A six-bedroom home with its own private beach cove, overlooking Baker Beach and the Pacific Ocean in SF's tiny Sea Cliff neighborhood, is facing its second foreclosure in a year after failing to sell for the umpteenth time in the last decade.
The highly leveraged home at 224 Sea Cliff Avenue has liens and senior debt attached to its deed totaling about $17 million, as Socketsite explains. Various lenders have been trying to offload the house for years after its original buyer, disgraced SF real estate investor Luke Brugnara, took out multiple mortgages on it since he bought it in 2002. (Brugnara was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2015 for an art fraud scheme in which he apparently had $11 million in art delivered to the home's garage, and then refused to pay a dealer for it.)
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The house has hit the market multiple times, following its original foreclosure in 2012. A lender tried to sell it for $19.6 million in 2016, only to see it sit on the market. The price was reduced to $15 million in 2019, and then reduced further to $13.7 million before another foreclosure auction happened in mid-2020.
As Socketsite explains, a buyer at the auction appears to have "won" the house for a bid of $71,000, not fully understanding the size of the debt that the owner would have to assume. That trustee sale was then voided, and the house was relisted for sale last September for $17.5 million, and it has not sold. A Redfin listing page suggests the house is "ALL CLEANED UP" and the photo array features images of both empty rooms and CGI-staged rooms. "If you think you've seen this property before, you haven't!" the listing says, acknowledging how many times this thing has hit the market.
Anyway, the 1925-built home has an updated (ca. 2002) kitchen and stunning views, as well as a wine cellar, and a cliff-top patio with a private staircase down the cliff to a small private beach, otherwise accessible only by boat. It has six bedrooms and five full bathrooms, as well as two half baths, and totals 7,170 square feet.
Photos via MLS/Redfin
