Santa Clara County’s biggest house has nine bathrooms, or so Cindy and Gaymond Schultz believed. But when the couple moved in, they came across a 10th, tucked down a hall they thought led only to their 35-car garage.
It’s easy to miss a room or two when your house is 18,000 square feet, or 12 times bigger than the typical two-bedroom tract home in Silicon Valley.
Perched on its own knoll overlooking San Francisco Bay, the Los Altos Hills house is bigger than all the other 318,009 single-family detached homes and 62,254 condos in the county, at least according to property tax records kept by Assessor Larry Stone.
But Silicon Valley magnates are erecting what appear to be equally grand estates, at the time of an acute shortage of housing afflicts the region’s middle-class and low-wage workers, as prices spiral out of sight.
Less than a mile from the Schultzes, workers are hurrying to complete a mansion with 15 bathrooms so a family of five can move in before Thanksgiving. Construction crews said the house was bigger than the Schultzes’ home.
The Schultzes had no idea they owned the county’s biggest house when they bought it three years ago for $6 million. Cindy’s last place was a two-bedroom West Valley cottage that she shared with a roommate. Gaymond’s wasn’t much bigger.
“We weren’t looking for a big house, just 5,000 square feet,” Cindy said. “But we fell in love.”
Gaymond, 59, who grew up milking cows on a farm, is an engineer and a founder of Stratacom, a telecommunications company purchased by Cisco Systems for $4.5 billion. His latest venture is a networking equipment company called Vina Technologies.
Cindy, 45, was a secretary at Hewlett-Packard Co. who earned $40,000 a year until three years ago.
“It’s the Cinderella story,” Cindy said.
He courted her for a decade before they tied the knot — in their new house, which easily accommodated the 85 guests.
“This is totally unreal to me,” Cindy said, gesturing toward the master bedroom, which is bigger than her last house. The master suite includes a fireplace, sitting room, two Greek columns, a canopy bed and separate bathrooms. “I still have to pinch myself.”
In fact, their Mediterranean-style mansion is less than half the size of Bill Gates’ sprawling estate outside Seattle.
But it’s larger than the California governor’s mansion. And big enough so that Cindy and Gaymond — the only people who live there — were both home once at the same time without realizing it.
“I wouldn’t call it a monster house,” she said, “even though it is a monster house in size.”
Unlike some massive new houses below on the valley floor, which squat on small lots and loom over their one-story neighbors, the Schultzes’ house snakes along a spacious six-acre lot dotted with olive trees and tubs of seasonal flowers.
Sequestered behind wrought-iron gates, the one-story house was built 61 years ago by a General Motors tycoon who named it “Rancho San Antonio” and spent the then-princely sum of $111,798 to include the best materials such as Carmel stone, Italian marble and first-cut redwood. Today it’s worth $15 million, more than twice what the Schultzes paid in 1997.
Amenities include a 5,000-bottle, climate-controlled wine cellar, gym, tennis courts, five fireplaces, dog kennel, swimming pool, two guesthouses and former servants’ quarters that have been converted into a one-bedroom apartment for a caretaker.
There’s also a “grand loggia,” a fancy porch that overlooks the pool and is enclosed with sliding French doors.
You think your electric bill is high. Theirs is $1,000 to $1,200 a month, and it’s only that low because they don’t heat every part of the house.
The cavernous garage was built by the previous owner, who used it to store one of the nation’s largest private car collections.
“It’s great because when we have parties,” Cindy said, “we can have valet parking.”
Living in a mansion took some getting used to.
Cindy’s feet ached from the long walks to the laundry room until she discovered a washer-dryer in one of the walk-in closets in her bathroom. The previous owners installed it so they wouldn’t have to trek down a long hall with stained-glass windows, past a living room so large that it swallows up a grand piano, through a chandelier-lit foyer, past his-and-her powder rooms, down a spiral staircase, and past the wine cellar before reaching the laundry room.
Managing the part-time staff also was a challenge at first.
Cindy uses a maid service only a couple of times a week because there are only two living there.
But she was so unaccustomed to having help that she once cleaned five bathrooms herself.
For five months this year, the couple didn’t use the house because they were sailing in the Mediterranean. They plan to resume sailing when their new 112-foot yacht is finished. But until then, Cindy is throwing herself into redecorating the place.
“People think when you live like this, it’s easy,” Cindy said. “But it’s an old house and it’s a lot of work. How can you ever be done? By the time you finish, that first room is starting to look drab.”
All the furniture has to be custom-made because ready-made pieces are too small and look out of place.
They also plan to install a home theater. But contractors are in such demand.
“There’s so much money in Silicon Valley it takes forever to get anything done,” Cindy said.
She’s just about finished with redecorating the his-and-hers powder rooms on either side of the grand entry hall. The men’s has bamboo-trimmed walls, an animal print rug and small anteroom with a banquette. The women’s is sage, silvery and gold. Gaymond added his touch to the ladies’: toilet paper stamped with gold monogrammed “S’s”.
Does it ever bother Cindy knowing that fewer than a quarter of the people in the county can afford a median-priced home here?
“When I drive around and see the houses and the apartments, especially the apartments, I’m like, oh my God, I could never live like that,” Cindy said. “Why are they building them on top of each other? Why don’t they give them some space? I like it up here because it feels like a park.”
