San Francisco’s median house price climbs to $1.61 million

The median price of a single-family home in San Francisco rose to yet another all-time high by quarter in Q1 of 2018, according to a report released Wednesday by Paragon Real Estate economist Patrick Carlisle, this time hitting $1.61 million.

If accurate, this figure means that the price of a San Francisco house has nearly doubled just since 2013 and soared more than 23.8 percent since Q1 of 2017, when Paragon calculated a median of $1.3 million.

For comparison, here’s how price year-over-year prices in the first quarter breakdown for the past five years:

• 2017: $1.3 million, down 0.76 percent
• 2016: $1.31 million, up 19 percent
• 2015: $1.1 million, up 13.28 percent
• 2014: $971,000, up 14.23 percent
• 2013: $850,000, up 27.8 percent

While this year-over-year spike is not the largest in recent memory, it’s still a disconcertingly big jump, and the ongoing pile-up of new all-time highs remains as flagrant as ever.

In fact, if you isolate the figures from February, the situation looks even more dire. But Carlisle cautions readers that focusing only on that short-term data is potentially misleading:

We are not enthusiastic about monthly median price movements since they tend to bounce around without great meaningfulness due to a number of factors and sales volumes are very low in the first 2 months of the year, but for what it is worth the SF median house price soared to a new high in February 2018 to $1,715,000. (100 sales across 70-odd neighborhoods, reported to MLS by 3/7/18—late reported sales may affect this price.)

Note that the report also records a median SF condo price of more than $1.17 million, up 4.5 percent year over year. Back in 2013 the price was about $850,000, but it’s risen by less than $100,000 since Q1 of 2015.

Carlisle cites all sales reported to MLS for the first three months of 2018. It should be noted that the data does not reflect homes sold in non-public deals off the open market.

         By Thierry Guinet

The California Association of Realtors has not yet released its own estimates for the full first quarter, but CAR figures from January and February mirror Paragon’s data, recording a median single-family home price of $1.33 million and $1.73 million for those two months, respectively, in San Francisco County.

That’s roughly three times the statewide median during the same period and the highest for any California county except perhaps San Mateo, which registered a slightly higher average than SF in January but also a slightly lower price in February.

For the curious, the median price of a single family SF home on Redfin right now is $1.68 million. On Zillow it’s $1.59 million, and on Trulia about $1.5 million.

Since these sites do not include every home listed in the city right now, and since prices today don’t necessarily reflect those from the previous three months, those figures don’t necessarily compare to those in Q1 reports.

• Q1 San Francsico 2018 [Paragon]
• County Sales Activity, 2018 [CAR]
• San Francisco Listings, Redfin
• San Francisco Listings, Zillow
• San Francisco Listings, Trulia