A 1907 Queen Anne Victorian at 137 Elm Street in San Mateo — the birthplace of banking trailblazer Claire Giannini Hoffman and a former residence of Bank of America founder A.P. Giannini — has hit the market for $2.075 million, down $300,000 from its original asking price. The 2,380-square-foot home sits on a 9,000-square-foot lot with a detached garage that includes an original carriage house, a structure realtors say could offer space for an accessory dwelling unit.
The price cut, from an initial $2.375 million listing down to $2.075 million by July, comes as the property is sold by Caminar, a behavioral health nonprofit that has used the home as transitional housing, according to the San Mateo Daily Journal. Caminar has sold about five similar homes over the past couple of years as it winds down comparable transitional housing programs, the paper reports. The nonprofit has never enrolled 137 Elm Street in the Mills Act program, which offers property tax breaks to owners who commit to a 10-year contract preserving a historic structure's character.
A Home Tied to Bank of America's Origins
The Elm Street property is where Claire Giannini Hoffman was born in 1904, according to the city's 1989 historic survey. She went on to become the first female board member of Bank of America, taking her late father's seat in 1949 and serving until her resignation in 1985, when she protested the sale of the bank's San Francisco headquarters, per SFGATE.
Her father, A.P. Giannini, founded Bank of America and later moved his family to Seven Oaks, a 10-room Tudor Revival home at 20 El Cerrito Avenue in San Mateo. Giannini bought that property for $20,000 in the early 1900s and lived there until his death in 1949; it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. Giannini reportedly chose to settle in unpretentious San Mateo rather than wealthy neighboring Hillsborough, according to the same account.
Giannini's San Mateo ties run deeper than real estate. After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, he reportedly rescued the Bank of Italy's cash, gold, and records from the burning city by hiding them under produce in farm wagons and hauling them to his San Mateo home, according to the San Mateo County History Museum. That maneuver allowed him to resume lending while other banks in the city remained shuttered.
Historic Survey Status Could Complicate a Sale
137 Elm Street is included in San Mateo's 1989 Historic Building Survey, which cataloged roughly 200 historically significant structures citywide, about 37 of which were identified as individually eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, according to the City of San Mateo. That survey remains the backbone of the city's current preservation efforts, and the Elm Street home is considered eligible for an official historic designation, per the Daily Journal's reporting.
An official designation would trigger additional review and approvals for the property and could limit the types of exterior alterations a future owner could make, the paper notes. San Mateo's historic preservation ordinance already adds an extra layer of local review for potential historic structures, and the city updated the ordinance in May to allow staff to nominate properties from the 1989 survey without the property owner's consent.
That change has not gone over quietly. In July, a group of San Mateo homeowners sued the city over surprise historic tags, arguing they were blindsided by non-consensual additions to the registry. Any prospective buyer of 137 Elm Street would be entering that same regulatory landscape, weighing preservation obligations against the freedom to renovate a century-old house.
Weighing Preservation Costs Against a Premium Market
The Mills Act program, which the Elm Street home has never used, offers property tax reductions of between 20% and 80% for owners who sign a decade-long contract to rehabilitate and maintain a historic property's character, according to the City of San Mateo. That incentive exists specifically to offset the costs that can come with preservation-driven restrictions on remodeling.
Whoever buys the home will be paying well above the county norm. San Mateo County recorded a median single-family home price of $1.988 million in August 2025, the highest of any county in California, per the California Association of Realtors. The county's overall property tax base has kept climbing, too — the 2026-2027 assessment roll grew 4.85% to reach $357.6 billion, marking 16 consecutive years of growth, according to the San Mateo County Assessor's Office, which attributed the gains to low unemployment and strong Silicon Valley housing demand.
Caminar's decision to part with the Elm Street property also comes amid separate financial turbulence at the nonprofit. In April, Caminar reported to Redwood City police that its former chief financial officer had allegedly misappropriated $99,375 using fabricated invoices, as Hoodline reported at the time. The organization said it sought full repayment while tightening its internal financial controls.
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