No Mega-Home on Flat Walkstreet

We can now report what we had been hearing whispers of for a while – that proposed double-lot project on the South End walkstreet has been scrapped.

Instead of one mega-home (5br/6ba, 8000 sq. ft.) with a pool (see artist's rendering), the 2 lots at 412 8th and 416 8th will be developed separately into 2 new homes. (Links go to the new listings on Redfin; no sketches or pics yet.)

That's a victory for those who thought the scale of the first proposal was out of whack.

The listing for the mega-home once urged buyers to:

Imagine the luxury of a Manhattan Beach Hill Section sized home just steps to the ocean.

MBC was not alone in finding that awkward. As we said in "2 Are Better Than 1":

We're imagining it, and we're thinking: There goes the neighborhood.

Don't Hill Section homes belong in the Hill Section? Isn't that what it's for?

After 10 months on market with no takers, it appears that the market took the same viewpoint.

Not incidentally, one of the very biggest homes on the Hill, 814 10th, is currently in escrow with a last list price of $6.995m. (Listing can be viewed while in "backup offer" status.) We'd bet that one closes with a 6 in front, but nowhere near the $8.5m proposed for 412 8th as a double-lot mega-home. That Hillie has 9,000 sq. ft. and the lot is 12,000, so the flatland option on 8th was looking far out of line.

The two new spec homes begin at $3.95m each for 5br/5ba, and 4000+ sq. ft. One will be Cape Cod and one will be a "European Villa" (no reference to Tuscany – yet). This is before ground is broken.

You don't often see spec homes or new construction hitting the open market in the South End walkstreets, but there is a new option starting this week.

440 6th is new, comfortably large (6br/6ba, 4200 sq. ft.) on a corner lot at Ingleside.

Its public debut is Sunday and we'll be featuring it in greater detail before then.

Meantime, note that start price: $4.495m, a half-mil above the new, but not-yet-begun, homes on 8th.