A home in Menlo Park may have broken a new record in the city with its asking price: $26.5 million.

"The house is currently on the market and the most expensive home for sale ever in Menlo Park," said Judy Citron, a Compass real estate agent overseeing the listing.

Located in the West Menlo neighborhood on 1340 Arbor Road, the mansion has five bedrooms and seven bathrooms, totaling 8,648 square feet. The home sits on a 1.49-acre lot.

It's not the largest Menlo Park home ever to be listed. But it has growth potential — for another $7.85 million, a half-acre piece of adjacent land can be purchased to expand the size of the lot to just over 2 acres.

"You can build a compound if you want," Citron said. "You can build multiple structures, you can build a tennis court. There's optionality with this house and the property."

What makes the home worth more than $26 million?

Citron pointed to the large open concept of the home, where the spaces such as the kitchen, family room and breakfast room all flow together. It also leads to a yard that Citron says looks like a park.

"It's incredibly expansive with beautiful, mature landscaping and perimeter trees," she said, making the home feel private. Citron described it as an Atherton property but with the convenience of being a couple blocks from downtown.

Home values in Menlo Park in general have recently skyrocketed, said Citron, who is also a longtime local resident. Part of that can be due to the pandemic.

"It used to be that Palo Alto was the end-all, be-all in real estate," she said. "And I think what COVID did was people started to reevaluate what the meaning of home is."

Across the Peninsula, real estate prices have reached record highs. The median price for single-family homes in Palo Alto reached $3.71 million, according to the Palo Alto Weekly, The Almanac's sister paper. In Menlo Park, property prices increased 28% from 2021 to 2022, reaching a median home price for a single-family home for $3.47 million.

Still, even with skyrocketing home values, Citron agreed that the home is an outlier.

"It is a one-of-a-kind property that you can't replicate," she said.

The structure was designed by Jude Kirik, an architect at Pacific Peninsula Architecture, and built in 2012.

The home underwent major fixes over the past decade or so, Kirik said, completely refurbishing the old home and adding family rooms, garages, a full shell of a basement and more.

Architecturally, Kirik said he would describe it as a mix between transitional and Mediterranean style with its roof pitches and window fenestrations.

Citron declined to comment on the ownership history of the home.

The previous record holder for the most expensive Menlo Park property was a seven-bedroom, seven-bathroom home at 1394 San Mateo Drive that sold for $14.7 million in 2020. That property is once again on the market, with an asking price of $17.5 million. Citron also holds the listing on that property and said she was involved in its development.