Happy Friday!  Let’s finish out the week with a super structure in Saratoga, courtesy of Burbed reader wahnny!  And break out the red arrows, because we’re hunting mawbul kawlums!

15181 BELLECOURT Ave
Saratoga, CA 95070
$6,000,000

5 Beds 
5.5 Baths 
6,600 Sq. Ft.
$909 / Sq. Ft.
Built: 2003 
Lot Size: 1.02 Acres 
On Redfin: 10 days
Status: Active
Property Type: Detached Single Family
Stories: 1
County: Santa Clara
Style: French
Community: Saratoga
MLS#: 81236964

This unbelvble Gorgeous French Style Masterpiece Estate is spanned graciously on one level. Magestic & quality craftd, combind w/ architctural excellnce. Nestld in most desirble & prestigious area of SAR * Situatd on a Flat Acr+, * Guest Hse * amazing Media Rm/cinema * Game Rm * Exercise Rm w/ steam showr * 2Family Rms/wings * invitng grounds w/ Pool & Spa perfect4 entertainng * Orchrd * Nr downtwn-sar schls-Not a cornr lot

Was this house listed on Twitter before they put it on MLS?  With 6600 square feet of living space, certainly the broker could make room to stage some more vowels.

Now heeeeeeeeeere’s wahnny on why this wigwam’s a winner!

It’s been a while since multimillion+ RBA houses were featured on Burbed, but I just came across one that seems to go overboard in its ostentatiousness.

The house looks like an ad-hoc mishmash of architectural styles, with each room having different themes, some with painted ceilings, and of course, mawbul kawlums galore!

Curious who the seller/realtor thinks will be attracted to such a place, especially at their asking price.

We’re curious how high the overbidding on this kawlumned kastle will be when it’s so unbelvble.  We’ve included some more pictures for your perusal in case you doubt its awesomitude.  But we’re thinking of calling shenanigans on the home theater.  Either every high-end installation looks and photographs exactly the same, or the picture’s been nicked from another listing.

Bunus: See if you can figure out how this one acre property on the corner of Bellecourt and Highway 9 is not a cornr lot.

9:50 AM: See end for update.  It’s worth it.
12:09 PM: Another update on the other murder.

It’s time to play Build a Ginormous House Somewhere Not As Expensive As The Real Bay Area and then try to find a buyer! Ready?  It’s Burbed reader J from Alameda‘s turn with this lovely Lafayette listing.

1901 HUNSAKER CANYON Rd
Lafayette, CA 94549
$1,998,000

4 Beds
3.5 Baths
6,200 Sq. Ft.
$322 / Sq. Ft.
Built: 2003
Lot Size: 13.50 Acres
On Redfin: 39 days
Type: Detached
Stories: 3+
Community: Burton Valley
MLS#: 40587017
Style: Other
View: Canyon, Carquinez, City Lights, Forest, Hills, Mountains, Mt. Diablo, Valley
County: Contra Costa

WOW! $1+M price reduction! What a buy!! 13+- acres. Gated 360% View! Italian Villa/ stone, hardwood fls, custom & antique lighting. Finest materials including stone, hardwood, beautiful moldings and mllwork. Sunrise and Sunset included ! Rm for pool tennis/guest house/vineyard. PRICED TO SELL !!!

Here’s why J from A sent this in:

As promised, a lovely chateau – in the Lafayette hills. Of note: a million dollar price reduction, a reasonable $322 a square foot and lots of columns.

Somehow it seems that 3.5 bathrooms spread across 6,200 sq feet of living space is not quite the usual ratio – a new way to measure houses – bathrooms per square feet? I am sure the buyer will be happy to have an elevator to navigate all those stories. Enjoy!

You’re right, J. We’ve noted the business of beaucoup bathrooms in ginormous houses for people with too much money and not enough taste. No wonder this place had a million dollar price reduction.  According to the LA Times, this house needs at minimum 8 rooms for waste disposal and sluicing.

Good thing it was PRICED TO SELL !!! We’ve seen enough houses that were priced to stay empty or priced to sit on the listing service for years and years.

Like, um, this house:

Even Zillow thinks the house is worth $2,169,784. Instant equity!  Ka-ching!

