A detached, 5-by-7-foot storage shed in San Francisco’s Mission District has sold for $1.2 million, establishing what is almost certainly a record high price for Bay Area residential real estate at $34,285.71 per square foot.
The charming one-story, one-room shed, painted a tasteful, if faded, taupe, is built of reclaimed pallet-wood siding on a wooden frame, with a pitched, corrugated fiberglass roof overhead. Entry is gained through an ill-fitting aluminum storm door, with a narrow, four-pane window at the back of the shed allowing a measure of sunlight inside. The indoor flooring consists of random, assorted paving stones alternating with patches of bare earth.
Outdoor amenities include a rusted hibachi on cinderblocks and a plastic lawn chair.
The shed was the subject of news reports last month, when seven people were injured during an open house there that devolved into mayhem. Police estimated the crowd of first-time homebuyers, real estate professionals, home stagers, mortgage agents, and foreign investors at more than 200.
The buyers, a millennial couple who both work in the tech industry on the Peninsula, told this reporter that they wished to remain anonymous. They paid a 27 percent premium above the shed’s list price, winning a protracted bidding war that was described as reminiscent of Gettysburg.
A home design team with extensive experience remodeling Pacific Heights mansions will oversee renovations.
The seller, who also requested anonymity, said that he had hesitated for almost a year before putting the shed on the market, and even then briefly considered taking it back off the market, hoping that waiting a few more weeks might net an even higher sales price.
A spokeswoman for the San Francisco Realtors Benevolent Association told this reporter that the shed’s remarkable per-square-foot sales price was a predictable development in the red-hot Bay Area real estate market. Minutes later she clarified her remarks, stating, archly, that she found no humor at all in the news that today is April Fool’s Day.
(Image: Flickr/Justin Shearer)