San Francisco’s housing market has lost its mind

Source: TechCrunch

Recent High-End Sales

San Francisco real estate has never been very accessible, but the record sales happening right now in the city’s high‑end market are testing the upper limits of what even this famously unaffordable city thought was possible.

• A six‑bedroom, 5,700‑sq‑ft home in Cow Hollow was listed two weeks ago at $7.95 million and sold for $15 million. The sellers bought the property for $7.8 million in the summer of 2020 and nearly doubled their money in under six years. San Francisco real‑estate agent Rohin Dhar flagged the sale on X, where it drew the kind of reactions you’d expect from people who thought they’d seen everything this market had to offer.

• A 4,100‑sq‑ft home in Presidio Heights 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 sold, wasn’t impressed with what the money was buying. She wrote on X: “Mediocre house, good location,” adding a photo of a neighboring home that appeared to have burned down. “Someone just bought this for $8.2M. If you like to see cash lit on fire, come tour real estate in SF.” (source)

• A 2,300‑sq‑ft home in Bernal Heights sold this week for $4 million—a million dollars over asking—just two years after the same owners tried and failed to sell it for $2.95 million. This sale shows that the frenzy isn’t limited to the rarefied tier of eight‑figure homes; across a wide swath of the market, buyers are bidding aggressively, with homes routinely selling for $500 k to $1 million over asking.

Market Data

New data from Redfin shows luxury home sales in San Francisco jumped 22 % year‑over‑year in March, with homes going under contract in a median of just 12 days—down from 28 days a year earlier. Nearly two‑thirds of luxury properties went under contract within two weeks. By contrast, non‑luxury sales rose less than 4 %, with prices essentially flat. The high end is essentially operating in a totally different universe.

Tech Influence

The invisible force behind all of this is no mystery to anyone paying attention to the city’s tech economy. San Francisco is home to some of the most valuable private companies in the world, and their employees have been quietly accumulating—and increasingly cashing out—fortunes.

• OpenAI and Anthropic, two of the most valuable AI companies ever created, have allowed employees to sell portions of their shares in secondary‑market transactions in recent years, putting serious money into the hands of people who already live here and want to upgrade. That liquidity is flowing directly into the housing market, and the market is responding accordingly.

• The truly astonishing part may still be ahead. SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, and a cluster of other tech giants have yet to go public. When they do—and conventional wisdom holds that some of them will, sooner rather than later—the wealth unlocked could make the current moment look quaint in comparison. Thousands of employees holding equity in companies valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars will become even more liquid almost overnight.

Future Outlook

What that means for a housing market already producing $15 million sales within just a week or so of being listed is, candidly, difficult to fathom at this moment. San Francisco has spent decades as the punchline of conversations about housing affordability. It’ll be strange, to say the least, if $15 million soon looks like an opening bid.