I have not found that to be true unless you are looking for a standalone single family home. If you are looking at condos, SF has had good deals during the pandemic as that particular market segment has been hammered.
> The median-priced home in San Francisco sells for $1.5 million, according to Paragon. It's not uncommon for buyers to bid hundreds of thousands above asking and pay in all cash.
Who are these people? There are a lot of homes there, so there must be a whole lot of buyers with $1M in cash. There are enough of them that they even try to outbid each other by slapping an extra $100k no top of asking price.
This is city- and neighborhood- dependent. San Francisco as a whole is seeing 8% YoY gains [1], while Menlo Park has seen 0% median sales price growth [2]. Nearby Redwood City is seeing 10% growth [3].
The rate of increase is lower than in 2017, but most places in the SF Bay Area are still experiencing high growth rates. Those rates are apparently more in line with historical norms rather than the white-hot multiple-cash-offers waived-contingencies heyday of 2016 and 2017.
I don't doubt that there are many price drops. Realtors expecting offers 30% over ask likely were setting list prices with too much growth expectation and had to reset to the comparables' sales price. Last year using the current comps' sales prices would have been listing the home too low.
Despite the dubious "tech exodus" there are still a lot of insanely wealthy people in this city. One recent example being a house in a not-particularly-desirable neighborhood selling for $1million over asking price:
Seeing this firsthand, Sold our house in southern California in mid 2022. Moved to another state and regretted it. Looking to buy back in our area(also looking at another area if we can't find something in socal). Both me and my Wife are extremely high earners(Staff FANG comp for me and HR Director salary for Wife) and we are shocked at how expensive things have become in our old city(not naming it as I don't want more people looking there!).
Basically when we bought there during the early stages of the pandemic(mid 2020) most decent/somewhat updated 3 br 2 bath houses were between $800k to $1.2M, with some really nice ones $1.4M to $1.6M. Now the same houses are $1.7M to $2.1M which is basically a doubling of prices, and oh you have 7% interest rates which make housing payments insane. The local wages do not support these housing prices and being a rational person myself it is quite frustrating.
Our realtor is saying alot of the offers(about 75%) she has been seeing are coming from either SF or SF bay area as things are falling apart up there and families want to get out while they can(this is what they are telling her). And alot of all cash buyers have beaten us in almost every offer we have made, so a decent amount of these buyers are from northern california.
Also, Bay Area homes in expensive areas (PA, SF, Berkely, etc) tend to sell for far over their list price. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if this particular listing went for $1MM over list.
As a comparison though, people are paying 100K over asking without blinking in South Bay for already overpriced real estate in the last 2 months. I've even seen bidding up of rental prices in the last month. 10K sound pretty good in comparison.
In a place with higher supply and less demand, I'd absolutely agree with you, but in SF, that property will get snapped up within a week regardless of whether it's listed at $3k or $5k.
In the SF bay area people are throwing $4, 5, 6 million at houses in cash all over the place. No contingencies, 7 day closing. The high end of the market has slowed a lot, though, and houses are having to repeatedly lower prices to get bids. The market up to about $4M has not slowed noticeably, possibly because supply has slowed more quickly than demand; people are still bidding hundreds of thousands over asking.
Prices in the east bay are still way over asking and there is a lot of cash. My wife and I paid $75k over asking for our 1300ft2, 1 bed, 1 bath house in north oakland just shy of a year ago. We bid on 6 houses total and every one of those was in the same ballpark over ask.
I'm not sure what it's like over the hills, but in north oakland and berkeley you'll still have to pay over asking and compete against 5-10 other bids.
> Bay Area real estate agents say the market has remained strong in certain areas — especially for starter homes listed at or below the region’s median sale price.
It must be mentioned that SF housing prices - i.e price for median homes - are now nearing levels where regular people may never be able to pay off their mortgage. And these homes are increasing 15% in price, every year.
I don't really buy this. if you're going to be at a hot startup for 4 years and can easily afford a house the way the SF bay market has been for the past 2 decades is such that you would've made money in any 4 year period just buying and selling. covid might be the single exception.
I think the issue is more that sf people are rich for the country but not rich for the bay area so they just rent.
Yep, even during a global pandemic San Francisco still has property selling, and many of them for over asking.
[1]https://thefrontsteps.com/2020/05/08/pandemic-pricing-or-jus...
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