Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly a homeowner.
The 26-year-old multibillionaire has reportedly purchased a five-bedroom house in Palo Alto, Calif., just 10 minutes from Facebook’s new 22-acre corporate campus in neighboring Menlo Park, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
"Everything on that transaction (is) pretty hush-hush. He didn’t even buy it in his name," Dawn Thomas, broker associate with Intero Real Estate Services in Los Altos, Calif., told Inman News. Intero Real Estate did not handle the transaction, Thomas said.
She noted that, though Zuckerberg didn’t use the same agent, Zuckerberg’s parents were recently in the market and purchased a home through Keller Williams Realty in Palo Alto — the same brokerage that handled the sale of a $100 million Los Altos Hills mansion to Russian billionaire and Facebook investor Yuri Milner.
"That $100 million sale was far more publicized than (Zuckerberg’s purchase)," Thomas said. "I don’t blame him, he’s got people showing up at his doorstep where he currently lives."
Unconfirmed reports, including the Mercury News article and a post at the Real Estalker blog, indicate Zuckerberg purchased a $7 million property in a northern Palo Alto neighborhood near University Avenue.
The two-story, 5,500-square-foot-plus home identified in the Real Estalker blog post was originally built by a local pioneer in the mid-1800s as a Victorian cottage, according to a history of that home posted online by Alain Pinel Realtors. That brokerage declined to confirm whether Zuckerberg was the buyer of that home.
In the early 1900s the home was reportedly rebuilt. Successive owners expanded the home. The home was previously purchased in April 2006. The current occupants renovated the landscaping extensively, including the addition of a saltwater swimming pool, spa, outdoor gazebo with wood?burning fireplace, and carport.
The house exhibits "a stunning blend of early Colonial Revival and Craftsmanship architecture," according to the history. The home also includes a "spacious" porch, a music alcove, and a glassed-in sunroom, according to the Mercury News.
"Set back and shielded from the street by a wall and trees, the new home certainly offers more privacy than Zuckerberg’s current address," the paper said.
Price history information from PropertyShark shows the neighborhood’s median sold price in 2010 was $2.7 million, with a median square footage of 2,790. In 2009, the home identified in the blog post had a total assessed value above $4 million.
The Mercury News declined to reveal the address of the home for privacy reasons. Zuckerberg, the subject of the award-winning film "The Social Network," filed a restraining order in January against a Milpitas man who was allegedly stalking him and showed up at the Palo Alto home he is currently renting. At one point, the man reportedly left a note stating, "I am ready to die for you, please, Mark, please," the paper said.
Zuckerberg is not expected to move into his new home for several months, the Mercury News reported. Until now, the Silicon Valley celebrity has preferred to live in rentals he’s found on Craigslist. He moved into his current home at the end of last year — a five-bedroom, 3,800-square-foot rental near the Stanford University campus, down the street from Facebook headquarters.
Zuckerberg’s estimated net worth is $13.5 billion
