Positioned as “an excellent opportunity to purchase a beautiful new construction residence in one of the hottest neighborhoods in San Francisco,” with “contemporary finishes, excellent views, and wonderful outdoor spaces,” the 1,432-square-foot, two-bedroom Bayview condo #6 at 4132 3rd Street sold for an even million dollars, or roughly $698 per square foot, in April of 2015.

Returned to the market last month listed for $1.075 million “in vibrant Bayview (aka trendy Dogpatch Extension!)”, a sale at which would represent annual appreciation of 3.9 percent over the past two years, the list price for 4132 3rd Street #6 has just been reduced to $995,000.

63 thoughts on “2015 Pricing in One of the Hottest Neighborhoods in San Francisco”
  1. I don’t see why you would pay the premium for Bayview vs Oakland unless you are commuting down the Peninsula.

    1. A couple of reasons come to mind: 1) Once the Central Subway is done in 2019, commuting to downtown from there is going to be silky smooth whereas you might not get a place in the East Bay close to Bart. 2) As you alluded to, great flexibility for getting to Peninsula area or SF proper.

      1. The commute from this area to the financial district is much easier and more consistent than the commute from the east bay. Also, although the neighborhood is not really there yet (in my opinion), you get easy access to what the rest of the city has to offer. You don’t get that from Oakland.

          1. I can’t argue with your personal opinion, but the real estate market would look very different if your opinion was the common view.

          2. The pricing is similar, or lower, psf than a typical single family home in a good Oakland neighborhood. So perhaps this thinking is more prevalent than you imagine.

          3. Pricing is not really similar for apples to apples. This loft in Emeryville @ 1500 Park Ave APT 324 is listed at under $500/sf compared to our property above at $700/sf. 1500 Park is a really cool project and much more peaceful than this unit in terms of the rail line and Bayview “street life”. There’s a free shuttle to BART and then a quick ride to downtown SF, not quite as easy but you are saving a lot of money and there is more cool stuff going on in Oakland.

          4. Unless you travel internationally often to Asia and elsewhere, I believe SFO has more flights and it is easier to get to SFO from San Francisco. Nowhere near as many flights as LAX, but more than Oakland.

          5. SFO isn’t in San Francisco — but besides that point, OAK is smaller, more user friendly, faster to the terminal, and a short easy taxi ride from where I live.

          6. Comparing a single SF neighborhood (Bayview) to an entire city (Oakland) isn’t apples to apples either, but it is a testament to how much the Bayview has to offer. Some examples:
            1. Easy access to employment hubs in UCSF, Mission Bay (Uber HQ is already rising, so are Exchange and Chase Center), South SF Biotech Hub (The Cove, Oyster Point, etc), and of course the peninsula/Silicon Valley
            2. Easy access to SFO (10 min drive)
            3. Transit oriented, walkable retail corridor with new businesses moving in (Tato, Radio Africa Kitchen, Trouble Coffee, Duc Loi, Peet’s, etc)
            4. Lots of design and food beverage makers in cool industrial spaces (Craftsman and Wolves, Flora Grubb, Galanter & Jones, Laughing Monk Brewery, Seven Stills Distillery, Gratta Wines, SF Mead Company, Sequioa Sake, Azalina’s, Feve Chocolate, etc)
            5. Existing waterfront parks, with over 300 acres in the works
            6. All the Candlestick and Hunters Pt Development under construction bringing in housing, retail, office, open space (biggest development project in all of SF)
            7. Warm, sunny weather and bay views

          7. Of course SFO isn’t in San Francisco. SF land is much too valuable to use for an airport, unlike Oakland.

          8. Nope, SF’s land is too valuable to let jumbo jets and their runaways park on it. I guess SF might have expanded to swallow a thunk of northern SM county or the nicer parts of the eastbaylands, but no need. SF has operated as a quasi-regional authority ever since the 19th century when it had a quarter of all of California’s resident population. Still does for the major aeroportal, water for millions, and some healthcare (SFGeneralZ). Some cities have to expand to dominate and control an area, some do it by stuffing the state and national capitols with their “advocates.”

