{"id":489164,"date":"2026-10-08T12:08:36","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T12:08:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/489164\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T12:08:36","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T12:08:36","slug":"inside-a-20000-square-foot-duboce-park-compound-that-finally-found-a-buyer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/489164\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside a 20,000-square-foot Duboce Park compound that finally found a buyer"},"content":{"rendered":"

The vine-covered exterior of 67-69 Belcher near Duboce Park | Source: Emily Landes\/ The Standard<\/p>\n

Is it possible to have too much space in San Francisco? It\u2019s one thing to read a listing touting nearly 20,000 square feet in one of the city\u2019s most desirable neighborhoods. It\u2019s quite another to actually walk into the vine-covered former furniture factory at 67-69 Belcher St. between Duboce Park and the Castro.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Owner Howard Epstein, a City Real Estate agent, has seen the reality sink in dozens of times since listing the two-unit residential loft for sale for about $6.34 million in July 2025. The surge of initial interest led him to raise the price to almost $7 million that September.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people had a lot of interesting ideas,\u201d he said, including numerous startup founders and VCs<\/a>. \u201cOnce they\u2019re inside and they spend some time there, it\u2019s just daunting. People don\u2019t realize what 20,000 square feet looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n

For context, it\u2019s the equivalent of about four NBA courts, seven tennis courts, or one-and-a-half Olympic-size swimming pools.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AThe arched living room ceiling is 20 feet high. | Source: Courtesy Howard Epstein<\/p>\n

It took a year of regular showings, during which he got just one low-ball offer, before the right buyers finally walked in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was never really a price issue,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was just finding the person who didn\u2019t shy away from the sheer amount of work required.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The property sold Sept. 25\u00a0 for nearly $6.8 million to Paul Mercer, one of the early innovators of the iPod, and his wife, Elizabeth McEnroe, a 20-year veteran of Apple, according to public records.<\/p>\n

Mercer was an early Apple employee who left in 1994 to start his own software firm, Pixo. In 2001, Apple used Pixo\u2019s software to upgrade the user interface for its signature music player, and two years later Pixo was acquired by Sun Microsystems. Mercer\u2019s next company, Inventor, was acquired by Palm in 2007.<\/p>\n

The couple declined to comment on the purchase of the two, two-floor buildings, each with about 10,000 square feet, 20-foot ceilings, and a large garage. They were represented by Justin Goldberg at Compass. He declined to confirm his clients\u2019 identities but said the all-cash purchase came quickly after about six years looking for investment opportunities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"TallFrom the outside, it\u2019s hard to tell that the property is a two-unit residence. | Source: Emily Landes\/ The Standard\"AThe patio at 67 Belcher has a basketball court and a hot tub. | Source: Courtesy Howard Epstein<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve been looking throughout the whole city for something unique like this. They weren\u2019t planning to acquire this much square footage for this price point,\u201d Goldberg said, adding that the prime neighborhood sealed the deal.<\/p>\n

After a year on the market, the deal happened so quickly that Epstein is still trying to figure out what to do with all the construction material and equipment he keeps in one of the units, which he had been pitching in his listing notes as usable for everything from classic car storage to an indoor pickleball court.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The other unit is built out with six bedrooms and five bathrooms and is rented to one master tenant paying $12,500 a month, with six friends as subtenants.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou definitely need roommates, that\u2019s for sure,\u201d Epstein said of filling up the space, which also has a patio with a hot tub and outdoor basketball court.<\/p>\n

What comes next is an open question. There have been several plans for the property since the warehouse was rezoned residential in the 1980s by artists and partners Spaulding Taylor and Winfred Ng, who owned the Taylor & Ng department store.<\/p>\n

Ng died in 1991, before building out his side of the property. Epstein and his construction partners bought the buildings for $4.9 million in 2021 and spent years entitling it for a 31-unit condo development, designed by Stanley Saitowitz.<\/p>\n

\"AOne of the six bedrooms, with a lofted sleeping area above a work space. | Source: Courtesy Howard Epstein<\/p>\n

By the time it was greenlit, the project no longer made economic sense given the cost and interest rate increases. Epstein and his partners listed the property, figuring they could always pull it off the market if interest rates came down; instead they went up, but so did the overall enthusiasm of San Francisco buyers and developers.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe there\u2019s somebody else that has a better game plan than we have,\u201d Epstein said.<\/p>\n

Goldberg said his clients\u2019 purchase is too new for much of a game plan to have developed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re very open to the possibilities,\u201d he said. \u201cFor them, it was a really nice discretionary purchase.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The vine-covered exterior of 67-69 Belcher near Duboce Park | Source: Emily Landes\/ The Standard Is it possible…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[9578,1337,13781,35036,388,11853,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-489164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-home-listing","tag-housing-development","tag-luxury-real-estate","tag-mansions","tag-real-estate","tag-residential-real-estate","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}