Update 9:50 AM: Burbed reader magdalena alerts us to this 2005 SF Chronicle article that specifically mentions the house.  In a this-would-never-be-believed-as-fiction tragedy, the wife of criminal defense lawyer Daniel Horowitz was murdered in “the entryway of the home.” Wikipedia says she was murdered in a mobile home on the property while their “dream house” was being completed.  The murder occurred four days after the beginning of a high-profile trial where Horowitz was defending Susan Polk, accused of killing her husband in their Orinda home. Horowitz had taken the case after Polk had fired her previous lawyers for encouraging her to plead insanity.

This led to a mistrial, but as Horowitz prepared for Polk’s second trial, she fired him, convinced that he had something to do with his wife’s murder.  16 year old Scott Dyleski was convicted of the murder; supposedly he intended to kill a neighbor who had run over his dog and went to the wrong house.  Polk’s story manages to get even more bizarre after Horowitz was fired (this Dateline NBC link confirms the mobile home claim from Wikipedia).

WOW!  Sunrise and sunset is just the entryway of what’s included with this house!

Update 12:09 PM: Murder kills home values as well as people.  Check out Susan Polk’s house.  We found a listing e-flyer, and Redfin has the price history:

Our readers have mentioned what they’re looking for in an ideal home.  Some want a big, well-organized kitchen, some want spectacular views, some want the best school district possible.  And since Silicon Valley is We-Built-That Central, we’ve heard from many readers who want nothing more than a lot of garage and workshop space.  This lascivious Los Gatos listing, lobbed in by Burbed reader nomadic, may be where you’ll end up dropping your tools, banging your head, and having the time of your life.

Oh yeah, there’s supposedly a house somewhere on the property.

119 HARWOOD Ct
Los Gatos, CA 95032
$2,895,000

5 Beds 
5 Baths 
5,361 Sq. Ft.
$540 / Sq. Ft.
Built: 1987 
Lot Size: 1.49 Acres 
On Redfin: 20 days
Property Type: Detached Single Family
Stories: Bi/Split Level
Community: Los Gatos/Monte Sereno
MLS#: 81233794
Style: Mediterranean
View: City Lights
County: Santa Clara

Under Construction! Unique opportunity to complete construction to your own taste. Serene setting next to natural open space & trails. Mediterranean home, 4 BR & 3.5 BA (2 BRs are suits with Jacuzzi), sweeping city light views from all rooms. High ceilings & skylights bring lots of natural light. SF includes separate guest unit(960 SF) w/ 1 BR & 1.5 BA * Unit has 4 car garages. Total 7 car garages.

Here’s why nomadic sent in the gorgeous garage (with ginormous garrison).

A trunkey Mediterranean (sic)! 7 car garages (huh?) 2 of the bedrooms are suits with Jacuzzis (how do you keep the water out of your shoes?)

Purchased at the height of the bubble for $2.3M, now in the “middle of remodeling” and the seller is trying for $2.9M.  Comparing with the 2008 listing, it looks like they added 1500sf, but I suspect that’s the size of the “guest house” because looking at the site, it doesn’t appear that they’ve expanded the house.  The bedroom/bath counts match up with the old 2008 listing too.

I go past this house regularly, and it seems like they’ve been working on the new tile roof for at least a year.  I figured the owner was doing it himself and was low on cash. 

Alas, the listing doesn’t show the garage as it goes through construction.  Instead, all we get are exterior shots such as this smoggy and obstructed view of Milpitas, except there’s a bunch of buildings blocking The Great Mall.  (The photo at right is from the aforementioned old listing.)

Fortunately, nomadic took some actual on-site pictures!  Ready?

As promised, here are the pictures of the current state of the house on Harwood.  It’s kind of bizarre that he started putting pavers down for the driveway and quit part way through.  Usually you can put them in pretty quickly once the hard part (the base and leveling) is done.

The guest house (bottom left) looks kind of abandoned, just like the main house.  The view from the main house is pretty good; you can see Communications Hill (no big deal) and downtown San Jose.

Still can’t see the Great Mall.  Might as well go back to the garage and enjoy that seller financing.

The San Francisco Chronicle breathlessly reports that the Mitt Romney For President Campaign (nickname: UnMittigated Disaster) paid a visit to the Real Bay Area.  The Romneys were welcomed by co-hosts Meg Whitman and George Shultz… and a very SF Bay protest group.

