Jony Ive’s surprise $73 million purchase late last month of a self-made compound in Belvedere is already pumping up prices in one of Marin’s ritziest enclaves.
As soon as the sale became public, Monica Costa’s phone started ringing. The Engel & Völkers agent represents 337 Belvedere Ave., the hillside home just below the former head Apple designer’s new digs.
Several of those calls came from her clients, which public records identify as investment fund head Clark Winslow and his wife, Sharon. Though the 2008-built 11,000-square-foot home on half an acre has been on and off the market at various prices for years, it had been listed consistently at $19.5 million since March.
But after the Ive sale — and given that the housing market overall has picked up since the “Trump Slump” in the spring — the sellers decided it was time to raise the price by more than 10%, to $22 million.
For wealthy buyers looking in what Costa calls the “Atherton of Marin”— which has no commercial district but does have two yacht clubs — the additional $2.5 million won’t make much of a difference, but the attention from the Ive deal will. The community has kept a low profile, with even high-net-worth buyers just over the bridge unaware of its bay-front charms, she said. But with the Ive sale, the word is out.
“A lot of people, including from Silicon Valley, they’re starting to explore Belvedere now,” she said.