CEO sells luxury home for $15 million loss three years after purchase

Leslie Stretch, CEO of customer experience software company Medallia, took the 50 per cent haircut last month after paying $30 million for the four-bedroom, eight-bathroom house at 2626 Larkin St in trendy Russian Hill in January 2020, The Real Deal reported.

Stretch has been slashing the price on the 1000sq/m abode — which features a five-car garage, guest apartment and roof deck — almost immediately after making the purchase, the New York Post reports.

In May 2020, he put the house back on the market for $28 million, per its listing.

After another two months, the price was reduced again to $23 million.

It has languished ever since until an unidentified buyer scooped it up at the discounted price of $15 million in early November.

The Post has sought comment from the property’s listing agent, Compass’s Nina Hatvany, and its previous owner, Stretch.

The steep price cut was first noted on X by real-estate investor and San Francisco resident Rohin Dahar.

The house, which was assessed at a total value of $32 million, comes with a media room, wine room and elevator that services all six floors.

It also boasts a floating helix-shaped limestone staircase circling a three-storey Venetian glass light fixture rumoured to be worth $1.5 million, per The Real Deal.

When Stretch bought the swanky home, he paid a whopping 627 per cent premium, the home’s Zillow listing showed.

The prior owner of 2626 Larkin St. paid $4.158 million for the property in 2007.

The sale comes as crime in Russian Hill has ticked higher so far in 2023, with 839 total incidents ranging from burglaries to larceny thefts and drug offences, according to records from the San Francisco Police Department — up from 806 total incidents in 2022.

In recent months, San Francisco’s historic hotels have been converted into roach-infested “Single-Room Occupancy” housing for vagrants as the city has become the poster child for the deteriorating housing market.

Many of the century-old buildings in the Tenderloin neighbourhood are now overrun with drug-addled “zombies” high on fentanyl and the flesh-eating animal tranquilliser dubbed “tranq,” residents told The Post during a tour in August.

“It’s like living in a prison, but worse,” Robert Blackburn said of his squalid room in one of Tenderloin’s SROs at the time.

A recent report by real estate brokerage Redfin revealed that homeowners in San Francisco looking to sell in the troubled city are a whopping four times more likely than the average US home seller to take a loss.

Roughly 12.3 per cent — or one in eight — of the homes sold in the Bay Area during the three months ended July 31 was purchased for less than the seller bought it for, Redfin found.

On average, San Franciscans can expect to sell their homes in the embattled city for $154,000 less than they paid for it.

This article originally appeared on the New York Post and was reproduced with permission.