Romney collects funds in Hillsborough

Carla Marinucci, SF Chronicle; Updated 12:45 p.m., Saturday, September 22, 2012

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has had a trying week, what with the surfacing of a video in which he appears to dismiss 47 percent of Americans as government freeloaders.

So he was probably looking forward to being among friends at a high-dollar fundraiser in Hillsborough Friday evening. But in the solidly Democratic Bay Area that meant he first had to experience an enthusiastic greeting from about two dozen protesters as his motorcade drove through the wealthy neighborhood where the event was held.

Some of those protesters carried signs reminding him of the video, in which Romney appears to denigrate supporters of President Obama. Others jabbed at his release Friday of his 2011 tax returns.

What this article neglects to cover is the Hillsborough house.  Fear not!  Burbed has #factchecked the reportage!

The house used for Romney’s fundraiser belongs to Ada Regan and is, according to the Los Angeles Times, “a 13,820-square foot manse with nine bedrooms and 9.5 bathrooms…”  And what did Mr. Romney think of it?

Speaking about a dinner held for him in the Bay Area the previous night, Romney noted on Saturday that the driveway to the estate appeared at least a mile long.

“It’s like, Oh my goodness, how in the world? And then we came to the home, and it was like San Simeon, you know, the Hearst Castle,” Romney told donors at a different fundraiser on Saturday. “It was this beautiful home with gardens, manicured gardens, and a pool and a topiary and so forth.”

OMFG Oh my goodness! A topiary!  Bet they don’t have those in La Jolla.  You know what else they don’t have?  A house on 48.26 acres. Check this parcel out (right)!

We also arranged for a UAV with a camera to bring you these ultra-secret aerial photos of the house itself.  (Drones: they’re not just for assassinations anymore!) Remember, no mile-long driveway can keep Burbed from reporting to you on current house events!  The only way to stay off this page is to keep your house off the entire internet!

“Bunus:” Zillow thinks this ginormous house on 2 million square feet of land is worth five million dollars.  That would be about right if the house came with one acre.  Can’t win them all, Zillow.

Now, let’s take two recent items in the news.

• Secret video of Romney taken at a Florida fundraiser causes no end of headaches for the Republican Presidential candidate
• The iPhone 5 is released yesterday

Hmmm.  Are you thinking what we’re thinking?  Keep an eye on YouTube for more amazing MittVid in full 1080p.

Today’s story deserves a good long sit and read, followed by a good long sit and think.  Thanks very much to Burbed reader nomadic for wafting this one in.

Wealthy home buyers demand bathrooms; lots of bathrooms

Some mansions have nearly as many toilets as entire blocks in less regal neighborhoods

By Lauren Beale, Los Angeles Times, March 2, 2012, 6:34 p.m.

Here’s another way the rich are different: They have more bathrooms.

Real estate brokers who cater to the moneyed say their clients typically want homes that have at least two bathrooms for every bedroom. And with spacious tubs, floor lamps, dressing areas and seating, some bathrooms rival bedrooms in size.

“The bathroom has become the dressing room,” said Bob Ray Offenhauser, a Studio City-based residential architect who routinely encloses the shower and toilet in their own rooms within a room. “They really don’t look much like bathrooms anymore.”

Some mansions have nearly as many commodes as entire blocks in less regal neighborhoods.

Pickfair, the Beverly Hills estate of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, was outfitted with 30 bathrooms in a later overhaul. But the record locally may be the 41 bathrooms boasted by an 18,400-square-foot Mediterranean-style home in Bel-Air that was recently on the market for $40 million, real estate agents say.

This is an alarming trend coming out of SoCal.  Why would ginormous Southland estates need more bathrooms than the San Jose Convention Center?  Do they all need to do coke privately, but simultaneously?  Is this high-pressure trend going to affect estates in the Real Bay Area?

Discuss.  You may refer to Facebook stock prices to support your conclusion.

This is also your Weekend Open Thread, so feel free to mention any Open Houses you visited, or whatever else you feel like arguing about today.

Just keep the door shut until you’re done.

