Look, you know San Francisco is expensive. Inman knows San Francisco is expensive. Saying the market there is brutal is like calling water wet.
But do you realize just how insane things are there?
A few weeks ago a 2,400-square-foot home in San Francisco sold for $3.5 million. Not impressed? Here’s the kicker: The list price was only $2.5 million, meaning the sale price was a full million dollars over asking, and the home reportedly sold within three days of hitting the market.
464 Lansdale Ave, San Francisco. Credit: Compass
Property records compiled by Redfin show the home, 464 Lansdale Avenue, first hit the market in late October.
The listing describes the property as a “fully modernized design home,” and the photos show panoramic views of the surrounding region. Though originally built in 1958, the kitchen, bathrooms and other spaces appear to have been thoroughly updated. As a bonus, the home also boasts a two-car garage — a major selling point in relatively dense San Fransisco.
Still, $1 million over asking.
464 Lansdale Ave, San Francisco. Credit: Compass
Speaking to local news station KRON4, Compass agents Richard Woo and Holly Phan — who held the listing — said the asking price was intended to be a fair one.
The home’s previous owner purchased the property from the same agents two years earlier for $1.4 million, according to KRON4.
“We didn’t price the house low — it was priced based on area comps so when we saw the offer come in at more than $1 million over asking with no contingencies, it was amazing and we thought, is this real?” Woo told the station.
Woo went on to say that the house had been completely remodeled, and all three offers the listing ultimately elicited were more than $500,000 over asking.
464 Lansdale Ave, San Francisco. Credit: Compass
Bonkers as this particular latest sale is, the thing that’s most amazing is that it’s actually becoming more of a case study in Bay Area real estate rather than an outlier. Case in point: In September, a property nicknamed “the treehouse in the sky” for its views of the city sold for $5.6 million, a full $2.1 million above asking.
“We were blown away by the offers and the final price,” Aaron Bellings, the Compass agent who held the listing, said at the time.
These two sales follow years of headlines about San Francisco’s housing market becoming increasingly unaffordable. The rise of remote work has allowed other parts of the country to outpace the Bay Area’s price growth during the coronavirus pandemic, but the region continues to have the most expensive community in the U.S.
464 Lansdale Ave, San Francisco. Credit: Compass
There’s also no indication the Bay Area is becoming meaningfully more affordable. Indeed, Woo told KRON4 that while the home on Lansdale Avenue elicited the highest over-asking offer he’s seen, other listings have also generated sales far above their listing prices.
“People will pay [a] premium right now,” he concluded, “when the house is prepared right.”
