For years, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was one of the Bay Area's wealthiest renters who, until last year, leased an ordinary if heavily fortified and not exactly cheap house in the College Terrace neighborhood in Palo Alto, CA.
That changed last March (2011) when he coughed up $7,000,000 for a gated and fully renovated five bedroom residence in Palo Alto's Crescent Park neighborhood where he and long-time gal pal Priscilla Chan legally hitched their love wagons in a small ceremony earlier this year.
For months now the baby-faced billionaire has been regularly spotted—with security detail in tow—walking his dog near the once drug infested but recently refurbished and downright spectacular Dolores Park, standing in line like everybody else at Wise Sons Jewish Delicatessen, and downing a few beers at local dive bars like Phone Booth fueling internet scuttlebutt that Mister and Missus Z. recently added to their slender but high-end property portfolio with a pricey pied-à-terre in San Francisco's once gritty and edgy now almost ludicrously gentrified and hipster filled Mission District neighborhood.
However, thanks to a little neighborhood gossip tattled by our S.F.-based bestie Fiona Trambeau who has lived in a second floor walk up two blocks from Dolores Park since the dawn of time, a little reading around on some of the San Francisco property blogs and a deep dive into a multitude of property records data bases Your Mama surmises that Mister and Missus Z. did not purchase a multi-million dollar pied-a-terre in the Mission District but rather a multi-million dollar pied-a-terre in the quiet, affluent and more tech tycoon-ish Liberty Heights 'hood that clings gloriously to the steep hillsides that rise above the southwest corner of Dolores Park.
There has been some speculation amongst readers of the always informative and always well-informed San Francisco-based property blog Socketsite that Mister and Missus Z. may have purchased a fully-renovated contemporary crib on Liberty Street between Church and Sanchez streets. They didn't.
Now children, keep in mind we can't directly connect neither Mister Z.'s nor Missus Z.'s name to the property in question—making this all just a juicy tidbit of real estate rumor and gossip—but our research indicates that, back in April (2012), a generically-named corporate entity that links directly back to the same tax consulting firm in Palo Alto as Mister and Missus Z.'s primary residence in Palo Alto (CA) paid exactly $3,000,000 for privately situated house on a double-wide lot on a fairly steep street with panoramic views over Dolores Park towards the compact but dynamic downtown skyline. The property was not, as far as we can tell, on the open market so there aren't any listing photos to share with the children.
Ol' Fiona called to tell us rolled by several times this morning in her banged up Subaru hoping to catch of glimpse of Mister Z. or—better yet—get stopped and forcibly frisked by one or more of Mister and Missus Z.'s burly security men but alas...all was whisper quiet.