Let’s finish up the week on the Peninsula.  Burbed reader Wendie has a very special find for us, a bodacious bunker in Burlingame!  Thanks Wendie!  Meanwhile, we’re going to continue linking to different sites and we’d love to know which ones you prefer, and why.  Wendie sent in a link to mlslistings.com and the home isn’t there anymore.  Fortunately, we found it on Movoto!

Please give Wendie a big, warm, RBA welcome as today’s Guest Blogger with this excellent guest post!

50 Howland Hill Ln
Burlingame, CA 94010
$3,200,000

Loan Payment:  $12,222/mo
Bedrooms:  6
Bathrooms:  5&1/2
Size:  6,461 sqft
$/Sqft:  $495/sqft
Type:  Single Family House
Year Built:  2001
Lot Size:  21,375
Days on Movoto:  63 days
MLS#:  81226232
Status:  Active
Open House:  Sun 01:00pm – 04:00pm

Quality, details, exquisite finishes make this 6BR., 5.5BA, 2FR, 3 car garage,custom built home by Edward Neale truly remarkable. 5611 sf of living space on floors 1 & 2 plus approx 1000 sf of living space on lower level with wine rm, entertainment area featuring a wet bar, separate dining rm,a theatre inspired lounge area plus patios & decks off public rooms. Private lane close to 280/101/SF.

Here’s why Wendie sent this in:

Something about this house seems to scream “Winchester’ to me! Maybe its the “boat” bed. Clearly, that is an adult version of….what? The toddler race car bed that every 3 year old boy in America has?  But clearly, this is not for a little boy. Who would even THINK to want to sleep in that weird bed?

And then the wine cellar…seems very unorganized..no rhyme or reason to it…..and why would the realtor take a photo of the front hall with THE FRONT DOOR OPEN?

Shut the damn door so we can see the entire room!!

Moving onto the kitchen…its huge with an equally large island in the middle…yet NO overhang of the granite so you can put some chairs there and eat at the island. Why not?

And last but not least, what’s up with the backyard? How many separate areas can there be?

Seems like the perfect house for 3 or 4 separate families who never want to bump into one another….

British publication Financial Times visits Cupertino and discovers Silicon Valley startups and salons… in a very expensive frat house.

Over the rainbow

Communal living is back in vogue, especially among Silicon Valley’s young technology workers

By April Dembosky, June 29, 2012 6:52 pm

At first glance Rainbow Mansion appears to blend in seamlessly alongside its high-end Silicon Valley neighbours, nestled among the eucalyptus trees and driveway gates of Cupertino, about an hour south of San Francisco. The salmon stucco stretches around multiple bedrooms, balconies and turrets. In the front yard, a stone footbridge arches over a bubbling koi pond.

Inside, it looks more like a university dorm. Bean bags and mismatched couches sit at odd angles in the living room. A former dining nook, now christened “the mystery room”, is lined with hippie-style Indian tapestries on the walls and mattresses on the floor.

Seven people live here, from the ivy league of Silicon Valley companies, such as Apple, Google and Tesla. They are from America, the UK, Serbia and Moldova. While none are blood related, they call each other family.

“We’re not a frat house,” says Mike Grace, 26, a lab manager and researcher at Nasa. “We’re an intentional community.”

Excuse us.  A very expensive intentional community.  As in $7300 a month expensive.  Let’s see what they get for $7300, besides the built-in tech networking with their housemates.

21677 Rainbow Dr
Cupertino, CA 95014

Zestimate $2,509,411
Rent Zestimate $7,435/mo
Est. Mortgage $8,923/mo

Beds: 6
Baths: 4.5
Sqft: 5,127
Lot: 55,321 sq ft / 1.27 acres
Type: Single Family
Year built: 1992

Description from Zillow: This 5127 square foot single family home has 6 bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms. It is located at 21677 Rainbow Dr Cupertino, California. The nearest schools are Regnart Elementary School, Kennedy Middle School and Monta Vista High School.

Wow, that rent Zestimate’s pretty bang on. Think Zillow’s model includes searching the Financial Times?

Incidentally, the people renting the house have set up a website.  Note the third item on the ribbon: Press.  Several pieces have been written about this house, the sort of people who end up living here, and one the the successes launched from this very library.

Ever hear of OpenStack?  If you haven’t, Wired is happy to fix that, with its history of how it got started.  Yes, here at the Rainbow Mansion.  Oh yeah, and at NASA Ames.