          9. Just to give you an example of the impact of the new Hunter’s Point and Candlestick developments: These developments will increase the Bayview population by 1/3 over the next decade. This change will bring with it new bars, restaurants, new public transportation connections, new office space and amenities like child care providers etc. And this is before you account for the new Executive Park, Schlage Lock, India Basin and other developments which are adjacent to the neighborhood and which could easily bring another 5-10k new residents to the South East part of the city.

            Also, if you’re a nurse working at UCSF or a ticket seller at the Chase Center working NBA nights and making <75k per year. What are your options for affordable, commutable neighborhoods? BART doesn't run all night and commuting by car from the East Bay and parking in Mission Bay is neither cheap nor easy.

          10. Jake finally admits we all live under the iron-fisted rule of Imperial San Francisco — vassal states shall offer suitable tribute in the form of bedroom communities and payroll tax revenue for downtown jobs.

          11. Swiftamine of course forgot the #1 amenity adjacent to this condo: the odors emanating from the water treatment facility.

          12. “if you’re a nurse working at UCSF or a ticket seller at the Chase Center working NBA nights and making <75k per year. What are your options for affordable, commutable neighborhoods?”

            So look at your example. A 75k income in a $1M condo is levering up to 13x income! For jobs with limited stability, likely no pension and not much upside potential. And this gets you into a neighborhood that has been for decades, to put it mildly, "crime prone" with all the unanticipated expenses that entails. Plus the nearly $500/month HOA alone is 8% of your gross pay (and more if you're in the "less than" part of your example).

            This only works out great if the condo quickly rises in value so you can cash out. (Though if the condo rises to $1.2M, the next $75k buyer now has to stretch to 16x income, and the next buyer…)

            If you have people stretching 13x income to get into a marginal neighborhood at the top of the market, what kind of cushion do you have when a downturn hits?

          13. @anon2 – agree completely. As it is young single nurses at UCSF can’t afford to purchase in SF. The reality is SF is not affordable to many upper mid-level job holders. The BMR requirement is a little too late and perhaps not the best way to allocate resources to folks who qualify for BMR housing.

            Other cities are trying to avoid SF’s mistakes and don’t want to become unaffordable to their middle classes. With all the negativity that entails as we see in SF.

            The condos at Lennar HP, apart from the BMR component, will go for much more than this condo and be just as unaffordable to that hypothetical nurse.

          14. @Anon4,
            I was obviously not referring to this specific condo – which is not at all representative of condo prices in the Bayview – but to housing costs in the Bayview in general.

            An average SFH in the Bayview cost 750k in 2016 and a Condo went for 500k-700k per year. These are the lowest prices in the city and they are comparable to the East Bay.
            Now, if you’re making <75k, you would probably be renting. A 1bd condo rents for about 2-2.5k in the Bayview according to Zumper.

            Now, I know it's not great to spend 25-30k of your 60-75k salary on rent, but many many people in SF spend 40-50% of income on rent. And more importantly, what other alternatives do you have in the Bay Area? Which neighborhoods offer a better deal for a similar access to jobs?

          15. longterm and odor free don’t flow together wrt waste treatment plants, but yeah SF is spending big (billions) bucks rebuilding much of the water system and from what I’ve heard (not smelled) that plant will be much better.

            @macarthur, you left out the transportation shaftings through neighborhoods to feed the FiDi beast. Displacement at the point of a bulldozer blade. Sadly, those afflict more than just Oakland, even Bayview/Portola and SoMa/Mission/Potrero….

            But yes, I have long believed that the primary virtue of the nearly impenetrable barrier that is SF Gov is to impede the greed of those with the least need. SF hi$tory being the guide to the effects of greater efficiency.

            As to this property, I would recommend a minimum UL 752 Level 3 for all external surfaces. Perhaps we can revise the building codes, thinking longterm.

          16. @Jake: “you left out the transportation shaftings through neighborhoods to feed the FiDi beast. Displacement at the point of a bulldozer blade.”

            I compliment your poetic skills, but if urban life is such a blight for you, I really suggest you look out for a small town in the countryside. There will be much much less change and no bulldozer blades coming at you.

