Sales of San Francisco homes above $5 million nearly doubled in 2026, from 61 to 116 through the end of July. Homes above $10 million went from selling at 84% of asking to 102%, with median time on market dropping from 47 days to 10. Meanwhile the headline data says luxury median prices fell 6.5%, which is true and also completely misleading. Both things are happening because the homes entering the luxury data set changed, not because prices dropped.
A house on Spruce came on the market this year asking $3.995 million. It sold for $8.2 million.
I did not misspeak. That’s not a typo. And it’s not even the most extreme thing that has happened this year.
My team and I have sold more homes in San Francisco this year and last year than any other agent in the city, and I’ll tell you plainly: this is the hottest market I have seen in my 17 years of doing this.
So here’s what doesn’t add up. If you pulled a standard market report right now, it would tell you the median price of luxury homes in San Francisco is down by 6%. Both of those things cannot be true at the same time.
Below I’ll show you exactly how hot the market actually is with the data, then why that headline number says the opposite, and then what it means depending on which side of the transaction you’re on.
Same city, same 7 months (January through the end of July), same data set.
Hold onto that third one. I’m going to come back to it, and the answer is genuinely interesting.
But the volume number doesn’t begin to capture what’s actually happening out there, because there are two luxury markets in San Francisco right now and they are not doing the same thing.
This range is functionally an auction.
Here’s what changed. In 2025, and honestly in every year before that, we would tell buyers shopping above $5 million to settle in. Buyers could take their time. Prices were not moving quickly. Inventory was not moving quickly. A buyer could walk through a house multiple times, go look at something else, decide to let one go and figure another would come along later. The market might move up a bit in the meantime, but not dramatically.
That is gone. If you’re shopping in that range this year, and we’re working with a lot of you, you are going to be massively out of budget if you’re looking at the list price. That’s new. And if you think you’re going to get something at that list price, you’re probably going to have to lose a lot of houses before you understand why.
The volume barely moved, but the behavior changed completely.
Sales went from 10 in 2025 to 13 in 2026 across the same period. That’s the whole story on volume. Now look at how those sales happened.
In 2025: the typical sale in that segment closed at 84% of asking. People were listing high and planning to wait. Average time on market was 47 days. Most of those sales closed below list price, at around 95%. What you had were stalemates. Sellers would not come down, buyers would not come up, and the listing would sit.
In 2026: 102% of asking. 10 days on market, down from 47. Only 2 sales closed at that 95% level.
For the first time I can remember, we are seeing genuine bidding wars above $10 million. That has not been a thing in San Francisco. Four homes listed below $10 million this year sold above it.
The one you probably caught in the news: 2512 Union Street, asking $7.95 million, sold for $15 million. I saw a house that was very, very similar to it, not far away, and that would have put the comp closer to $11 million. It sold for $15.
And that became the new comp for the neighborhood. A lot of times people look at a sale like that and ask whether it’s an outlier, and then the next sale behind it just follows suit. Somebody really wants a home, really jumps for it, and now they’ve created a whole new price for every buyer who comes after.
There were 4 separate sales in San Francisco this year with spreads that large, differences of $2 million to $5 million between list price and sale price at those very high numbers.
Two honest caveats. Above roughly $20 million there’s still a bit more negotiation play, though those houses are still moving really fast and a lot of times they’re moving off-market. And some list prices are set deliberately low, which exaggerates the percentages. It depends on whether a result got pushed up because somebody really wanted it and bid high, or because the listing agent intentionally priced it low.
To be honest, early in the year we had no data. The market was moving up in 2026 at such a fast rate that listing agents had to rely on previous data. Then those overbids happened, and we all saw it: the buyers are here, and this pricing strategy is resonating. So now it’s a question of whether this is the new strategy for San Francisco or whether we find our way back toward more accurate pricing.
One more detail worth flagging: every single one of the 13 sales above $10 million recorded in MLS was a single family home. Not one condo, not one co-op, not one TIC. Last year, 2 co-ops cleared $10 million.
If I made you guess which band is hottest, you’d probably pick the cheapest one. If you did, you’d be wrong.
| Price band | 2025 (% of original asking) | 2026 (% of original asking) |
|---|---|---|
| $5M to $6.5M | 98.3% | 106% |
| $6.5M to $8M | 98% | 115% |
| $8M to $10M | 97% | 108% |
| Above $10M | 84% | 102% |
Comparing sale price against original asking price:
The $6.5 million to $8 million band is by far the strongest segment. Above $10 million is the biggest single jump, because that market went from a list-high, offer-low standoff to much more accurate pricing and much faster movement.
Take every home in San Francisco listed at $5 million or more and ask one question: did it actually close at or above $5 million?
The failure rate dropped by more than 80%.
Here’s the whole year in 2 sentences. Last year, 4 listings could not hold $5 million. This year, 26 homes that weren’t even asking $5 million got over it.
And here’s a rule worth keeping, whichever side you’re on. If you want to know whether a market is strong, don’t only ask what things sold for. Ask what fraction of sellers got what they actually asked for.
