Colorful houses line a steep street surrounded by dense trees and greenery, overlooking a sprawling urban area with hills in the background under a clear blue sky.
SSan Francisco

Gavin Newsom’s childhood home sells for close to $4,000 a square foot

  • October 27, 2026

The wooded upper Cole Valley home across from Sutro Forest where Gov. Gavin Newsom toddled around as a tot has sold for more than $4,000 per square foot. 

The two-bedroom, two-bath, redwood-shingled home is smaller than 1,500 square feet but sits on two lots that are nearly 10,000 square feet combined. There’s a separate studio and a Japanese soaking tub. One of those underdeveloped parcels opens onto Belgrave Avenue, where a new home fetched $22 million in 2019, and a 65-foot-wide-lot with approved plans sold in April for $5.75 million.

“The Newsom connection got a lot of eyes on the property initially, but ultimately the value component and upside rested in the land and its potential,” said listing agent John DiDomenico of Compass. 

The property received multiple all-cash offers after it listed for $4.5 million in early October and closed for $5.85 million a mere 14 days later. Frank Nolan of Vanguard Properties, who represented the buyer, the Sutro Trust, did not reply to a request for comment. 

A dense cluster of trees surrounds several houses in a leafy neighborhood, with winding paths and greenery connecting the residential area.Source: Courtesy Compass

The seller has lived in the home since 2019 but purchased it in an off-market “intra-family sale” six years later, DiDomenico said.

The fact that the property sold last week for more than double its 2019 price of $2.8 million and nearly $2 million more than the in-family transfer just last year shows not only that the city is at an all-time pricing high, DiDomenico said, but that there is “significant confidence” that values will continue to climb in the months ahead. 

A cozy bedroom with a wooden beamed ceiling, large windows showing trees outside, a bed with white linens, and two cushioned chairs.Source: Courtesy CompassA modern bathroom has a walk-in glass shower with white brick tiles, an illuminated round mirror, a red vanity with a sink, and a green plant on the counter.Source: Courtesy Compass

The seller in 2020 remodeled the kitchen, both bathrooms, and the upstairs primary closet, according to city permit records, as well as removing a wood-burning fireplace, chimney, and lots of wood siding in the living room. So the current iteration of the 1951 home looks very different from when Newsom lived there in the late 1960s with his parents, sister, and first pet, Potter the Otter, who, the governor has said, (opens in new tab) slept curled up in his childhood bed. 

After Newsom’s parents divorced in 1972, his mother sold the home that same year, according to information available via public records preserved by the office of the assessor-recorder. 

The home was originally owned by Newsom’s maternal grandfather (opens in new tab), Arthur Menzies, who was a horticulturalist at the San Francisco Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park. He appears to have given it to his daughter and moved to a home in Stinson Beach before his death in 1973. A native plant garden in the botanical garden is named in his honor. 

A cozy wooden room with two cushioned chairs, a wooden table holding a lamp, an open book, and a black notebook, with large windows showing greenery outside.Source: Courtesy CompassA round wooden hot tub steaming with water sits outdoors near a wooden cabin, surrounded by lush green trees under a blue sky with white clouds.Source: Courtesy CompassA narrow stone path winds through dense greenery and trees toward a house with red window frames, alongside a wooden fence bathed in sunlight.Source: Courtesy Compass

The owners who bought it from Newsom’s mother added the redwood cladding, harvested from Marin, in 1979 and lived there for more than four decades. Their son “looked like a clone of a younger Gavin” in his early years, the previous listing agent, Dan Slaughter, told SFGate (opens in new tab) when the property last hit the market in 2019. The governor’s father, William Newsom, saw the likeness as well, telling the family, “There must be something in the water,” whenever they ran into him at Balboa Cafe, Slaughter relayed.

As Newsom wraps up his second term as governor, he and wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom bought a $9 million home in Marin and listed their home just outside Sacramento for $7.5 million in August. Newsom’s home in the unincorporated Sacramento suburb of Fair Oaks is still on the market and would set a neighborhood record if it sells for anything close to the asking price.