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From viral listings and record-setting deals to historic estates with deep Peninsula roots, 2025 delivered a standout year in high-profile home sales. These notable transactions captured attention not just for their price tags, but for the stories, personalities and quirks that made each property one of a kind.
Home went ‘viral’ with 35K views in single day
Asking price: $4.89M | Sales price: $5.6M
This 2,700-square-foot home in Palo Alto’s Adobe Meadow–Meadow Park neighborhood went viral after hitting the market for $4.89 million in March. The Spanish-style house drew nearly 35,000 views in a single day, making it the most-viewed active Redfin listing of the year, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Within a day after going up for sale, it was marked pending and ultimately sold for $712,000 over asking. Why all the hype? The original listing used a provocative marketing hook, suggesting that success was baked into the home’s history. “Since its 2017 rebuild, every owner’s children have gone on to Harvard or Stanford, paving the way for even greater achievements. Now it is ready to pass on its extraordinary energy to the next family,” according to the original listing. Photos from the staging leaned into the theme, featuring Stanford diplomas and what appeared to be a framed Harvard acceptance letter on the living-room mantel, Curbed reported.
Restored ‘great estate’ on open-space easement
Asking price: $29.5M | Sales price: under contract
Mountain Meadow is among the last surviving early 20th-century “great estates” in Woodside. Built in 1927, the Tudor Revival home is set among formal gardens, redwood groves and more than 1,000 acres of protected open space on the historic Phleger Estate. The roughly 9,300-square-foot residence was listed for $29.5 million in May and is now under contract, according to the sales listing. The estate was most recently owned by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore and his wife, Betty, who purchased the home and 24 acres in 1993 to protect it from redevelopment. Over the next three decades, the couple invested about $15 million restoring the house and grounds as a private retreat. The five-bedroom home includes a guest house, wine cellar, library, elevator and century-old gardens, and is safeguarded by a conservation easement that preserves its natural setting for future generations.
Most-expensive Bay Area sale in 2025
Listed for: $125M | Sold for: $85M
Woodside’s historic 74-acre Green Gables estate, a summer retreat for five generations of the Fleishhacker family, sold for $85 million on Sept. 3 becoming the Bay Area’s most-expensive public sale in 2025. Built in 1911 by San Francisco banker Mortimer Fleishhacker and artist Bella Gerstle Fleishhacker to escape the city’s wind and fog, the property includes seven houses, three pools, extensive gardens, a reservoir, and a Roman-style reflecting pool the size of a football field. The estate was listed sporadically over the past decade, with asking prices ranging from $135 million in 2021 — making it among the most expensive listings in the world at the time — to $125 million in May 2025 when it was offered as 10 individual lots priced between $19 million and $55 million. This marks the first time Green Gables has changed hands since its creation.
Home where plans for SLAC drafted
Asking price: $5.5M | Sales price: $6.01M
Thehistoric Dutch Colonial in Los Altos Hills that was once home to renowned physicist Wolfgang Panofsky sold for $6.01 million on July 30. It was reportedly here that plans for Stanford’s 2-mile Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) were first drafted. Panofsky, a Manhattan Project nuclear consultant who later advised U.S. presidents on arms control, served as SLAC’s founding director. His research earned the National Medal of Science in 1969 and contributed to three Nobel Prizes. Panofsky and his wife, Adele, purchased the 5,172-square-foot shingled home in 1951, the year he joined Stanford University, and it remained in the family for over 70 years. The 2.17-acre hilltop property was first listed for $5.5 million on June 18.
French-style chateau Bing Crosby once called home
Asking price: $30M | Sales price: $25M
The French chateau–style estate that famed croonerBing Crosby once called home sold for $25 million on June 12, marking one of the priciest home sales in Hillsborough, though far below the original$40 million asking price in February.The 40-room, four-level estate spans 5.38 acres across four parcels and features 15 bathrooms, multiple salons, a paneled library, a smoking room with a bar, and a formal dining room with hand-painted murals. Crosby and his wife renovated nearly every room, incorporating European antiques — including a wooden staircase from an English abbey and 400-year-old wood paneling — and added personal touches like the “Road to Morocco Hideaway” room and rows of hybrid “Crosby Roses” in the garden. The buyer, who is reportedly local, plans to preserve the home’s historic character. Originally built in 1929 for the Howard family who owned champion race horse Seabiscuit, the estate has long been celebrated as a premier example of French architecture in America.
Villa with its own party house
Asking price: $65M | Sales price: $56M
Portola Valley’s Villa del Prato drew widespread attention when it hit the market in August, priced at roughly 16 times the town’s median home value of $4.02 million. But its price tag wasn’t the only thing turning heads: The 12-acre estate came with its own party house. Built in 2021, the Tuscan-inspired compound sits in the Westridge neighborhood and sold for $56 million on Nov. 14. The property includes a 12,305-square-foot main residence with a 3,500-bottle wine cave, a 6,500-square-foot entertainment house and a 2,000-square-foot pool house with guest quarters, totaling more than 20,000 square feet of living space. What truly sets the estate apart is its three-parcel layout — a rarity in Portola Valley, where strict zoning rules typically limit properties to a single parcel with maximum square-footage restrictions
Historic ranch with landing strip
Asking price: $12M | Sales price: $10.5M
This 162-acre historic ranch in Woodside sold for $10.5 million on April 18. The property was once part of the land where Gerda Isenberg founded Yerba Buena Nursery in 1960, now considered California’s oldest retail nursery specializing in native plants. Isenberg famously collected plant specimens while riding through the ranch with saddlebags, propagating species that today are endangered or extinct in the wild. While the nursery later relocated to Half Moon Bay, the Woodside ranch remained in her family for nearly a century. The 4,230-square-foot country home, built in 1983, offers sweeping ocean views and features a private lake, barn and an unofficial airstrip. With soaring wood ceilings, rustic beams, a stone fireplace and handcrafted doors and windows, the home feels like it’s straight out of an old Western movie. the spirit of an old Western ranch.
