The rest of the country may be cooling off, but our San Francisco market update is doing the opposite.
While national home prices are declining and new listings are shrinking, SF is seeing rising prices, fierce buyer competition, and an incredibly tight supply of homes for sale. As top San Francisco realtors with over two decades of experience in this market (and all its ups and downs), we’ll break down exactly what's happening and what it means for you heading into spring.
In short: AI money.
The surge in AI startup activity across the city has created a wave of new demand from well-compensated tech workers, many of them eager to put down roots in SF. Valuations at local AI companies have been climbing fast, and that's translating directly into employee wealth and buying power. At the same time, the supply of homes for sale remains far below what the market needs.
The result is a market where homes sell quickly, bidding wars are common, and sellers are in an enviable position. And it’s not limited to single-family houses. San Francisco’s condo market, which lagged for a couple of years, is experiencing a real comeback. Rents are climbing too, driven by the influx of younger tech workers who want to live close to where the action is.
Meanwhile, national consumer confidence remains shaky and employment worries persist in other parts of the country. But those headwinds aren't showing up in the San Francisco market update numbers. As has been the case for the past couple of years, more affluent buyers continue to play an outsized role in local demand.
Extremely tight.
January saw just 440 new listings hit the market in San Francisco, a 22% drop compared to last January. And the “months of supply” metric (a measure of how long it would take to sell every home on the market at the current pace) is down a staggering 43% year over year.
Here’s a snapshot of where things stand:
To put that 1.2 months of supply in context:
San Francisco has rarely exceeded 3 months of supply since 2012. (See the chart below.) The exceptions were the early COVID period in mid-2020 and the rate-hike adjustment period in 2023. Right now, we’re well below even the seller’s market threshold, and the spring rush is just getting started. In the SF Bay Area, the “spring market” often kicks off in February.
Note: All data referenced in this San Francisco market update is via agent-reported data from SFARMLS and Infosparks.
Explore San Francisco neighborhoods to see how conditions vary across different parts of the city.
Yes, SF home prices are rising. This trend stands in contrast to the national picture. Nationally, the median listing price fell 2.4% year over year in late January, the largest weekly price drop on record since Realtor.com started tracking in 2018. Slower sales and growing inventory in many regions are putting downward pressure on prices across the country.
San Francisco is a different story. Over the 3-month period spanning the slower months of November 2025 through January 2026, median sales prices rose 5.6% year over year citywide across all property types.
A few more price data points worth noting:
Of course, there’s really no single “national housing market.” Conditions vary enormously by region, state, city, and even neighborhood. (Stay tuned for our upcoming blog post about how there's no single “San Francisco housing market” either.)
The median is the middle value when you line up all sales from lowest to highest. (Here’s a more detailed explanation.) We use the median instead of the mean (average) because a few very high or low sales can skew the average in misleading ways.
But the median has its own quirks.
Right now, an outsized share of sales activity is happening at the high end of the market, driven by luxury demand from well-paid tech employees and stock market gains. When a cluster of $5M homes sell, it pushes the median up, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a $1M home is now worth more.
There is a rising-tide effect. Limited housing stock plus growing demand adds to scarcity across all price points. But for first-time buyers and those not riding the AI wealth wave, the experience of buying a more modestly priced home (which is still expensive, because SF) can feel very different from the headline numbers.
If you’re thinking about selling your San Francisco home in this market, the data makes a strong case for acting sooner rather than later.
Here’s some welcome news: purchasing power is stronger today than it was a year ago. That’s true whether you’re buying with a mortgage, cash, or somewhere in-between.
On mortgage rates:
On stock markets:
Between better borrowing costs and strong investment portfolios, homebuyer purchasing power is at a multi-year high as we head into spring. For buyers working with an experienced SF agent, this creates real opportunities to move strategically and offer competitively without giving away the farm.
We anticipate an active spring market in 2026. With supply this low and demand this strong, competition among buyers will be intense for some property types and neighborhoods. For sellers, the conditions are favorable, but pricing and presentation strategy matter enormously. The homes that generate the most interest and the highest offers are consistently the ones with smart preparation, expert staging, and compelling marketing.
Read more: The Strategy of Home Staging in San Francisco Real Estate
Buying or selling, having a top SF real estate team in your corner makes a real difference. You can read some of our client case studies to see what that looks like in practice, or learn more about our team here.
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