Softbank CEO buys Silicon Valley residence for a record $117 million - media outlet

It was recently reported that a home in Woodside, California has been sold for a staggering $117.5 million. This nine-acre estate passed into new hands last November, according to the county, and was never officially put up for sale.

Some people, including me, suspected that a mistake in the public records in entering the figure resulted in such an unprecedented amount. After all, how could this house be valued higher than another - the 92-acre Flood estate, valued at a mere $85 million? After thorough investigations, it turned out that the $117.5 million figure was indeed correct, according to several sources. But the media outlets that first reported on the sale made a slight inaccuracy: it was not the second most expensive salehomes in U.S. history, and the most expensive so far.

The seller turned out to be Tully Friedman, an executive at Friedman, Fleischer and Lowe, a San Francisco-based firm. The buyer, on the other hand, turned out to be SV Project LLC, a so-called shutter - a person associated with a Los Angeles-based law firm used to protect the buyer's information. Though the buyer's identity has not been confirmed, several Silicon Valley sources say an Asian billionaire may have been involved in the purchase.

Update:

Supporting this speculation, the Los Angeles Times claims that the secret buyer is Japan's second richest man, Masayoshi Son. Forbes estimates his fortune at $7.2 billion. Son is the head of telecommunications company Softbank,which recently announced the purchase of a 70% stake in Sprint Nextel for $20.1 billion.

While the identity of the buyer is still in question, information about the sale itself is being recorded: $117.5 million, the highest price recorded in the history of single-family home sales in the United States. It surpassed billionaire Yuri Milner's $100 million purchase of a Los Altos Hills home in 2011 - then considered the most expensive single-family sale in the United States. It also surpassed billionaire Ron Baron's $103 million purchase of a 40-acre parcel of land in East Hampton, N.Y., in 2007.

The deal is nevertheless causing embarrassment as some media outlets dubbed it the second most expensive home sale in U.S. history during the lastweeks. Some are wondering if the purchase of the Broken Om Ranch agricultural industry by another billionaire, Stan Kronke, suddenly also went for a higher price.

Situated on a hill overlooking the Woodside Mountains, the price includes a neoclassical style homeof approximately 9,000 square feet, a swimming pool with a constructed chapel of approximately 1,100 square feet, a separate library, a recreation building, a swimming pool, a tennis court and formal gardens. "Reflecting the strong Palladian tradition in the United States, the house was planned using ascending elements and dependencies and features a double volume, elliptical garden room," says the website of architect Allan Greenberg, an East Coast-based architect who designed and completed the house in 2005.

The vast majority of the neighborhood's residents are tech billionaires such as Gordon Moore, Jeffrey Skoll, John Doerr and perhaps the most famous - Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison, is claimed to have spent more than $200millions to build his luxury Japanese-style villa in Woodside.

According to Forbes for 2012, Woodside ranks as the 22nd most expensive zip code, with the average price of a home in the neighborhood at a sizable $3,074,909, a 33% increase from 2011. The last time this home changed ownership was in 1997 for the relatively low figure of $8 million. In other words, in nearly 15 years, including the millions of dollars spent on construction, this property has appreciated in value by more than 1,300% - despite the economic downturn.

"The real estate market in Silicon Valley continues to grow, and is strongly influenced by active hiring, increased investment by Chinese investors and strong financial performance by tech companies like Google,LinkedIn and Facebook," says Ken Dillon of Deleon Realty, a real estate company that handles the largest transactions in Silicon Valley. "While we won't see as strong an increase as we did in 2012, when the average property value in Palo Alto rose more than 20 percent, the big deals will continue this year, mostly in the $40 million to $60 million segment. But the $117.5 million sale will remain a standout case, similar to the $88 million sale of a penthouse at 15 Central Park West in New York City's East Coast. Judging by that deal, some sellers may raise their prices, hoping to use it as a comparable example in the future. Other expensive U.S. homes approaching the $100 million bar include the $95 million Maison De L'Amitie, purchased by theby Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev in Palm Beach, Florida, the sale of two penthouses for more than $90 million in the One57 building in New York City, and Gary Winnick's $94 million purchase of the Weber Mansion in Los Angeles (more than a decade ago). There have also been several home sales of $80 million or more in recent years, including the sale of an $88 million penthouse and the purchase of an $85 million home in Los Angeles in 2011. This month also saw a record sale in southern California's Malibu for $75 million when billionaire executive Howard Marks sold his waterfront villa to Russian billionaires.