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rich uncles
Why a Huffington Post Co-Founder Buys Extravagant Real Estate For Pretty Young Ladies
Cityfile encountered a stubborn mystery this week: Why did Huffington Post co-founder Ken Lerer help People magazine reporter Joey Bartolomeo buy a $1 million Upper East Side apartment? Bartolomeo and Lerer were mum, but we've found a (mundane!) answer. More » -
real estate
Facebook Tries to Cool-ify Fuddy-Duddy Office
Facebook's making the best of its move from downtown Palo Alto to an old Hewlett-Packard building in the suburbs. As if to prove the campus is sufficiently cool, one engineer shot a video in which he skateboards through the building. Someone else took pictures. More » -
birthday wishes
Happy Birthday, Mark Zuckerberg! Welcome to the Rest of Your Life
What do you get the social-networking mogul who has everything? Click to see Valleywag's gift to the 25-year-old blunderkind CEO of Facebook! More » -
real estate
Google's Larry Page Goes on Eco-Friendly Construction Rampage
To build the new, Google must tear down the old. As must its billionaire cofounder Larry Page, whose neighbors believe he's illegally tearing down houses in Palo Alto to make room for a gargantuan eco-mansion. More » -
great moments in pr
Facebook Gets the Fortune Cover Curse
A breathless Fortune story — "How Facebook Is Taking Over Our Lives" — reports that more people use Facebook than watched this year's Super Bowl. Facebook's board of directors must be thrilled, right? More » -
real estate porn
The House Built on a Ponzi Scheme
Alleged $50 billion swindler Bernie Madoff has been confined to his house between the hours of 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. Ah, but which house? -
politics
Google lines up for a government handout
In The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama called his 2004 visit to the Googleplex the "most memorable part" of a trip to California. Google's salespeople are planning to make sure he doesn't forget it. -
real estate
Bill Joy sells $40 million condo to Hugh Jackman at half off
Dreamily inventive billionaire Bill Joy, the cofounder of Sun Microsystems, has predicted doom for the human race in the pages of Wired. He has a new reason for pessimism: A Manhattan condo he put on the market for $40 million has reportedly sold to Australian actor Hugh Jackman for $21 million — down from a previously rumored sale price of $25 million. The five-bedroom, three-floor condominium has a view of the Hudson River. We have a theory on why Joy sold, even at such a discounted price. More » -
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real estate
Halsey Minor's $31 million hole in the ground
This just in: CNET founder turned angry Internet commenter Halsey Minor promises he will "get it up"! "It," in this case, being the Landmark Hotel in downtown Charlottesville, for which he has promised $7 million of his own money and obtained $24 million in promised financing from a bank. There's the hitch: The bank has stopped lending money, and no one was paid for September. Minor says he's "furious" and is getting a lawyer. Local publication CVillain.com wonders, though, if the bank yanked its loan because Minor somehow violated a covenant of the construction loan. (Photo via CVillian.com) -
real estate
Google's shrinking NYC office pampers the Lego-and-scooter set
The immense former Port Authority building where Google now does business in Manhattan has an impressive history. Truck drivers once drove onto elevators and motored around the building's upper floors. Today, the place has been Googlefied with snacks, ping-pong tables, and a jillion Legos. Free scooters let staffers zip one part of the supersize building to another. But the best thing about this video? Google Docs manager Jonathan Rochelle talks up his office for 2 minutes and 42 seconds without once using the word "cool." We just wish The Big Money's camera crew had shown us the 50,000 sq. ft. Google is emptying out for sublease, too. -
cutbacks
Google's New York sublets could spell layoffs
As recently as a year ago, Google was scrambling to get more office space in New York's Chelsea neighborhood. Now, just as swiftly, it's trying to offload it, putting 50,000 square feet up for sublet. The company has cut back on snacks in New York, as elsewhere — but real estate is a far more serious thing to trim. With less room for warm bodies, it suggests Google will soon be shedding staff. -
your privacy is an illusion
Zillow chief's home a secret