NASA’s Chris Kemp decided that they needed scalable storage of their own rather than through their corporate partners.  Think Google Moon and Google Mars.  NASA has plenty of high-res space images, and they wanted to host them, but that meant they needed a new infrastructure.  And in bringing that project about, they not only crashed upon political shoals (a Congressional “inquiry”) but on the difficulty in creating open-source software when so many potential partners had commercial intents.  And eventually the project led to OpenStack… and several related cloud computing companies.

The founders of the group home explained that they started the house because Silicon Valley rents were high, so sharing a house was much less expensive.  Most of them were new NASA PhDs who came from elsewhere and knew each other through their academic connections.

People would leave, and new housemates needed to be brought in.  The residents are looking for people who want to change the world.

“Group living situations are not tremendously rare in the Bay Area,” he explains. “We have an unusually high percentage of rentals in part of because home buying is so tremendously expensive, and the leverage goes up as you get more people.

“What’s unusual is when you have a really intentional community, when you have a group of people who are determined to build something and really bring people together.”

A little less than a year ago we found an agent website listing ten big, expensive properties in the Real Bay Area (well, most of them were in the RBA). We dug in deep to see how the very high end market was doing as it began the fourth year of a prolonged economic slowdown.  Burbed reader Robert Dow recently sent in a Los Altos Hills luxe listing, and sure enough, it was one of the ten featured fabulous freeholds.  So let’s dwell on these digs in more detail.  To the Batmobile!

27040 Old Trace Lane
Los Altos Hills, CA 94022
$19,880,000

6 beds
7 baths
14855 sqft
3 acres
1990 built
30 days on site
MLS# 81227454
Walk Score™ 23

Spectacular Estate situated on a Private Country Lane 3.39 acres (per prelim) Main House w/dramatic entrance salon, Library/Office, Family/Game Room, Theatre, Gentleman’s Bar, Exercise Room, Wine Cellar, Indoor Exercise Pool, attached 8-Car Garage, Generator, Well for irrigation. 2bd/2ba Guest House,Tennis Court pool and elevated spa; Terrace w/outdoor fireplace; firepit . Palo Alto schools

Here’s what Robert had to say when bringing this gem to our attention.

Saw this listing for a $19,880,000 home for sale. No idea if this a reasonable price, but the house is pretty spectacular. Is this the kind of listing you’re looking for or is there some other set of criteria? Thanks.

Who wants to tell Robert what the criteria are for a home to be featured on Burbed?  There are so many ways for RBA realty to win the Internet!  For example, this one’s got a MAWBUL KAWLUM even on the guest house porch!  And check out this “library,” where books are under glass.

Like any big, expensive, and mutli-acred mansion, it has a Virtual Tour.  Unlike most of them, it also has a Gentleman’s Bar (unclear if the strippers are included, consult agent for details before writing offer).  But most importantly, it has a history, although you’d never know that if you used the Estately page.

Fortunately, when we reviewed the Astonishing Webpage we filled in all those price reductions, so there’s not much more to add.  And Zillow has it all, anyway, even if Redfin and Estately used the memory hole (as well as the seller request to not link to its Zestimate of $17,227,396)

Listed: 3/17/2008 at $25,000,000
Price Increased: 4/26/2008 to $28,950,000 (+16%)
Price Reduced: 5/22/2008 to $25,000,000 (-13.6%)
Listing canceled: 9/20/2008
Relisted: 8/30/2010 – 12/27/2010 at $24,950,000 (-0.2%)
Relisted: 2/1/2011 – 7/11/2011 at $20,500,000 (-17.8%)
Relisted: 7/22/2012 at $19,880,000 (-3.0%)

Oh, about that Zestimate.  It’s 13.3% below today’s list price, which disappoints us.  We had a theory that the Zestimate for any large, custom, hard-to-price estate like this would be exactly 15% lower than the current asking price (and if you don’t believe us, go back to the Astonishing Webpage and check all ten of them).

Anyway, the hapless seller has been chasing the market down for more than FOUR YEARS.  At what point will their price cutting finally hit the market bouncing back up?  They have to get lucky this year, there’s a couple of 8s in the price now! Oh, wait.  Facebook isn’t going to save the RBA after all.  Never mind.

