Originally Posted by simplythebest Mark Zuckerberg is,at age 26,on the young side for a first-time home buyer these days. But the Facebook cofounder and chief executive isn’t exactly stretching financially to make his first purchase. Valued at $13.5 billion,and with a persona made famous by the Oscar-winning film The Social Network, Zuckerberg recently plunked down a relatively paltry $7 million for his first home. The restored historic Palo Alto,Calif. abode encompasses 5,617 square feet on a 17,100 square-foot plot. It includes five bedrooms, five and a half baths,a banquet-size dining room,a music alcove and glassed-in porch. The backyard has a saltwater pool,a spa,an outdoor gazebo with a wood-burning fireplace and a carport. The lot,located on Edgewood Drive in the Crescent Park neighborhood,is shielded from nosy neighbors and gawkers by a wall and citrus trees. Crescent Park itself is a high-end neighborhood where median single-family homes went for an average of $1.9 million in February,according to the Zillow Home Value Index. The young billionaire’s new pad hails from an earlier structure erected by William A. Newell,a physician and politician who helped establish and govern the area in the late 19 th century. It was razed and rebuilt by another physician in 1903. Since then,it changed hands roughly seven times,going through several remodelings,before being acquired by the social media entrepreneur. The home is located on Edgewood Drive. The property was listed through Sherry Bucolo of Alain Pinel Realtors. Both Bucolo and Facebook declined to comment on the sale,but public records indicate the deal closed in mid-March. As with most real estate transactions involving rich and famous homebuyers,the sale was conducted through a third party LLC. The young billionaire has long been a fan of renting and of relatively modest digs. His last two places were rentals in the College Terrace neighborhood of Palo Alto,both of which were close to Facebook’s offices and significantly smaller than the new home. Zuckerberg,who ranks 52nd on Forbes’list of the World’s Billionaires,paid $1 million more than the previously listed asking price of $5.85 million. The $7 million paid is about what the home is valued in the expensive 94301 zip code,according to Zillow.com.
