Novato Spinning Round House Sells With Six Neighbors for $3.3 Million

The rotating round house at 4 Harkle Road in Novato, long a spaceship silhouette for Highway 101 drivers, is for sale for the first time with six neighboring homes on 2.25 acres for $3.3 million. All seven units are occupied by tenants who pay their own utilities.

Listing agent Angelo Baglieri of Marcus & Millichap cold-called owner Harold Pozzi in 2017 and stayed in touch for years. Pozzi, grandson of builder Sam Harkleroad, finally decided the upkeep had grown too heavy at age 71.

Seven Homes, One Price, Full Occupancy

The package includes the 1,562-square-foot round house, the neighboring potato chip house with its hyperbolic paraboloid roof, a former workshop, and four more conventional dwellings. Combined living area reaches 7,502 square feet with 16 bedrooms and three baths across the lot of roughly 98,010 square feet.

The 3.61 percent cap rate and full package terms appear on the Marcus & Millichap offering. Tenants are separately metered for water, gas and electricity, so the landlord’s main costs stay taxes and insurance. Baglieri calls it a rare chance to buy improved income land in Novato that already carries two local landmarks.

Zillow shows the multi-family listing active since mid-August 2026 with thousands of views in its first days. The assessed value sat near $1.07 million recently, far below the ask, a common gap for long-held family property.

How a Washing Machine Motor Turns the House

The round house rests on a pedestal and rides an inverted railroad track. Two old washing machine motors push it. A simple switch labeled “clockwise” and “counterclockwise” controls the motion. It covers 320 degrees in about 20 minutes while plumbing and power stay live through a central swivel core.

• Rooms are wedge-shaped around a spiral staircase that drops to the motor room and basement.
• Dark square gates ring the exterior deck; one fixed stairway always meets a gate no matter the orientation.
• Harkleroad sited every building on bedrock.
• Original construction cost ran about $17,000 in the early 1960s.

Current tenant Jessi Adams told ABC7 she rotates the house seasonally. “Usually in the winter, I face a certain direction. It heats the house. In summer, I can change the view.” The door knob sits in the middle of the door, a detail that once slowed Baglieri’s first visit.

Drivers have mistaken the round form for a restaurant and walked right in. That curiosity still draws lookers, though parking on the private road stays tight.

Sam Harkleroad Built What He Wanted

Sam Harkleroad (1909-1993) grew up on a Fresno farm, finished high school, then worked as a cobbler, gold panner, truck driver, fruit picker, tree surgeon and ship rigger before turning to construction in Marin. He had no formal architecture degree and favored recycled materials.

Around 1960 he put three odd structures on the low hill off what became Harkle Road (the city shortened the name to avoid “Harkleroad Road”). The potato chip house went up in 1959, the round house in 1963, and a workshop that once carried a Savonius wind turbine made of 50-gallon drums. The turbine came down in 2021 after atmospheric rivers raised fears it could fly onto the freeway.

1. 1959, Potato chip / taco / parabola house completed with movable interior walls and hyperbolic paraboloid roof of 2-by-4s.
2. Early 1960s, Round house finished; Highway 101 construction forced relocation of some of his other work.
3. 1960s-1980s, Additional unconventional dwellings built across the area; most later lost to the freeway.
4. 1986, Los Angeles Times labels him the Frank Lloyd Wright of Novato.
5. 1993, Harkleroad dies at 83.
6. 2021, Wind turbine removed.
7. August 2026, First public listing of the full Harkle Road cluster.

The Frank Lloyd Wright of Novato profile from 1986 captured the tinkerer’s reputation. Grandson Harold Pozzi told reporters his grandfather simply grew tired of ordinary boxes. “It’s different. It’s a challenge. He loved a challenge.”

He was tired of the same old houses. He thought normal houses were boring.

Pozzi said that of his grandfather in the Wall Street Journal coverage of the listing.

The Potato Chip House Shares the Hill

Next door sits the potato chip house, its roof sweeping down to the ground at two points like a giant chip or saddle. The form is a hyperbolic paraboloid, the same geometry used on arenas such as Calgary’s Scotiabank Saddledome and London’s Lee Valley VeloPark. Harkleroad built it with simple lumber and made the interior walls movable so rooms could change shape.

The remaining five homes are more ordinary rentals. Together the seven generate the income that supports the 3.61 percent cap rate. The workshop building remains, now turbine-free. Everything sits visible from the De Long Avenue exit, a constant roadside presence for Marin-Sonoma traffic.

On X, longtime Bay Area residents still trade childhood memories of fathers pointing out the “spaceship” on drives to the Russian River. One reply compared the silhouette to John Lautner’s Chemosphere in the Hollywood Hills. The landmarks feel collectively owned by the freeway even though the deed stays private.

Investors, Architect Fans and the Density Question

Baglieri sees three buyer types: developers eyeing the land, pure investors wanting the cash flow, and architecture collectors who want the icons intact. He hopes the next owner keeps the unusual houses standing. The listing itself flags the upside of adding units or subdividing, subject to City of Novato approvals.

Marin County land is scarce and expensive. A bare 2-acre lot elsewhere in Novato can list in the mid-hundreds of thousands, but improved multi-family with existing income and freeway frontage is rarer. The low operating costs and 100 percent occupancy make the package financeable as a conventional multi-family deal even if a buyer never spins the round house again.

The second-order tension is plain. The same ingenuity that made the property famous also makes it awkward for maximum density. Wedge rooms, a spinning structure on a track, and a swooping roof do not subdivide as cleanly as rectangles. A preservation-minded buyer locks in the history and the rent roll. A denser play risks public pushback and the loss of two of Novato’s most recognizable buildings.

Pozzi has reached the age where managing the cluster is simply too much. The tenants stay for now. The door knob still sits in the middle of the door. And every day thousands of drivers glance up from 101 and briefly own the view.

The house that once nearly fell to the freeway’s path now waits for whoever writes the next check.