          17. Pero, blight is in the eye of the beholder. I’ve lived in one of the more changelingest of SF hoods long enough to have seen de-blighting by de-freewaying. Kinda miss the urban grit of the old Tar Sands, though; had a certain bloom, which gave to the palate a fine tang of faintly scent. Almost miss it enough to move to Bayview or Oakland; almost.

          18. “And more importantly, what other alternatives do you have in the Bay Area? ”
            True, but being the only choice of lower income workers is worlds away from being one of the hottest neighborhoods in San Francisco.

            “An average SFH in the Bayview cost 750k in 2016”
            Still 10x income and you trade HOA fees for insurance and upkeep expenses.

      2. The existing T-Line takes you directly to the Financial District (Embarcadero and Montgomery stations), albeit by a circular route. The new Central Subway will have a station at Union Square. I don’t think that will assist in “commuting to downtown”.

    2. just under $700 per sq ft isn’t a premium vs. Oakland; that’s pretty close to what Oakland prices are now.

      also BART and Bay Bridge are even less reliable (with breakdowns/accidents/strikes) than Muni and traffic within the city

    3. all of the following better in this location than in Oakland….baseball and basketball (in 2 yrs), opera, concerts, commute to SV, commute to downtown, ballet, better restaurants, better nightlife,

      1. mustn’t leave out that The City has better braggadocio, though Oaklanders do more with less, relatively.
        The listing should update their “neighborhood” tour, as Speakeasy halted operations last Friday. Might want to add “wonderful outdoor space” photos of the ever lovely and fragrant Southeast Treatment Plant, one block upwind.

    4. Well here are a few.
      Most of your social network may be in san francisco.
      You expect the return on your investment in sf property to be more than oak (debateable, especially a condo).
      You work in soma and bike to work.

      1. I considered the bike to work part, but then wondered how many people who can afford to drop $1m on a house would do that. Also that corridor is kinda horrible for biking.

        1. Lots of people, including affluent people, bike to work in SF. And there are good bike paths that extend through Mission Bay and the central waterfront to Bayview.

          1. And the Blue Greenway continues to get built. Trails and parks all along the southeast waterfront… creating continuous waterfront access between Bayview to the Embarcadero all the way to Crissy Field.

    1. I’m guessing that inclusion was accidental (no pun intended!) and kudos for not editing that ugly billboard out of the image. They also left in the “tail” of the streetlight in the image.

      The HDR in that image is a little unbelievable but not nearly as garish as in some other real estate listings.

  2. What a million bucks does not get you in SF. That building is mediocre looking at best, the street is cluttered with cars, there is no immediate green space. The views? One can get a much better view in the East Bay or down the Peninsula for the same price.

    Over time what one gets for the dollar in SF real estate has declined and especially so in the recent boom. More and more folks and especially those starting families are, it seems, willing to put up with a longer commute – in return for return for better quality housing and neighborhoods.

  3. How is bayview hot? In a downturn, a non-desirable area like to Bayview will be the 1st and drop the largest %. Isnt that usually the way markets work.? the homes in good locations keep their value, and those in bad locations have more up and more down

    1. It’s quite desirable now considering that regional employment growth/shift has placed it nicely centered between Downtown SF/SOMA/Mission Bay and South SF/Silicon Valley. Plus all the other reasons above.

      1. I think Swiftamine must have bought in the Bayview and is hoping that putting up with all the gunshots etc pays off some day. The nightlife and restaurants are better in Bayview? You must be sampling some of the local street products down there! Opera and theater and those other central SF amenities are a similar trip on the BART vs T line. And as far as commute goes, this will be changing as more companies relocate to Oakland, like Blue Shield for example which is about to relocate 1,200 employees.

        1. 1. I never said the nightlife and restaurants are better. Just that they’re there and growing.

          2. Again, you’re comparing all of Oakland to the Bayview, which is just one neighborhood in San Francisco. If this one SF neighborhood is comparable to an entire city, then it must be pretty substantial. Otherwise, why not compare Bayview to a single residential/industrial Oakland neighborhood? West Oakland?

          3. Some companies may move to Oakland, but that doesn’t erase the raw square footage of office space and employee counts that exist and are on the way in SF, South SF, and on the Peninsula. Also, remember Prop O.