A flack at Zillow recently tried to interest me in the online real-estate startup's listings of celebrity homes. A fun topic, and one that might distract reporters from talk of the company's finances after a recent layoff. (Zillow is infamous in real-estate circles for its questionably accurate estimates of home prices.) I asked her: What about the celebrity home of Zillow CEO Rich Barton? The answer I got: Zillow only lists celebrity houses which are up for sale. But Barton has been happy to use his personal residence to generate publicity for the site before, blogging about the sale of his previous Seattle home. Why so shy now? More » -
real estate
Legendary VC Tom Perkins putting $20.5 million house on the market
7,535 sq. ft. 7 bd/6.5 ba. 3-car gar. Wet bar. Wine cellar. MUST SELL NOW. Okay, that last bit isn't part of the listing for Tom Perkins's palatial home in Belvedere, across the Golden Gate from San Francisco. But the fact that Perkins wants to sell his house, in this real-estate market, is disturbing. He is one of the founders of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and is fabulously wealthy. He has already started hawking his $187 million megayacht, the Maltese Falcon. What this looks like: Perkins is liquidating his worldly possessions. Let's assume he's not doing this because of financial straits. The only alternative conclusion: Perkins thinks he should sell now, before things get much, much worse. -
real estate
A Googler's modest $7.75 million home
Why did Google engineer Michael Frumkin pay $7.75 million for an oceanside house in Santa Cruz? It was ideal, he says, for boogie boarding. Frumkin is contesting his tax bill for 240 Geoffroy Drive, claiming the property is only worth $3.5 million. When he purchased it from venture capitalist Gerard Casilli in 2006, he paid $4 million for the house and $3.75 million in "option money" — essentially paying Casilli for the right to buy the house in the first place. Frumkin essentially overpaid for the place to entice Casilli to sell. Boil it down, and you have a classic tale of a VC screwing an engineer. Nice house, though. (Photo by Shmuel Thaler/Santa Cruz Sentinel) -
real estate
Inside Larry Ellison's Pacific Heights mansionette
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison doesn't really live in his multimillion-dollar house in San Francisco; he mostly keeps it around for parties, like the rager of a dinner party PR schemestress Brooke Hammerling threw for the 10th anniversary of NetSuite, an online-software company which Ellison has backed since it was a startup. Kara Swisher did one of her let-the-CEO-yammer interviews with NetSuite's Zach Nelson. Videographer Richard Blakeley cut her clip down to just the real-estate porn. It works a lot better with the intro theme from MTV Cribs, doesn't it? -
craigslist
Mystery startup admits it's overspending on office space
In a Craigslist post titled "R.I.P. Good Times? Save Money by Sharing our SoMa Office," a San Francisco startup seeks a cotenant to defray its monthly lease. It's an allusion toVC firm Sequoia Capital's times-are-tough presentation, which called on startups to cut their burn rates. What the ad doesn't say: The fact that this startup has space to spare means it rented an oversized office, likely in the hopes of making more hires, and now realizes it can't fill it. Any guesses, based on the details in the ad — a top executive named Justin, an office at 7th and Mission — who it is? Leave them in the comments. Here's the ad, with more pictures: More » -
real estate
CNET founder's $22M mansion to get $15M makeover
CNet founder Halsey Minor, whose 8020 Media isn't exactly repeating his success, has hired hotshot interior designer Michael S. Smith to redo his 8 bedroom, 7 bathroom, 17,895 square foot Presidio Heights place at 3800 Washington Street. Minor is still arguing with Sotheby's over $16.8 million in purchases he refuses to pay for. But he's moving forward with home remodeling, having told Portfolio that the place “needs a lot of work to go from this grandiose monstrosity to a real house.” After the jump, Google and MSN snoop shots. More » -
real estate
Bebo cofounders buy $29 million cabin on a hill
Well, it's on a hill, but it sure ain't a cabin. Instead, Bebo cofounding couple Michael Birch and Xochi Birch have purchased a $29 million manse in Pacific heights on the corner of Broadway and Broderick. It looks like the Birches purchased the property from one William Mathes, a managing partner at Behrman Capital. Mathes originally purchased the lot for a mere $3.25 million back in 1998. -
