Scott McNeely finds buyer for Portola Valley home for $35 million

Tech billionaire Scott McNally has finally found a buyer for his 13-acre Portola Valley estate—complete with golf course and ice skating rink—after more than five years on and off the market.

Listed in June 2018 at nearly $100 million, the home recently went on the market for $54 million and sold for $35 million on July 18, according to public records. Among the biggest deals in the Bay Area housing market so far this year.

Stanley Lowe of Greenbanker Real Estate last held the listing, and did not respond to a request for comment on what appears to have been an off-market sale.

According to public records, the buyer was Zenith Path. The address listed for the LLC is the same as You Investments, a multifamily office and business management company based in New York City that looks to an international clientele based on its website.

McNally and his wife, Susan, built the five-bedroom, 7.5-bath home at 610 Los Trancos Road in 2008. According to a previous SF Gate story, construction cost $11 million.

The 13-acre lot gave the Sun Microsystems founder and former CEO plenty of room for all of his family’s hobbies, including a 110-yard practice golf course, an ice hockey rink, a rock-climbing wall and a tennis pavilion. Interior spaces add up to more than 21,000 square feet, including a 4,000-square-foot guest suite.

The previous listing agent, Deepi Chitta, told CNBC after the $42 million price tag in 2020 that the McNeiles didn’t get serious about selling the house until their sons came out this year.

“The home was originally put on the market with an attractive list price that reflected the McNeese’s desire to maximize the return on their real estate investment but not a strong desire to sell while their children were still in school,” he said at the time. “Now that their children have moved out and the McNeils will want to move, the price has adjusted.”

According to CNBC, Cheetah is now with Intro but was then with Rex, a real estate listing service and lender where McNally served on the advisory board at the time.

San Mateo County has sold more than $10 million so far this year, according to Compass Data. The Peninsula saw 32 sales at that price point through July 15, while San Francisco had 12 and Santa Clara County 11. The “Stanford Circle,” which also includes Portola Valley, posted more than $10 million in sales in its second quarter last year. The median home price in the circle crossed the $14.1 million mark in the second quarter, the highest in two years.

So far this year the average annual price in Portola Valley/Woodside is just under $4 million, while Atherton is more than double that at $9.5 million. The nation’s most expensive zip code has seen more than $20 million worth of deals this year, including GAP founder Doris Fisher’s $48 million sale of two parcels of her longtime estate. The biggest deals in the region so far this year are Lorraine Powell Jobs’ record-breaking $70 million purchase of Pacific Heights home in San Francisco and Icon Capital’s $54 million purchase of Woodside.

At $35 million, the McNally home now ranks fourth with Woodside sales since earlier this summer.