From the San Francisco Standard, September 10:
‘Trying to steal a house’: How Sea Cliff was engulfed in SF’s strangest property dispute
Years after a home’s owners moved out, new people with conflicting deeds moved in. Now the neighborhood has reached a boiling point.
In September 2025, a San Francisco real estate agent named Cathy Robles received an email from a man looking to sell a house. She looked up the address — 250 32nd Ave. — and could not believe her luck. It was in Sea Cliff.
Robles and her husband have sold houses in the city for more than two decades, but never one in Sea Cliff — the ritzy neighborhood on the bluff above the Pacific Ocean that recently set a San Francisco record for price per square foot: $4,574. The average Sea Cliff home is worth just shy of $5 million, according to Zillow. The biggest deal Robles had done was $3.5 million. Selling this home would be a career milestone.
The seller’s name was Brandon Aadee. On the phone, Aadee sounded professional and clearly knew his real estate lingo, Robles said. He told her he needed to sell quickly and was willing to go under market to do it. But Aadee was hard to pin down and kept making excuses for why they couldn’t meet in person. Robles followed up, but he went silent.
Eleven months later, in early August, Aadee resurfaced. He told Robles over email he was ready to sell, but there were conditions: no open houses, no “for sale” signs. “I’m in danger of defaulting on my taxes,” he wrote. “I want it sold very fast, like last week.”
Robles thought this was strange. But she was holding out hope for a Sea Cliff sale amid an AI-fueled housing market that has gone berserk with “bidmaxxing” wars, all-cash transactions, and offers millions over asking. So she started asking Aadee questions....
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