Yahoo's first CEO and his wife are selling their mini-utopia for US$19.4m

New York

FIVE months before he got married, Tim Koogle, Yahoo's first chief executive officer, was in the market for a house. It was early 2003, and he and his fiancée Pam Scott "were looking for our first house together", Mr Koogle said. "I asked her: 'When you walk out of the door in the morning, do you want to have your feet land on dirt, or asphalt?'" The answer was an emphatic "dirt", and so, after a brief search, they purchased a mid-century modern house on 12 acres in Los Altos, California, for about US$8 million.

"The seller needed to sell - he was in over his head for a bit of money, and I picked a price, took care of the closing fees, and basically made him whole," Mr Koogle said. "We got a great deal."