Amid Recall Madness, Gavin Newsom Sells Marin County Home in Lucrative $5.9 Million Off-Market Deal

He might be shaking a bit in his designer loafers as Californians head to the polls — or more accurately, send in their mail-in ballots — to decide whether they want to recall him but the Golden State’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom is nonetheless tap dancing all the way to the bank when it comes to the sale of his former home in the Bay Area’s wealthy Marin County.

Tax records show the popularly elected pol, who garnered nearly 62% of the votes in the 2018 election, more than any other Democratic candidate in state history, and his documentary filmmaker wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom (“The Great American Lie”) have more than doubled their money on the $5.895 million off-market sale of a crisply contemporary home in the sleepy and woodsy community of Kentfield that they scooped up nearly a decade earlier for $2.25 million.

The couple first put the not quite 1.5-acre hillside property up for sale shortly after Newsom took office in early 2019. The initial ask was $5.995 million, and the price quickly dropped to $5.695 million before it was taken off the open market and quietly shopped around as a private listing.

Set on a flat, elevated and picturesquely tree-shaded plateau with coveted views of both Mount Tamalpais and the San Francisco Bay, the slightly more than 4,000-square-foot home was designed and built in 1950 by Bay Area architect Worley K. Wong and updated by San Francisco-based architect Julie Dowling. Square and boxy with gunmetal-grey siding and vast expanses of floor-to-ceiling windows, the home’s airy, open floor plan has an easy, relaxed relationship between indoor and outdoor spaces, and marketing materials from the time it was initially put up for sale show there are five bedrooms and four bathrooms, plus two more powder rooms.

Carefully clipped hedging makes a clear distinction between the untamed woodland hillside and the grassy, manicured backyard that offers a curtained dining pavilion alongside a pale-blue swimming pool and spa. There’s also a huge second-floor deck that spans the car port below with misty, meditative tree-framed mountain views.

It remains to be seen if Newsom will get booted from the state capital but even if he does, he won’t be unceremoniously packed up and pushed out of the historic governor’s mansion. Rather than take up residence in the 30-room Second-Empire Italianate Victorian where more than a dozen previous governors have made their home while in office, including Ronald Reagan, the Newsoms opted for a more secluded suburban setting about a half hour’s drive from the capital in the rolling, oak-covered hills of the affluent, unincorporated Fair Oaks neighborhood where they ponied up $3.7 million in late 2018 for a nearly 13,000-square-foot home on eight oak-filled acres with a swimming pool, pool house, and tennis court. It seems unlikely the Newsoms will stay in the Sacramento area if the recall is successful…that is unless he plans to run again in next year’s regularly scheduled gubernatorial election. Stay tuned.