Is this process going to work for these people?’ Because sometimes it might not,” he said.