There’s the notion that a million dollars is the price you have to pay if you want to play in San Francisco’s red hot real estate market. After all, the most expensive properties get a lot of media attention– But if the median price is $1,160,000, that means almost half the properties on the market are selling for under $1 million.
Of those sub-million dollar properties, the majority are neither Below Market Rate units nor fixer-uppers, instead livable turn-key homes (search homes here). Socketsite recently published news of a double-digit uptick in the number of six-figure single-family homes for sale. Just this week, this two-bedroom single-family home in San Francisco’s Excelsior neighborhood sold for $630,000. The property is already occupied by an unprotected month-to-month tenant agreeable to paying market rent, making this a positive cashflow investment for the non-occupant buyer:
Year to date, Excelsior has in fact had the most six-figure single-family home sales of any neighborhood:
Last week, this two-bedroom two-bathroom condominium at the amenity-rich Telegraph Landing in San Francisco’s North Waterfront neighborhood sold for $950,000. It’s one of the almost 200 two-bedroom condos that have sold in 2015 so far:
First-time homebuyer, investor, mom & pop… a million dollars is a lot of money to almost everyone, and opportunities do really exist beyond the hype of million dollar listings. Sure, prices have been reaching new peaks month after month, climbing to daunting highs. But actually San Francisco real estate is still more affordable now than at the height of the market in 2007, thanks to low mortgage interest rates:
The frenzy that exists in San Francisco’s real estate market right now may be attributed to many factors: a booming local economy, low inventory, very few new residential developments, consumer confidence, credit availability, etc. As the city continues to stake its place as a world class destination, I believe prices will continue to rise — perhaps up to $3,000 per square foot, on par with Tokyo, Sydney and London. With that in mind, it may be only a matter of time before sub-million dollar home sales in the city are a thing of the past. Never underestimate the voracity of the San Francisco market!
Meredith Martin is a Broker Associate at Paragon Real Estate Group and can be reached at Meredith@OpeningDoors.me
