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Look Out for Googlers As Employees Cash In Stock, Bidding Wars Escalate; Atherton, which is located between San Francisco and San Jose, is one of Silicon Valley's most elite addresses. People like financier Charles Sch wab and eBay Chief Executive Meg Whitman own houses here.
Some of them, he figured, would be hom e-shopping in Atherton, which is just a few minutes' drive from the comp any's headquarters in Mountain View. "I wanted to buy before the Google l ockups expired in February," says Mr Cowan. Mr Henriquez later visited the developer of that house to put dibs on a yet-to-be-built Atherton house. Too late again: The builder, Jeffrey Wis e, says he had already agreed to sell to a Google employee. Early this y ear, Mr Henriquez offered $12 million for an Atherton mansion with a ma rble-walled media room; "I started aggressively looking because I didn't want to get caught in the Google w ave," says Mr Henriquez, "but I got caught anyway."
"Ther e's been an obvious Google effect," says Tom Dallas, a local broker who specializes in homes in Atherton and neighboring towns. "I estimate 25% to 35% of recent upper-end home sales, meaning sales over $7 million, ar e from Google people." Across the country, new tales of real-estate froth are bubbling up every day. Among the newly arrived Goog lers' neighbors is the boss: Google CEO Eric Schmidt is an Atherton home owner. Financiers and tec h titans continue to be regular buyers. Mr Hurd moved We st from a Dayton, Ohio, house that was last valued at $799,520, accordin g to property records from the Montgomery County auditor's office. But the Google effect stands out in Atherton, agents say. "There's a lot of Google money out there," says Mary Gullixson, a Silicon Valley real-e state broker who says she has sold nearly $130 million in residences thi s year, the bulk of them in Atherton. Once filled with the summer homes of wealthy San Franciscans, this bucoli c town of 7,194 boasts land parcels typically an acre or larger -- unusu al in space-starved Silicon Valley. Many Atherton homes have sprawling l awns, swimming pools, guest houses, large media rooms and security fence s Some are stunningly unusual: Oracle Corp. chief Larry Ellison, whose office is in Redwood City, has put his Atherton home, a 28-acre estate in the style of a Japanese villa, on the market for $25 million. Atherton has 2,500 home s and no more than 160 home sales a year, says Tom LeMieux, a real-estat e agent here. Houses are often snapped up without going on the market at all. So it was with great anticipation that local agents began waiting for dat es Googlers could legally start selling stock. Most employees, under Securities and Exchange Commission rules, cou ldn't sell their shares until "lockup" periods ended. The first of sever al lockup periods ended in September, with the last in February. Mr Kordestani, who owned 179 million Google shares va lued at $537 million as of late June, has sold 14 million Google shares , for approximately $259 million, since late last year, according to SEC filings and Thomson Financial. Kordestani and Senkut didn't return calls seeking comment. Some Googlers are buying properties through trusts in an effort to remain anonymous, real-estate agents say. In February, a 12,400-square-foot At herton estate sold for $10 million to a trust, according to the assessor 's records. Behind the trust, says a person familiar with the matter, is Salar Kamangar, a 28-year-old Google product-management director. Reached by phone, Mr Kamangar referred questions to a Google spokesman, who said Google d eclines to comment on his behalf. Other Googlers say they tried to get a jump on the Google effect. Mr Woytowicz says he "went house hunting before the Google masses arrive d" He could buy earlier than some Googlers, he adds, because after he l eft the company he wasn't subject to the same lockups. He is remodeling his 6,000-square-foot house, knocking down a wall to accommodate a pool table, creating a wine room and adding a basketball court. " Atherton has a certain cachet" that should keep prices higher than they are elsewhere, he says. Some real-estate agents are now targeting Googlers through the search eng ine itself. Local agent Catherine Marcus says she spends as much as $6,0 00 a month buying Google keyword advertisements for terms such as Google 's "GOOG" ticker symbol and "Atherton real estate," so her name will pop up if people search for those terms. One Google client hired her after spotting her search ads, Ms Marcus says. The 41-year-old says he is relieved the "ord eal" of buying in Atherton is over. "I know another 15 to 20 Google fami lies who are still looking to buy here," he says.
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