Less than a year after selling at a discount, crooner Bing Crosby’s former Hillsborough estate is back on the market with a few million dollars in upgrades.
The French chateau-style property at 1200 Armsby Drive sold in June 2025 for $25 million, after it was initially listed at $40 million. Now the estate has been relisted following what its current owners describe as an extensive renovation.
Sellers Mehrdad and Neda Elie spent about eight months and roughly $3 million updating the property, according to listing agent Jenn Gilson of Golden Gate Sotheby’s International Realty.
Mehrdad Elie, founder of the real estate investment firm ElieCorp, told the Wall Street Journal this week that the work included about $400,000 in landscaping and the installation of a new swimming pool, replacing one Crosby had previously filled in.
The home is being marketed at $28.995 million, according to the current listing.
The estate sits in Lower North Hillsborough, one of the Peninsula’s most exclusive enclaves, and was built in 1929. Listing materials describe the residence as having about 13,635 square feet of finished living space, or 18,535 square feet in total, with 11 bedrooms, 10 full bathrooms and five half-bathrooms across four levels.
The property was designed by architects John Bakewell Jr. and Ernest Weihe, whose work includes San Francisco City Hall, and built for businessman Lindsay Howard, the son of Charles Howard, the owner of the racehorse Seabiscuit.
Crosby bought the estate in the 1960s and lived there until he died in 1977.
A pioneering multimedia entertainer, he built a career that spanned radio, film and music, appearing in more than 70 feature films and recording over 1,600 songs.
A Washington state native, he began performing in the 1920s with bands and vocal groups before moving to California and rising to national fame. He launched his radio program, “15 Minutes with Bing Crosby,” in 1931 and soon transitioned into film.
Over his career, Crosby received numerous honors, including a Peabody Award, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and the Golden Globe’s Cecil B. DeMille Award.
The home remained in his family for decades and was listed for sale after the death of his widow, Kathryn Grant Crosby, in 2024.
Among the details highlighted in the marketing is a paneled library known as “Bing’s Den,” a smoking room with a built-in bar and several antiques from the collection of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, including a 17th century wooden staircase banister and antique wood paneling.