Big Story Data

The San Francisco Local Lowdown

Quick Take:

• Inventory continues to be a huge problem throughout San Francisco, with continued year-over-year declines.
  
• Median sale prices continue to gyrate around the 2-year average, as supply and demand move roughly in-line with each other.
  
• Single-family homes continue to be a hot commodity, while condos continue to sit on the market.

Note: You can find the charts/graphs for the Local Lowdown at the end of this section.

Inventory continues to dwindle away in San Francisco

Over the past year or so, we’ve seen a very concerning trend emerge in San Francisco that many of the other submarkets in the Bay Area haven’t exhibited. That is, inventory is dwindling away in San Francisco, especially within the single-family home market. While many submarkets throughout the Bay Area are seeing a resurgence in inventories, as sellers begin to list their homes again, sellers in San Francisco remain resilient in holding onto their properties. This has led to a 15.87% year-over-year decrease in active single-family home listings and a 7.70% decrease in the number of condo listings!

Single-family homes fetch the highest percentage of original price we’ve seen in nearly two years

Due to the lack of supply on the market, single family homes are fetching well above asking price when they sell, making it a profoundly difficult market for first-time home buyers. The average single-family home listing sold for 113.3% of the original asking price in February, marking the highest level we’ve seen since May of 2022! It is important to note, though, that we’re not seeing the same phenomenon in the condo market, as most condos sell either at the listing price or slightly below the listing price.

Supply and demand are remaining fairly balanced, for now

Luckily for buyers in the San Francisco area, supply and demand have been more or less moving in line with each other over the past couple of months. However, in order to have a meaningful change to the inventory levels we’re seeing, new listing growth will have to outstrip sold listing growth by a considerable margin for a long period of time.

Sellers control the single-family home market, while buyers control the condo market

When determining whether a market is a buyers’ market or a sellers’ market, we look to the Months of Supply Inventory (MSI) metric. The state of California has historically averaged around three months of MSI, so any area with at or around three months of MSI is considered a balanced market. Any market that has lower than three months of MSI is considered a seller’s market, whereas markets with more than three months of MSI are considered buyers’ markets.

San Francisco remains a divided market, as sellers have the negotiating power in the single-family home market. Whereas buyers have a bit more leverage in the condo market. Right now, San Francisco’s single-family home market has roughly 1.2 months’ worth of supply, and its condo market has around 3.4 months’ worth of supply.

Local Lowdown San Francisco Data