Ken Plourde sold his Palo Alto home so that it could be demolished.
But for $3 million, it was well worth it for the 79-year-old retired jazz bassist.
The San Jose Mercury News reported that Plourde sold the home he bought for $35,000 in 1970 to a "wealthy Stanford graduate in China" who plans to flatten the 992-square foot home.
But for Plourde, whose income is diminishing in his advanced age, it's a "fortune for a guy who's never made more than $30,000 a year."
Meanwhile, bungalows in Menlo Park are going for $1,000 a square foot, the newspaper reported, with "fixer-uppers" in Cupertino going for $1 million.
This is what's going on in the Bay Area, where demand is continuing apace -- and, nay, growing, while supply stays about the same, the newspaper reported.
"There's too much money chasing too few homes," Coldwell Banker's Scott Dancer told the paper.
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"When does it end?" asked Don Orason, of Intero Real Estate. "I haven't any idea."
And it's happening all over in the Bay Area. In Berkeley, recent sale prices were for $700 a square foot. In Fruitvale, another home went for $744 a square foot.
