Putting Menlo Park home prices into perspective

The price of single-family homes in Menlo Park is definitely fluctuating, but it’s more like three steps forward, one back. And those forward steps are starting to add up.

The monthly median price for sold homes has topped $2 million in seven of the last nine months with figures that are higher than any in recent memory. For sellers, this is good news. For buyers, it means deeper digging in the pockets.

In May, the median home price here was $2,026,500, up 3.1% from $1,965,000 in April and up 54% from May 2013, when the median sold price was $1,312,500.

Prior to that, we saw five months in a row where the price was $2 million or above. The highest monthly median price in the last two recorded years was $2,566,000 in September 2014. In October, the figure dropped to $1,785,000 before starting its five-month run in the $2 million range.

Currently, there are 32 single-family homes listed on the Multiple Listing Service for Menlo Park. While three of these homes are priced at under $1 million, 18 have price tags of more than $2 million, some of them considerably more. Let’s look at the price zones for these listed homes.

• Under $1 million: 3
• $1 million-$1,999,999: 10
• $2 million-$2,999,999: 10
• $3 million-$3,999,999: 5
• $4 million-$4,999,999: 3
• $5 million-$5,999,999: 1

The most expensive home currently on the market is on Bay Laurel Drive and is offered at $5,795,000.

Edging toward $6 million is a lot of money for a home in Menlo Park. But it’s no comparison to some of the most expensive dwellings in the U.S.

Home price perspective

Although Silicon Valley, overall, is regularly ranked among the most expensive regions in the country, there are in other locales select properties whose prices dwarf what we see here. Check out a few of them as listed in a May 2015 article on Forbes.com.

• The highest asking price on any single-family property is $195 million for a 16-acre estate that includes a main house with 62,200 square feet. Known as “Gemini,” this home is located in Manalapan, Fla., and includes two four-bedroom cottages and staff housing with four apartments. (The photo at the top of this article is of this home.)

• In the lower-Manhattan, N.Y., neighborhood of Tribeca, owners of an apartment building are offering to convert it to a single-family residence for $65 million. If you want to do the conversion yourself, you’ll pay just $50 million.

• For $59 million, you can own a 72nd Street mansion that was once owned by Gloria Vanderbilt. Built in 1881, the home has renovations planned that will expand it to seven stories.

• Over on 73rd Street (yes, still in New York) is a former carriage house (garage) on sale for $50 million. The owner is presenting it as an ideal townhome conversion, with a width of 40 feet and a total of 17,232 square feet.

With prices like this, Menlo Park’s $2-million-plus price tags don’t seem quite so extreme.

Hadar Guibara
Silicon Valley Real Estate