Sea Cliff's record $20M house could be torn down and rebuilt

The house at 740 El Camino del Mar sits on the lip of the bluff above China Beach, a cream 1938 home on about a quarter acre with the Golden Gate filling its back windows. In June it sold off-market for $20 million, or $4,574 a square foot, a San Francisco record for a single-family home according to The San Francisco Standard. Sea Cliff's typical home was worth $5.57 million in October 2026, according to Houseberry's Sea Cliff price history. So one sale cost about 3.6 typical Sea Cliff houses.

Now the new owner wants to tear it down and build something bigger. City records we pulled show a filing accepted on October 27 to demolish the house and replace it with a three-story main home over a basement, an attached in-law unit and a two-car garage. Because the plan counts as two homes, it can use a state housing law that skips the Planning Commission, skips neighbor appeals and skips environmental review.

This is a story about who gets the fast lane. A 2023 state law written to speed up apartments may approve a rebuild of the priciest house per foot in the city, and we think that is fine.

What the city's records actually say

San Francisco's planning records list three files on this lot in 2026, and together they show a plan that was moving within days of the sale.

On June 29, the permit firm GBA opened a historic resource review, the step that asks whether a building is old or important enough to protect. The city closed it on September 8 as informational. On September 22, GBA opened a project review, a pre-application meeting with planners that is still listed as pending. On October 27, the city accepted the notice of intent, record 2026-009440PPS on the city's planning map.

The notice describes the job plainly. Demolish the one-unit house. Build a two-unit home, the main house plus an attached in-law unit, three stories over a basement on a sloped lot, with an attached two-car garage, a pool, a deck, terraced retaining walls and a redesigned driveway. The filing also says, in its own words, "This is not a development application." The full application, with the drawings and the unit count staff will test, comes later under state Government Code 65913.4.

SF YIMBY reported the architect is Richard Beard Architects, with a four-bedroom main house in lime plaster stucco under a slate roof with copper gutters. The Standard reported the buyer is a biotech chief executive, citing loan documents. The sellers, two doctors, had bought the house for $5.4 million in 2010.

One mismatch for anyone tracking this: the Standard's sale figure uses 4,372 square feet, and SF YIMBY's read of the plans puts the existing house at 4,800. Measured against the smaller number, the new main house is 75 percent bigger.

The building department has nothing new yet. As of November 2, the city's permit data shows no demolition or building permit filed for 740 El Camino del Mar. The last one, in 2017, replaced a front bedroom window.

Why one in-law unit changes the whole process

The law is SB 423, the 2023 extension of California's SB 35 streamlining rules. San Francisco falls under it because the city is behind on its state housing targets. In the city's version, a code-compliant project of two to nine homes gets a yes or no from staff, with no public hearing, no environmental review and no neighborhood notice, according to San Francisco Planning's SB 423 page. Projects of 150 homes or fewer get a 90-day review clock.

A single new house on this lot would normally run a different gauntlet. Neighbors get a mailed notice, and any one of them can ask the Planning Commission for a discretionary review hearing. On this block, people use that tool. In December 2018, a next-door neighbor's request sent a 200-square-foot deck extension at 610 El Camino del Mar to a commission hearing, the staff report shows.

The in-law unit takes most of that off the table. Planning says it confirms SB 423 eligibility only after a complete application arrives, so the two-unit count still has to hold up when staff read the full plans.

Here is the plan next to what stands there today.

The $20 million price works out to about $2,608 for every square foot of the house that is planned, which tells you what the buyer was paying for. It was the quarter acre and the view.

Our view: let the fast lane run

We think the city should approve this if the plans meet the code, and should be glad the law reaches Sea Cliff at all. The streamlining rules exist because hearings became the place where homes went to die. A rule that treats a $20 million rebuild with an in-law unit and a fourplex in the Sunset the same way is a fair rule.

The trade-off is real. Neighbors on El Camino del Mar lose their one chance to argue about a bigger house on the bluff, and a 1938 home comes down. One in-law unit is a thin housing return for a 7,670-square-foot rebuild on a quarter acre.

That is the honest critique, and it points at zoning, not at this owner. If one more home is the most a quarter acre at the Golden Gate can hold under the rules, the problem is the rules.

The block already has a precedent. The trust of Tom Steyer won permits in December 2024 for a multigenerational rebuild with an in-law unit at nearby 496 Sea Cliff Avenue, SF YIMBY reported.

What this does to Sea Cliff and the blocks around it

For neighbors, the short answer is construction on a narrow curving street above China Beach. A basement dig and terraced retaining walls on a sloped lot mean trucks and shoring once permits issue, and the filing gives no cost or schedule yet.

One sale does not move a neighborhood, but this one marks the top. Sea Cliff's typical home rose from $4.76 million in November 2025 to $5.57 million in October 2026, about 17 percent, according to Houseberry data. The neighborhood scores 4.5 out of 5 on safety and 4.1 on both schools and amenities.

One ridge over, Lake Street ranks 9th in the city at 4.1 overall, with a typical home of $3.63 million in October. The Outer Richmond, south of the park, ranks 21st at 3.9, and its typical home was $1.87 million in August. The 740 sale could have bought about 10.7 of those.

In September we wrote about a different Sea Cliff house, the one with eight deeds recorded on it in 14 months. Nobody is confused about who owns 740 El Camino del Mar, so the fight, if there is one, is over size.

No agenda will ever list it

The city has 30 days from the notice to invite local tribes to consult, and tribes get 30 days to answer, under the state's tribal consultation rules. Then GBA can file the full application and the 90-day clock starts. The next public sign of this house will be a demolition permit.

If you are pricing a home anywhere near the Golden Gate, see how Sea Cliff and the rest of San Francisco's 92 neighborhoods score before that permit shows up.

Sources

• San Francisco Planning, records 2026-009440PPS, 2026-008428PRV and 2026-005808HRR, via DataSF planning records and the property map, accessed November 2, 2026
• San Francisco Planning, 610 El Camino del Mar discretionary review packet, December 2018
• San Francisco Department of Building Inspection, building permits for Block 1307, Lot 002A, via DataSF, accessed November 2, 2026
• San Francisco Planning, Affordable Housing Streamlined Approval (SB 423)
• The San Francisco Standard, record price per square foot, July 16, 2026
• SF YIMBY, mansion expansion proposed for record-setting house in Sea Cliff, October 30, 2026
• Houseberry, Sea Cliff, Lake Street and Outer Richmond price histories and the San Francisco City page, November 2026