Because the median is not a price. It’s a position.
This is probably the single most useful thing in this post, so pay attention to this part.
Line up every sale from cheapest to most expensive. The median is whatever is sitting in the middle. That means the median can move for 2 completely different reasons:
Those are entirely different situations. The first means the market moved down. The second means the sample moved.
In San Francisco, the sample moved. Here’s why.
San Francisco doesn’t build new single family homes. We are a city that is 7 miles by 7 miles, and it’s built out. Housing stock changes very, very slowly unless it’s condos.
So if sales above $5 million suddenly went from 61 to 116, where did those additional 55 homes come from? No one manufactured 55 brand new luxury homes. They were already here. They were just sitting below $5 million.
If you’re a buyer out there walking through a listing thinking “this does not look like a $5 million house,” you’re not wrong. Last year it was a $4 million house, or a $3.8 million house. What changed is what got on the list.
And that matters because the lower you go in price, the more homes there are. There are more homes worth $4M to $5M than $5M to $6M, and more in that range than $6M to $7M. The market thins as the price rises.
So when prices rise across the board, a fixed threshold like $5 million starts sweeping through the thickest part of the market. Homes that used to sell for $4.5 million are now trading for $5.5 or $6 million. The moment they cross $5 million, they enter that luxury set.
Those new sales enter below where the old middle used to be. Add enough of them and something strange starts to happen: the median falls while the homes themselves get more expensive.
The numbers back this up. The $5M to $6M band went from about a third of luxury sales to 41%, from 20 sales in 2025 to 47 in 2026. And 42 homes asking between $4 million and $5 million sold this year, with 40% closing above $5 million. Last year, 31 homes were listed in that range and zero closed above $5 million.
Narrowing to single family homes only, because that’s where most of the buyers we work with are focused:
| Single family homes above $5M | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of sales | 50 | 46 | 87 |
| Median price | $6.5M | $7.5M | $6.85M |
| Median price per sq ft | $1,566 | $1,611 | $1,950 |
| Houses listed under $5M that sold above it | 5 | 0 | 20 |
If median price were all you had, you’d say the market surged and then gave some back. But price per square foot went up 3%, then up 21%. What buyers actually paid clearly went in one direction, and then that increase got dramatically bigger.
That last row is what changed my interpretation of the whole thing. Looking at 2026 alone, 20 looks like the unusual number. Put 2024 next to it and you realize zero is the unusual number.
The functional entry point for a luxury house in San Francisco is no longer $5 million. I think it’s closer to $7 or $8 million, in terms of how a home feels when you walk in there. That varies by neighborhood, and there are certainly neighborhoods where a $5 million home still feels like a luxury home.
Practically:
And the thing underneath all of it: we don’t have a double in new luxury homes. We have luxury homes that didn’t used to be luxury that are moving up. Everything is moving up and it’s very, very competitive. Above $10 million, buyers are now competing for houses, which was not common less than a year ago.
Competition is working. That goes for a luxury property or, honestly, any property. It used to be that we had several different pricing strategies to choose from, and now going low is working almost everywhere, including above $10 million.
More inventory came on this year, about 10% more homes, and buyers just gobbled them up. If you talk to real estate agents in San Francisco, every single one of them will tell you we have more buyers at one time than we’ve ever had in our entire careers.
So if you have a luxury property and you thought about selling before but couldn’t quite get there on price, there’s a good chance you could now.
That said, no, this does not mean you can ask for any number you want. I get calls after these videos from people who have a $5 million home and want 10. I can show you comps from this exact market where sellers thought that and it didn’t work out so well for them. The market will not pay anything. Don’t get overly greedy.
No, and this is where experience really matters.
Underpricing only creates competition when you have a deep enough buyer pool to sustain an auction. At lower price points in the city, we’ve been doing this for years and years and there’s enough activity to sustain it. Above $10 million, the buyer pool has historically been so small that it would never have worked. That’s what changed.
But we have multiple properties we’re working on right now where the buyer pool is just smaller. A home on a really busy street, no parking, or tandem parking on a luxury property: all of those are reasons to price closer to value. If you can only count on 2 buyers instead of 10 or 15, those 2 are not going to push the price as high as you might need to see.
You cannot use a one-size-fits-all pricing strategy. The nuances and the experience really, really do matter.
[INTERNAL LINK: home valuation / what’s my home worth page]
1. This is the strongest luxury market I’ve seen here in 17 years.
2. The median is a position, not a price. When it moves, check whether the membership of the list changed before you conclude anything about values.
3. You can still take your time. Your competition isn’t. If you thought the luxury buying experience was one where you could really take your time, you can. You can do whatever you want. But the buyer you’re competing with is dropping everything, going to see that home, and arriving ready to compete to win.
If you’re trying to figure out where your specific property sits in all of this, or you’re looking at a home and wondering what it’s actually going to take, contact me and we can go through your situation. It is confusing out there right now, and figuring out what homes are actually worth is exactly where you need an agent to help you out.
