San Francisco real estate has never been more affordable. But the record sales currently taking place in the city’s high-end market are testing the upper limits of what even this famously unaffordable city thought was possible.
Consider a six-bedroom, 5,700-square-foot home in Cow Hollow, one of San Francisco’s most desirable neighborhoods. It sold two weeks ago for $7.95 million, so it’s not cheap. It was sold for just 15 million dollars. Sellers who bought properties for $7.8 million in the summer of 2020 nearly doubled their money in less than six years as the pandemic pushed residents out of cities.
San Francisco real estate agent Rohin Dhar noted the sale At X, it drew the reactions you’d expect from people who think they’ve seen everything this market has to offer.
Then there’s a 4,100-square-foot home in Presidio Heights, one of the city’s most exclusive enclaves, that was listed in late April for $4.4 million and sold a week later for $8.2 million, nearly double the asking price. Venture capitalist Nichole Wischoff, who toured the property before it was sold, wasn’t impressed with what the money fetched.
“Grandfather’s house, good location” He wrote in Xnoting that it belongs to the neighboring house visible from the veranda, it appears to have been burnt. “Somebody just bought it for $8.2 million,” he said. “If you want to see cash on fire, tour real estate in SF.”
It’s not just the ultra-high that’s in action. A 2,300-square-foot home in Bernal Heights sold for $4 million this week — over $1 million asking — just two years after the same owners tried to sell it for $2.95 million. This sale represents a different but equally telling story: The rage isn’t limited to rarefied levels of eight-figure homes. In a wide swath of the market, buyers are bidding aggressively, with homes regularly selling for $1 million.
The numbers back up the anecdotes. New data from Redfin shows that luxury home sales in San Francisco rose 22% year-over-year in March, with homes under contract averaging 12 days — down from 28 days a year ago. About two-thirds of the luxury properties went into contract within two weeks. In contrast, non-luxury sales rose less than 4%, with prices largely flat. The high level actually operates in a completely different universe.
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The invisible force behind it all is no secret to anyone paying attention to the city’s tech economy. San Francisco is home to some of the world’s most valuable private companies, and their employees are quietly amassing fortunes and making more and more money.
OpenAI and Anthropic, two of the most valuable AI companies ever created, have in recent years allowed employees to sell some of their stock in secondary market transactions, in many cases putting serious money in the hands of people who are already here and looking to upgrade. That liquidity flows directly into the housing market and the market reacts accordingly.
The truly amazing part may be yet to come. SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic and a host of other tech giants have yet to go public. When they do — and, according to conventional wisdom, some of them will sooner or later — the unlocked wealth of the present moment may seem quaint by comparison. Thousands of workers with equity in companies worth hundreds of billions of dollars will become even more liquid almost overnight.
What this means for an apartment market that generated $15 million in sales in just one week after listing is clearly hard to fathom at this point. San Francisco has spent decades at the center of conversations about housing affordability. If $15 million looks like an opening bid anytime soon, it will be strange, to say the least.
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