Cole Valley: Gov. Newsom's childhood home sells for $5.85M

A two-bedroom, redwood-shingled house at 1284 Stanyan St. in San Francisco’s Cole Valley neighborhood, where Gov. Gavin Newsom lived as a child in the late 1960s, sold for $5.85 million last month, according to the SF Standard. The sale closed in late October after 14 days on the market and drew multiple all-cash offers, more than $1.3 million above its $4.5 million list price.

Why it matters

This is not a development story, it is a data point on the top end of San Francisco’s resale market. A house under 1,500 square feet on two lots totaling nearly 10,000 square feet closing at more than $4,000 per square foot, with multiple cash offers inside two weeks, is a read on how little premium inventory now exists in Cole Valley and similar west-side neighborhoods. Brokers and investors tracking San Francisco’s luxury resale recovery can treat the sale price and the bidding speed as a current comparable, separate from whatever attention the Newsom connection draws to the listing.

The numbers

The home last traded in 2019 for $2.8 million, meaning the October sale closed at more than double that price. It changed hands again off-market within the family in the years between, though no price from that transfer was disclosed. The buyer is listed as the Sutro Trust, represented by Frank Nolan of Vanguard Properties; the sellers were represented by John DiDomenico of Compass. Built in 1951 and clad in redwood since 1979, the house carries two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a separate studio and a Japanese soaking tub, with kitchen, bathroom and closet renovations permitted by the city in 2020. For comparison, a 65-foot-wide Cole Valley-area lot with approved plans sold for $5.75 million in April 2026, and a new home on nearby Belgrave Avenue sold for $22 million in 2019.

Newsom’s maternal grandfather, horticulturalist Arthur Menzies, originally owned the property and gave it to his daughter; Newsom lived there with his parents and sister before his parents’ 1972 divorce, after which his mother sold the house. Newsom has no ownership stake in the current transaction.

What’s next

No further listings tied to the property are pending. The sale is one more entry for anyone tracking San Francisco comparables in the sub-$6 million, west-side single-family segment heading into year-end, where thin inventory has kept bidding competitive even outside the city’s marquee luxury corridors.