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San Francisco real estate has never been very accessible. But the record sales happening right now in the city\u2019s high-end market are testing the upper limits of what even this famously unaffordable city thought was possible.<\/p>\n
Consider a six-bedroom, 5,700-square-foot home in Cow Hollow, one of San Francisco\u2019s most coveted neighborhoods. It was listed two weeks ago at $7.95 million, so, not cheap. It just sold for $15 million. The sellers, who bought the property for $7.8 million in the summer of 2020 as the pandemic was pushing residents out of cities, nearly doubled their money in under five years. <\/p>\n
San Francisco real estate agent Rohin Dhar flagged the sale<\/a> on X, where it drew the kind of reactions you\u2019d expect from people who thought they\u2019d seen everything this market had to offer.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s a 4,100-square-foot home in Presidio Heights, one of the city\u2019s 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 sold, wasn\u2019t impressed with what the money was buying.<\/p>\n \u201cMediocre house, good location,\u201d she wrote on X<\/a>, noting that the view from the patio was of a neighboring home that appeared to have burned down. \u201cSomeone just bought this for $8.2M,\u201d she wrote. \u201cIf you like to see cash lit on fire, come tour real estate in SF.\u201d<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t only the ultra-high end that\u2019s seeing action. A 2,300-square-foot home in Bernal Heights sold this week for $4 million \u2014 a million dollars over asking \u2014 just two years after the same owners tried and failed to sell it for $2.95 million. That sale represents a different but equally telling story: the frenzy isn\u2019t 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 $500,000 to $1 million over asking.<\/p>\n The numbers back up the anecdotes. 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 \u2014 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.<\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco, CA<\/span> The invisible force behind all of this is no mystery to anyone paying attention to the city\u2019s tech economy. San Francisco is home to some of the most valuable private companies in the world, and their employees have been quietly accumulating \u2014 and, increasingly, cashing out \u2014 fortunes. <\/p>\n 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, in many cases, already live here and want to upgrade. That liquidity is flowing directly into the housing market, and the market is responding accordingly.<\/p>\n 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 \u2014 and the conventional wisdom holds that some of them will, sooner than later \u2014 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019ll be strange, to say the least, if $15 million soon looks like an opening bid.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n