real estate
Yahoo building 300,000-sq. ft. Nebraska datacenter
Layoffs be damned, Yahoo needs more servers. Data Center Knowledge reports the company spent $14.8 million to buy a warehouse/office building in La Vista, Nebraska, a suburb of Omaha. Paperwork suggests Yahoo is ready to put $100 million into the site. Here's the real-estate porn: More » -
real estate
Bargain $8 million condo just the latest favor from Sergey Brin's banker
The $8.5 million pied-à-terre that Google cofounder Sergey Brin and 23andMe cofounder Anne Wojcicki recently purchased in Manhattan's Greenwich Village? The previous owner, Bill Brady, paid $7 million for the condo around a year ago and was trying to move the unit for as much as $12 million after buying into a different building owned by art superstar Julian Schnabel. If you think it was the negotiating mastery of Brin and Wojcicki — who are expecting their first child together — think again. A tipster points out that besides helping with Google's IPO at Credit Suisse First Boston, Brady and former boss Frank Quattrone still advise the company: More » -
real estate
Sergey Brin buys $8 million duplex in Greenwich Village
A 23-foot balcony, 3,457 square feet of space, four bedrooms, and a limestone bath with heated floors are what Google cofounder Sergey Brin and his wife, 23andMe's Anne Wojcicki, are getting at 744 Greenwich Street for $8.5 million, reports New York's Cityfile blog. The place formerly belonged to Bill Brady, who heads Credit Suisse's Global Technology group in Palo Alto. It'll make a perfect site for more of 23andMe's genetic-testing spit parties. -
failanthropy
Valley penthouse up for grabs in raffle
A team of sponsors lead by developer Barry Swenson are offering a penthouse in Swenson's City Heights high-rise housing development in San Jose as a prize in a raffle. A $150 ticket could win you the $1.2 million flat or $1 million in cash — if 15,000 tickets are sold. Otherwise, you'll have to settle for half the ticket takings. The raffle will reportedly benefit InnVision, which provides services to the homeless, but it's not clear how much. But then as the lucky winner you could live like an Objectivist, peering down at the impoverished masses and decrying the folly of altruism all you like. So there's that. -
startups
Zillow's new ad network desperate ploy to make sales numbers?
Ad networks are to Web 2.0 business strategy what the portal was to the dot-bomb — a desperate attempt to turn the eyeballs that were used to calculate valuations for venture capital and acquisition purposes into actual revenue by aggregating advertising inventory. And they work about as well as you'd expect, which is not very. So I was more than a little bemused to see real estate listing Web site Zillow touting a new ad network along with a consortium of struggling newspaper publishers. Because from what I've heard about the startup, it hasn't been able to make revenue numbers promised to investors by founder and CEO Rich Barton, while it burns through cash on — wait for it — real estate. More » -
real estate
Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and your home ownership dreams
Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, lenders created at the whim of evil government in the 1930s and 1970s respectively, have been brought back under national supervision in the wake of the country's mortgage crisis. The two institutions simply weren't "capitalized" enough to weather the sub-prime storm, and whatever government regulations were left failed like levees under a flow tide of bad debt. And while it will help stabilize the mortgage market, it won't necessarily help people who have sky-high payments and underwater equity. Ever resourceful, Americans in areas hard hit by foreclosure are playing home ownership musical chairs with the banks. All I understand about economics is that I feel poor. So does this mean Bay Area housing will get more affordable? More » -
real estate
SF luxury homes hold value, unlike LA
It's not surprising, but the number's good to know: Stats from First Republic Bank place San Francisco luxury homes at an average $3.01 million in value. It's a new high and a slight increase from last year. By contrast, high-end homes in Los Angeles are off 3.8 percent. San Diego luxury home values dropped a full 7.8 percent. Does that mean Brentwood bulldog daddy Jason Calacanis will pay lower taxes now? That guy has an angle on everything. (Photo by Jason Calacanis) -
rumormonger
YouTube's Steve Chen decorating a penthouse downtown