          4. Spencer was the one referring to opera and theater, not me. Maybe he meant the Bayview Opera House. Otherwise, the Warriors’ relocation from Oakland to SF will bring concerts and games close to the Bayview.

          5. And yes, I do own here, and it’s been great living here. Like the Bayview, Oakland also regularly gets a bad rap for being “dangerous,” but some say it’s a nice place to live too 😉

      1. Someone was also shot in North Beach over the weekend. Not to mention the armed person barricading him/herself on Valencia St in the Mission and prompting a closure of the block. Those neighborhoods are such dumps, no one wants to live there.

        1. Of course, there are never any shootings or midafternoon daylight pursuits (with multiple OPD cruisers at 75 mph) in OAKLAND, the NEXUS OF THE WEST.

          Heck, in my cycling perambulations in Oakland, I have ridden through the initial setup phase of an outlaw street racing session, passed by a homicide site, and observed with fascination the car chase described above.

          Get real, people.

      2. Maybe nobody describes the multiple Oakland homicides as “brazen” because they are just expected and considered par for the course?

  4. Scoot over to hud.gov and look at the low income rental housing they are building in Mississippi. The exterior of this building in America’s richest city doesn’t look half as nice as HUD housing in our poorest state. Its a tragic wasted opportunity.

      1. It’s land value, to a large extent. But, given the dominance of this board by rentiers and other land speculators, we will ignore that.

  5. Less than half sounds irrelevant when cost of housing is 10x or more. Plenty of expensive cities have excellent design and delivery. Design costs are roughly same for good and bad design … more likely that SF developers and planners simply have poor aesthetic and developers focused on profit.

    1. Bingo. Not to mention how so many SF projects gets VE’d down and the city planners allow the developers to get away with this.

      This building looks like the Sunset special of the day. One does not need to go to Mississippi to see better residential architecture. LA, Seattle, Portland and Oakland – the recent spate of proposals are generally lots better than what SF is doing.

      Developers know they can get away with phoning their architectural plans in and most of them naturally take that easy route. Planning encourages the generally banal architecture SF has been saddled with in this recent boom cycle.

      SF is an increasingly transient city with fewer and fewer who seem to give a rip about the quality of life here.

      1. Tell it!! Where is the pushback? I sometimes think the key issue is this: IN San Francisco the “opposition” is to put it kindly, aesthetically challenged. Campos, Daly, Yee, Avalos… all clever political players in their own ways, but no more interesting in terms of their sense of aesthetics than Weiner, Breed, Farrell, Tang et al. The wild cards are Peskin and Kim, but when the stucco hits the fan, they seem to fold.

          1. BUT BUT. We are told repeatedly that all other cities are better than SF! How can you speak such heresy?

      2. Seattle has the same sort of crummy contemporary townhouse design that plagues SF. And what’s compelling about contemporary Oakland architecture?

        Your opinions are consistently not in keeping with reality, IMO. Don’t come on here as much as I used to but when I do, there you are, arguing against SF in any way you can with real forced stuff. Why? Did SF steal your lunch money?

        1. It’s downright laughable to claim that current Oakland architecture is infinitely better than SF. They are part of the same regional market, use similar regional templates, often same or similar architects and contractors.

          I mean, although [this] is not a residential building, it is the product of a wealthy, prominent Oakland institution.

          So MUCH better than SF architecture, no?

        2. I started reading Socketsite less and less over time, but when I do read it, I notice the same thing in comment threads. Why is so much time spent comparing SF and Oakland? Why does one have to be considered better than the other? I love both. I live in SF, but could easily live in Oakland, or Berkeley. The vehemence that this debate seems to inspire in people really confuses me.

          If we all wanted the exact same thing, we’d be pretty screwed.

          1. Building community self-esteem by comparing favorably with neighbors is more of a Shelbyville thing.

  6. I actually like this spacious unit with a few notable exceptions… 1. Three levels for a two bedroom/2 bathroom unit is a lot of stairs; 2. Being on Third St is not optimal. & 3. The exterior paint colors are a disaster.

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