Villa de Verano in Hillsborough just listed for $88 million and could break a city record

In a region where eight figure listings barely raise an eyebrow, Villa de Verano in Hillsborough still manages to reset your sense of scale. The estate has just come back to market at $88 million, a price that positions it to challenge the city’s all time high and crystallizes how far top tier Bay Area property has climbed. If you track luxury real estate, this is the kind of listing that forces you to rethink what a single private compound can be.

The $88 million bet on Hillsborough’s next record

You are looking at a seller making a very public wager on the ceiling of Hillsborough’s market. At $88 million, Villa de Verano is not just another luxury home, it is a statement that one property can command a price on par with the most ambitious estates in Silicon Valley and the wider San Francisco Peninsula. The ask instantly places it among the priciest homes currently available in the San Francisco Bay Area, and it is structured to test how much weight buyers will give to craftsmanship, acreage, and privacy when everything is bundled into a single, walled compound.

The listing frames the property as a fully realized world of its own, with the main residence and guest structures organized as a single private domain at 3000 Ralston Avenue. Marketing materials emphasize that the $88 million price reflects not only square footage but also the level of design and construction detail that went into creating Villa de Verano as a unified compound rather than a collection of separate buildings. For you as a buyer, that means the number is meant to capture the value of an entire lifestyle ecosystem, not just a house with a view.

A Lake Como fantasy above Silicon Valley

What sets Villa de Verano apart from other big ticket listings is its insistence on transporting you somewhere else entirely. Instead of leaning on the usual glass box aesthetic, the estate channels an Italian lakeside resort, with architecture and landscaping that deliberately evoke the villas around Lake Como. You move through cypress lined approaches, stone loggias, and terraced gardens that are designed to feel more like a European retreat than a suburban Bay Area address, even though you are minutes from the tech corridors of Silicon Valley.

Reporting on the property describes how the owners drew inspiration from Italy’s Lake Como when they commissioned the design, resulting in a sprawling main house and grounds that read as a cohesive Mediterranean fantasy rather than a pastiche of styles, a vision detailed in coverage of the Lake Como inspired estate. That sensibility carries through to the lower parts of the property, where the sports complex, water features, and planted slopes are all orchestrated to preserve the illusion that you are looking out over a European landscape rather than Northern California hills.

Inside the main house, where every detail is bespoke

Step through the front doors and you are immediately in a world where almost nothing is off the shelf. The main residence is organized around grand entertaining spaces, with a double height living room, formal dining room, and a sequence of lounges that are scaled for large gatherings but detailed enough to feel intimate when you are alone. Stone fireplaces, carved woodwork, and custom plasterwork are not decorative afterthoughts, they are the backbone of the interior architecture, and they set a tone that is closer to a European country house than a typical Peninsula mansion.

Listing agent Jennifer Gilson has emphasized that the decor is equally bespoke, noting that many interior furnishings and finishes were created specifically for Villa de Verano by artisans, including specialized European craftsmen, a level of customization highlighted in the description of the home’s decor. Photo tours of the property show how that attention to detail plays out in the kitchen, sunny breakfast room, den, and games lounge, where each space has its own character but still feels like part of a single, carefully curated environment.

Bedrooms, terraces, and a conservatory built for lingering

For all its public facing grandeur, Villa de Verano is ultimately a place where you are meant to live, not just entertain. Across the main house and guest accommodations, the property includes six bedrooms and seven bathrooms, a layout that gives you multiple suites for family and visitors without tipping into hotel scale anonymity. Upper level bedrooms spill onto private terraces, so you can step outside in the morning and look over the gardens and hills without ever leaving your room, a detail captured in visual coverage of one of the property’s six bedrooms.

Elsewhere in the house, a glass walled conservatory pulls in sun throughout the day, giving you a sheltered vantage point on the gardens even when the coastal fog drifts inland. That space is paired with a 2,100-gallon saltwater aquarium that turns one wall into a living, illuminated backdrop, a feature singled out in descriptions of the Hillsborough mansion. The combination of private terraces, sunrooms, and immersive water elements is designed to slow you down, to make staying on the property feel more compelling than heading out.

A sports and leisure complex that rivals a boutique resort

Outside, Villa de Verano shifts from country house to private club. On a lower part of the property, a full scale sports complex unfolds, giving you a championship tennis court, pickleball and bocce areas, and additional courts and lawns that can flex between casual games and more formal events. The idea is that you can host a weekend tournament without ever leaving your own grounds, a level of amenity that is rare even among high end Peninsula estates and that has been highlighted in coverage of the estate’s sports complex in the hills.