Is Google's Marissa Mayer getting a coworker for a neighbor? Word on the tipline is that YouTube cofounder Steve Chen is putting together a high-tech bachelor pad: More » -
real estate
Seattle baristas propose 300-foot colossus honoring Paul Allen
Kapow Coffee baristas have collected hundreds of signatures on a petition to erect a 300-foot statue of billionaire Microsoft co-founder turned real estate developer Paul Allen in Kapow's South Lake Union neighborhood. It's a backhanded prank: Allen's development firm Vulcan owns about a third of South Lake Union and has been relentlessly gentrifying the place. Kapow's rent has tripled in recent years. It's not their first poke in Allen's eye. After he convinced city officials to provide a South Lake Union trolley service, Kapow's staff stuck the streetcars with the nickname "S.L.U.T." On the statue plan, Allen made the faux pas of letting a spokeswoman handle reporters for him. Come on, big guy, go down there and order a triple shot. They'll be eating out of your hand in ten minutes. (Original photo by Randy Wick) -
cubicle culture
Facebook's new home: HP's old office park
Facebook's new bosses don't let the peons throw drinking-game parties anymore, but at least the drones get to go to work in a pedestrian-friendly urban setting, right? Nope. Facebook plans to move "a substantial portion of its operations" in the first quarter of 2009 from downtown Palo Alto to one of HP's old office parks on to 1601 California Avenue, reports Palo Alto Online. The lot, about 8.5 acres in the Stanford Research Park, used to house HP's spun-off subsidiary Agilent, but by the looks of it, we would've guessed Dunder-Mifflin. -
real estate
Pixar veteran plans for massive treehouse in Lafayette
Pete Docter, the writer-director of Pixar production Monsters, Inc., wants to build a home in the sky nestled in the branches of a giant, fake oak on a $950,000 piece of land in Lafayette, nestled in the hills behind Berkeley. More » -
real estate
Larry Page's $7 million manse
Eager to expose Google's threats to our privacy, the National Legal & Policy Center proved so inept at technology that it ended up exposing Google cofounder Larry Page's street address in a publicity stunt. Hidden in plain sight within the NLPC's PDF document: Waverley Oaks Court, the Palo Alto street on which Page lives. (Last year, Valleywag published a Google Maps view of Page's home, but not the address.) It only took a little digging through publicly available records to turn up the actual house number — 100 Waverley Oaks Court, Palo Alto, Calif. So how much is it worth? More » -
real estate
Fox Interactive's $350 million new offices
Poor Yahoo can't even keep tenants at the Yahoo Center in Santa Monica — Fox Interactive Media will be moving all 2,000 of its Los Angeles-area employees to the as-yet-uncompleted Horizon at Playa Vista office park in Playa Del Rey. The deal, which Peter Levinsohn calls "the biggest deal in LA real estate in 25 years," is worth $350 million according to sources cited by the Los Angeles Times. The planned complex, situated between Culver City and LAX, will also host a retail complex, making it easy for FIM employees to buy the products with the paychecks funded by the advertising for those products, thereby completing the great Southland circle of life. -
Real Estate
Apple to move into very boring New York office tower
Apple will move into a new New York office tower going up on 510 Madison, taking two floors. The building is still under construction, but developer CBRE Richard Ellis has a live construction cam you can use to follow its progress. Glancing at sketches,we expected more from design-obsessed Apple. Other than the pictured garden terrace, and a for-tentants-only indoor pool and health club, the place looks pretty much like every other Manhattan office tower. -
real estate
The five drug dens of bad-boy ex-CEO Henry Nicholas
How can everyone have missed the most lurid aspect of the fall of former Broadcom CEO Henry Nicholas? Amidst all the sex and drug charges, we've missed the one subject that really gets people's tongues wagging: real estate. Thanks to laws passed in America's "war on drugs," any property involved in the transportation, storage and sale of illegal narcotics is subject to seizure. Thanks to the magic of Google Maps and Street View, we can also get a glimpse into the somewhat banal landscape of Nicholas's party circuit under the oppressively constant sunshine of Southern California's Orange County and Nevada. Let's start at Broadcom headquarters. More » -
toogle many googlers
