How About $150 Million for Triple-Lot Strand House?

It's already listed as the most expensive rental ever in the Manhattan Beach market.

212 The Strand (7br/12ba, 12,640 sqft.) spans what were once three lots along the golden South End of The Strand in Manhattan Beach. (Click the address for more details and photos. The current rental is listed by Eric Fonoimoana of Compass.)

And over the past few weeks, they've been asking $120,000/mo. to rent the home for a 12 month period or greater.

UPDATE: The first offering at $120K/mo. was snapped up, apparently for a short-term rental, at $135K/mo. However, the property remains listed for lease. The new price on the listing referenced above is $130K/mo.

But wait, there's more.

Now, the Wall Street Journal reports that the home is soon to be listed for sale at $150M. 

To spell that out: $150,000,000.

One. Hundred. Fifty. Million. Dollars.

That works out to $11,867/PSF, utterly destroying the previous high for PPSF among fully built, publicly listed homes along The Strand, which was $4,439/PSF on the $19.200M sale at 508 The Strand (5br/6ba, 4325 sqft.) in Oct. 2021. (See our post, "Manhattan Beach Strand Sales Hit Record Highs," from Dec. 2021.)

This home certainly has both scarcity and style going for it.

It's the first and last triple-lot home built on The Strand.

More than 14 years ago here on MBC, we wrote an appreciation of the home as it was just being completed (see "Big, Beautiful, Too Much?" from July 2009). We noted that it seemed to defy fears that had generated a "mansionization" debate in town, by being both pretty, and somewhat underbuilt.

Three consecutive Strand homes create a more imposing façade than this home, which features second-level open space – including a pool – with the home drawn back halfway on the lot.

Regardless, the city listened to residents and limited future lot mergers to two. Hence, 212 The Strand can't be built anywhere else again. 

Is it worth $150M?

How does one even begin to answer?

There are no comps in MB or really anywhere nearby, with the two top (public) Strand sales ever being the aforementioned 508 The Strand at $19.200M and 1000 The Strand at $21.000M.

Just this week, 1000 The Strand (10br/9ba, 5967 sqft.), a multi-unit property with recent remodeling, came to market again at a ceiling-raising $30.000M. Suddenly, instead of being the highest-priced listing in town, it's queued up to be asking just one-fifth the price of a Strand neighbor. (1000 The Strand is listed by Brett Zebrowski of Palm Realty Boutique, Inc.)

If it's The Strand you want, and an oversized home as well, you might also look at newly listed 3301 The Strand in Hermosa Beach, just a few blocks south. That double-lot 5br/4ba, 5150 sqft. modern (with pool!) is up at $20.700M. (Listed by Nicholas Schneider, Compass.)

The seller of 212 The Strand said to the WSJ: “There are properties in Malibu that have sold for over $150 million, $200 million... My personal opinion is, this house has everything those houses have to offer, and in some cases, more.”

The home is certainly the class of The Strand, with a surprising, general modesty to its overall look and feel. It costs extra to not look too opulent, and to keep the beachy vibe that Manhattan Beach treasures.

We've visited the home previously and enjoyed it greatly. We've never really had a beef with the place besides the fact that it has seemed criminally under-utilized. It seems like people are rarely there.

You go to all that effort to assemble 3 consecutive lots (at $13-$15M) and spend years designing your dream house, then spend up to $15M building it... don't you want to hang out there?

Maybe the next folks will?

--------------------------------------------------------

Want more Manhattan Beach real estate updates? Sign up now for our newsletter (~3x per week).