Those facilities are layered into a landscape of reflecting ponds, cascading water features, and winding private paths that connect the main house to the recreational zones. Water flows over scalloped bowls into a large pond, then continues toward open air lounging areas that blur the line between pool deck and garden terrace, as shown in detailed photo sequences of the Elegance on an epic scale setting. For you, that means the estate functions as a self contained leisure environment, where a morning can move from laps in the pool to tennis to a shaded walk without ever feeling repetitive.

From private dream to public listing: the owners’ next chapter

Every record seeking listing has a backstory, and Villa de Verano is no exception. The current owners spent years shaping the property into a personal vision of Italian inspired living, then used it as a primary residence before shifting their lives elsewhere. They have indicated that they now primarily reside at their property within the prestigious Bighorn Golf community, a move that helps explain why such a deeply customized estate is now available to you, a detail noted in reporting on the couple’s transition to Bighorn Golf living.

The decision to list at $88 million is not just about cashing out, it is also about testing whether the market will recognize the intangible value of years of design decisions, sourcing trips, and construction oversight. When you walk through a property like this, you are not only buying land and walls, you are stepping into someone else’s long running project of taste and ambition. The owners’ willingness to hand that over at a price that could reset Hillsborough’s record underscores how confident they are that the right buyer will see Villa de Verano as a once in a generation opportunity rather than just another luxury address.

How Villa de Verano stacks up against Bay Area trophy estates

To understand the scale of the $88 million ask, you have to place Villa de Verano alongside other recent headline making Peninsula sales. Earlier this year, one of the most closely watched transactions was Woodside’s historic Green Gables estate, a 74-acre property that was Listed for $125 million and Sold for $85 million, a benchmark that still looms large over the region’s ultra luxury segment, as chronicled in a roundup of Most-expensive Bay Area sale in 2025. Against that backdrop, Villa de Verano’s price signals that Hillsborough is ready to compete directly with Woodside and Atherton for the title of most coveted address in the Bay Area.

At the same time, the property’s marketing leans into its Silicon Valley adjacency, positioning it as a Northern California estate that offers both seclusion and quick access to tech and finance hubs. Social media coverage has framed it as a place where Silicon Valley is not known for understatement and where this $88 million Hillsborough estate takes grandeur to another level, a sentiment echoed in posts that describe the $88 million Hillsborough estate as a new benchmark. For you, that means the property is not just competing on acreage or architecture, it is competing on narrative, as the next chapter in the story of Bay Area trophy homes.

Hillsborough’s quiet power in the San Francisco Bay Area market

If you are used to hearing about Atherton or Woodside when people talk about extreme wealth, Hillsborough can feel like the quieter cousin, but that is precisely its appeal. The town sits in the hills above Silicon Valley, offering large lots, mature trees, and a level of privacy that is hard to replicate closer to San Francisco or San Jose. Within the broader San Francisco Bay Area, which spans nine counties and includes a deep bench of exceptional properties, Hillsborough has carved out a niche as a place where you can own a true estate without sacrificing access to airports, offices, or city culture, a dynamic captured in descriptions of the San Francisco Bay Area market.

Villa de Verano amplifies that positioning by turning a Hillsborough address into something that feels almost rural in its seclusion while still being firmly plugged into the Peninsula’s infrastructure. The motor court, guesthouse, and long private drive reinforce the sense that you are entering a separate world, yet you remain within reach of the region’s major freeways and business corridors. For you as a prospective buyer, that combination of quiet power and connectivity is part of what justifies a price that aims to set a new city record, because it offers a lifestyle that is difficult to replicate anywhere else in Northern California.

What an $88 million listing signals for you and the market

When a property like Villa de Verano hits the market at $88 million, it sends a message that extends beyond one hillside in Hillsborough. It tells you that sellers and agents believe there is still deep demand for ultra customized, fully amenitized estates, even after a period of volatility in tech and finance. It also suggests that the top of the market is becoming more comfortable with numbers that would have seemed outlandish a decade ago, especially when those numbers are attached to properties that function as single, private compounds rather than fragmented holdings, a concept underscored in the description of Villa de Verano as a single, private compound.

For you, whether you are a potential buyer, a neighbor, or simply someone who follows real estate as a barometer of regional wealth, the listing is a reminder that the upper reaches of the Bay Area market operate on their own logic. Record setting asks are as much about storytelling and aspiration as they are about comps and appraisals. Villa de Verano, with its Lake Como inspiration, 2,100-gallon aquarium, championship level sports complex, and meticulously crafted interiors, is a test of how far that logic can stretch in Hillsborough right now. However the sale ultimately lands, it will help define the next chapter of what luxury means in this corner of California.

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*This article was developed with AI-powered tools and has been carefully reviewed by our editors.