Let’s continue our trip up and down the housing food chain.  Earlier this week we had a genuine crapbox.  Yesterday we had a mid-priced property in a neighborhood without a name (and it really says something for the Silicon Valley housing market that a million dollar property in an unremarkable part of San Jose is considered mid-priced at a million dollars).

Today we’re back to another Burbed favorite: the non-moving high end.  Thanks very much to Burbed reader Petsmart Groomer for this lovely landscape in Los Altos Hills.

12859 NORMANDY Ln
Los Altos Hills, CA 94022
$6,195,000

BEDS:  6
BATHS:  6.5
SQ. FT.:  7,333
$/SQ. FT.:  $845
HOA DUES:  $300/month
LOT SIZE:  1.21 Acres
PROPERTY TYPE: Detached Single Family
STORIES: 3
VIEW: Neighborhood
YEAR BUILT:  2005
COMMUNITY:  Los Altos Hills
COUNTY:  Santa Clara
MLS#:  81216432
SOURCE:  MLSListings
STATUS: Active
ON REDFIN:  90 days

This stunning custom home is a masterpiece of East Coast-influenced architecture. The main residence features, 5BR/5.5BA + wkout rm (could be 6th BR), private office, a Media rm, large recreation rm & sep wine cell. Darling 1BR/1BA gst hs. Gorgeous landscaped grounds w/ sparkling pool/spa, exceptional terrace w/ fireplace, outdoor kit. & fountain. Detached 3-car gar w/ large workrm. Close in location

Other than the mildly radioactive trees on the grounds, this housing tumor photographed nicely.  There is the matter of the $300 homeowner’s association fees, not something one expects with a six million dollar property. 

Wonder just what the Normandy Lane Association gives you for the privilege?  Maybe they send someone over every month to spray paint the sod this exact shade of green not otherwise found even on a golf course.

And the reason PG sent it in?  Location, location, location!

You’ve heard of eBay, right?  If you have something to sell, you can put a picture or five of your item on eBay and wait for the overbids to start racking up.  But sometimes, you just want to have the silly thing sold without the annoyance of setting a minimum bid or being sued for someone sniping someone else’s bid, or finding out your high bidder is expecting you to ship 100 jigsaw puzzles to Estonia for the $8 shipping fee you cleverly padded onto the final asking price.

We’ve covered houses going up for auction before, but this is the first one we’ve seen with another eBay feature.  Thanks very much to Michael Boltonestater for this wonderful wealthsink in Woodside.

320 HARCROSS Rd
Woodside, CA 94062
$12,950,000

BEDS: 7
BATHS: 8
SQ. FT.: 10,010
$/SQ. FT.: $1,294
LOT SIZE: 5 Acres
PROPERTY TYPE: Detached Single Family
STYLE: French
STORIES: 3
VIEW: Bay, Neighborhood
YEAR BUILT: 1929
COMMUNITY: Woodside Hills
COUNTY: San Mateo
MLS#: 81124548
SOURCE: MLSListings
STATUS: Active
ON REDFIN: 383 days

AUCTION June 14 Starting Bid $7.9M Buy It Now for $12,950M “Le Soleil” a spectacular, c1920′s French Chateau, majestically set on 5+/- acres of exquisitely-landscaped grounds within sought-after-Woodside in the heart of Silicon Valley. Restored and renovated w/ modern amenities the estate features 7BDS, 7BATHS expansive terraces, tennis court, pool/spa and vineyards. Near 2 international airports

Yes, you did read that correctly.  “Buy it now for $12,950M”  Funny, “Mary & Brent” doesn’t sound particularly French.

But the price in the listing copy isn’t the only thing French about “Le Soleil.”  Because it’s just as French to not particularly care if the auction went ahead last week, or got delayed until October.  Remember, the French word for mañana is lendemain, but it doesn’t have quite the same sense of urgency.

This has got to be the first “Was $21M” house we’ve ever seen with postage-stamp-sized MLS photos.  Every single exterior shot is under 200 pixels.  Maybe they are postage stamps and we’ll be seeing them on wedding invitations all summer.

As to real property that you can Buy it Now on eBay?  Here’s something we swear we are not making up.

Okay, you can put this one on your American Express card, but is it near 2 International airports?