October 2025: San Francisco Real Estate Insider

The market in San Francisco has seen a dramatic shift in the past couple months. Buyer activity has dramatically increased and it feels like we are quickly heading into another bubble. San Francisco had a particularly interesting dynamic playing out: on a year-over-year basis we have a dramatic 35% increase in sales coupled with a huge 28% plunge in home inventory. This shortage is creating two very different stories for buyers and sellers and the imbalance is not sustainable.

Locally, the biggest inventory gap right now is on the luxury and super luxury side of the spectrum. There are a lot of buyer needs in the $5M+ category that are not getting met. I’ve talked to several agents that have highly qualified buyers “ready and willing” to write offers on turnkey homes, but the availability is not there. Due to this demand, two reactions have occurred. First, many of the luxury homes that could not find a buyer in the last 18 months are now in contract or sold. Second, many of these north side (i.e. Pacific Heights / Presidio Heights) buyers are expanding their target geographies, mainly into Lake Street and Sea Cliff.

To add more fuel to the real estate market, OpenAI employees who’ve held shares for over two years are eligible to participate in a secondary stock sale (at a $500B company valuation!) that was scheduled to close this month. The sale will allow current and former OpenAI employees to cash out some of their equity, providing liquidity while the company remains private. I don’t think it is unreasonable to expect (this event) to add $100M of new capital to the local market in the next six months (when leveraged its really $400M-$500M).

That is it for now. Have a great weekend. If you are thinking of a move, let’s put a plan in place to make the most of your asset. Likewise, if you have friends or colleagues looking to get into the market, feel free to pass my name along. 

Call or email, anytime.