By Mark David | Variety
The 90210 zip code may suck up the lion’s share of pop cultural prestige as the internationally recognized geographic locus of wealth and luxury, but it’s actually the much less well known 94027 zip code — that of the tiny Bay Area community of Atherton — that for the last four years in a row has been ranked by Property Shark as the most expensive zip code in America with a median 2020 sale price of $7 million. By comparison, Beverly Hills pegged in at the fourth spot with a substantially lower though still conspicuously expensive median price of $3.75 million.
However, if a deep-pocketed tech tycoon or venture capitalist wishes to acquire the recently listed Atherton estate of Facebook’s cryptocurrency guru David Marcus they’ll probably need to come close to the just under $10 million asking price, about 30% more than the affluent community’s sky-high 2020 median price.
An early cryptocurrency advocate, Marcus stepped down from his powerful position as president of PayPal in 2014 to join Facebook. He first served as VP of Messaging Products, where he oversaw the development of Facebook Messenger mobile app, and later co-created Facebook’s controversial experimental permissioned blockchain-based payment system Diem (formerly Libra). As part of a corporate restructuring last year, the online payments expert was tapped to helm the social media colossus’s recently formed payments group F2 (Facebook Financial).
Tax records indicate Marcus purchased the 1.3-acre spread via a corporate entity about 9.5 years ago for $5.8 million from Silicon Valley investor and former Shutterfly CEO Jeff Housenbold. Listings held by the DeLeon Team at Deleon Realty describe the residence as a “grand 2 level estate of nearly 5,800 square feet” with five bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms.
The formal living room, library/home office and dining room, the latter highlighted by a diamond-paned bay window and daringly painted the darkest shade of grey possible, sport traditional moldings and coffered ceilings, while the family room, kitchen and breakfast room adhere to a more crisply minimalist style. Two sets of arched French doors act as curved counterpoints to the blocky and austere fireplace that stands between them in the family room, and an unexpected jolt of cherry red cabinetry enlivens the sleekly appointed kitchen where the walls gleam with glossy white subway tiles. The adjoining breakfast looks out over the front yard with direct and convenient informal access to the parking lot-sized blacktop driveway.
A second home office is joined on the second floor by three good-sized guest bedrooms, each with a private bathroom, plus a glammed-up primary suite of nearly 1,000 square feet. A minimalist ring-shaped light fixture hangs from the shimmery silver-leafed ceiling, French doors open to a slender balcony and a huge TV is mounted over a fireplace. There are two custom-fitted dressing rooms and a the spacious bathroom sports ornate rococo mirrors that jockey for attention with the Hollywood Regency-inspired over-sized circular cabinetry pulls on the double vanity.
Discreetly squirreled down a narrow lane in the leafy and prestigious Lindenwood neighborhood, the estate’s grounds offer tremendous privacy with mature specimen trees around the perimeter that screen out neighboring homes. There are three fire features on the backyard’s expansive stone terrace — a built-in grill, an outdoor fireplace and, under a pergola, a fire pit. Elsewhere, surrounded by a green sea of mown lawn, a huge tree provides copious shade for a huge deck alongside the swimming pool and spa.