Google's suburban sprawl
Google's announcement today of a massive campus expansion was inevitable. Having taken over every last scrap of office park around it not occupied by neighbor Intuit, Google is expanding the Mountain View Googleplex to the west — and, more controversially, to the east, on land owned but poorly used by Nasa. Ignore the happy talk about Google and Nasa's scientific partnerships; those are an obvious fig leaf to cover the use of public land by a private entity. (Let's not even get started on Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt's sweetheart deal to park their party plane on Nasa grounds.) Google has grown to be a powerful employer in the Bay Area, and its wealthy executives donate freely to local politicians, so we should hardly expect the powers that be to stop it. What's good for Google is good for America, or so we'll be told. More » -
toogle many googlers
Details on Google's new campus at Nasa's Ames base
Google finally announced details of its plans to build a new campus on property owned by Nasa at the space agency's Ames Research Center. The ongoing partnership with Nasa was first announced three years ago. The initial terms of the forty-year lease peg rent at $3.66 million a year, with adjustments to the rate based on property-value assessments and up to five 10-year extensions to the contract. Construction isn't due to begin until 2013, with Nasa approving any designs. Proposed amenities beyond office space on the 44-acre plot will include dining, day care and recreation facilities. Not to mention that the Googlejet, the party plane jointly owned by cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt, will be that much more conveniently parked at the Moffett Field spot that the troika already rents for $1.3 million. Their rental isn't part of the deal, but isn't it convenient that they can negotiate with the same helpful government officials to fill their needs for both work and play? -
rumormonger
Facebook employees lived in San Francisco while collecting Palo Alto rent subsidy
Facebook employees who have lost a $600/mo. housing subsidy for living in Palo Alto may want to point the finger at their new adult supervision, COO Sheryl Sandberg, but a tipster tells us they only have themselves to blame: More » -
real estate
Facebook's cancelled housing subsidy puts squeeze on Palo Alto landlords
Rumor has it Facebook will no longer pay its employees a $600/mo. housing subsidy for living in Palo Alto. The move comes off as a cheap blow against employees, but it's not. The Craigslist ad in the image above illustrates who the cost-cutting move actually hurts the most: not Facebook employees, but their landlords, who just lost a pack of tenants willing to pay $600 more than anybody else. Say the apartment hunters who put up the ad: "We are looking to pay less than $3k/mo for a 3BR, especially since the Facebook subsidy is gone now." -
money can't buy you taste
Gurbaksh Chahal's swingin' bachelor pad in the sky
When we heard that BlueLithium founder Gurbaksh Chahal bought a $6.9 million penthouse, we figured he'd go with something tastefully modern to match the building and his taste in slim suits and slimmer ties. But no, oh no. Think animal skins; a headboard and coffee table monogrammed with his signature "G;" and actual chintz upholstery on the dining room set, which a cheap-looking but showy chandelier hovers over. It's like a pileup on the midcentury-minimalism and rococo-inspired Gucci decadence highway. More » -
real estate
Commercial real estate vacancies show no sign of dot-bomb 2.0
Recent reports from local real estate trackers put the amount of office space relinquished by local companies in the last quarter at the highest it has been since the third quarter of 2002 — 436,933 sq. ft, according to commercial broker CB Richard Ellis, or the equivalent of nearly all the space in the Transamerica pyramid. The East Bay and the South Bay also saw an uptick in vacancies. The bankruptcies of Sharper Image, Pay By Touch, and RedEnvelope helped push up San Francisco's vacancy rate, but South of Market remained an untouched bubble of business leases, thanks to expansion by Monster.com, Advent Software, and Splunk. (Photo by Thierry) -
borland
Austin, the retirement home for aging software companies
Borland has found cheaper rents in Austin, Texas, a regulatory filing reveals. Cheaper rents, but costly obscurity. Had anyone even heard that the software maker had moved its headquarters from Cupertino? Or heard from the company, period?








































