With house prices apparently in decline (but not so in the San Francisco Bay Area) home buyers are looking for fixer uppers and Cisco CEO John Chambers got his hands on one last year for $20 million, some $19 million below the asking price, reports the San Jose Mercury News. The 15,000 square-foot home in the Palo Alto foothills was originally designed and built for Web TV co-founder Philip Goldman, who snagging two adjoining lots that belonged to Ed McCracken of Silicon Valley and Andy Bechtolsheim of Sun. However Goldman died in 2003 at age 39 before his new home was completed. His wife put the unfinished house on the market for $39 million, the Merc reports. That’s when John and Elaine Chambers bought the property. Apparently the neighbors are over the moon with the Chamberses’ designs for the house, which involves a lot of foliage to keep it from view. The couple are also planting a forest of more than 360 oaks, redwoods and other native trees to keep the property from sight. Yeah, who wants to see a crummy old mansion set in a secluded forest landscape in their line of sight every day?
More from Cisco Subnet:
* Cisco marries Google Android with unified communications for the enterprise
* Nexus 7000 brings some exciting hardware to the DC LAN
* Back to basics with routers and packet handling
* Cisco vs. Juniper Episode II: Enterprise switching
* What’s new in Cisco’s newest NAC appliance version?
* What’s there to love about Cisco’s TelePresence?
* Cisco security admin pay could soar 48% in 2008
* Building your own CCNA lab series
Go to Cisco Subnet for more Cisco news, blogs, discussion forums, security alerts, book giveaways, and more.
Recent Cisconet blog entries
Network World’s IT Buyer’s Guide: Cisco products
Subscribe to Network World’s Cisco Alert, which includes a weekly digest of all Cisco Subnet items
