With the number of homes that were listed for sale in San Francisco over the past week having outpaced the number of purchase contracts that were written, the net number of homes on the market in the city ticked up 2 percent to 990, representing 28 percent fewer listings than there were on the MLS at the same time last year, when inventory levels spiked, but 55 percent more than there were prior to the pandemic and twice as many as there were in July of 2015.

At a more granular basis, listed single-family home inventory is holding at around 290 active listings, which is 17 percent lower than at the same time last year, while the number of condos on the market has inched up 690, which is 31 percent lower than at the same time last year.

But as we noted last week, the average list price per square foot of all the homes on the market in San Francisco has dropped back under $1,000 per square foot. And in fact, the average list price per square foot for homes in the city is now down 5 percent on a year-over-year basis with the average sale price per square foot in San Francisco proper having slipped 2 percent over the past year to around $1,035 per square foot despite some misreports to the contrary.

Expect inventory levels in San Francisco to drop next month before jumping again in September. We’ll keep you posted and plugged-in.

17 thoughts on “Inventory Inches Up in S.F., Price Per Square Foot Down”
  1. Data from the autumn selling season will be telling as that’s when many offices are returning to work in some form, Delta variant notwithstanding. Curious to see if SF gets a bump or whether the East Bay continues its ascent. My guess is East Bay, with SF staying flat-ish.

    1. You’re probably right about the East Bay. It just came out that the best retail markets in the Bay Area are Oakland (lots of new stores signing leases) followed by Walnut Creek. The growth of jobs there and well paying jobs are cited as the reasons for the retail vibrancy of Oakland and Walnut Creek.

    2. “Delta variant notwithstanding.”

      Not so sure about that. Apple just pushed back their scheduled return to office and I think many will follow suit if the current case surge continues.

      Frankly, I don’t understand why cases are going up in SF since we have 80+% with at least one dose, plus the people with immunity from prior infection. But I think that RTO dates will keep getting pushed as long this continues. (And ironically, I hear that in some places people left to, which have much lower vaccination rates then SF, the case increase is much worse then here.)

      1. Recent studies indicate that while a full two-dose regimen is incredibly effective against the Delta variant, a single dose is considerably less effective than it was against previous variants. A July study in nature (abstract in namelink) said a single dose of Pfizer or AZ “barely inhibited” Delta, whereas two doses provided 95% protection; and that sera from those previously infected with earlier variants were “4fold less potent against variant Delta.”

      2. “Frankly, I don’t understand why cases are going up in SF”:

        There’s no mystery:
        – the vaccines aren’t 100% effective, and
        – < 100% have been vaccinated

        In short, you might remember from school the only way to get zero when you multiply two numbers together is for one – or both – of them to (already) be zero. They aren't

        1. Obviously it hasn’t worked out that way, but there was talk that once we hit somewhere around 80+% vaccination/infected cases would slowly drift down to nothing due to heard immunity. I didn’t think we needed 100% of people getting 100% effective vaccines. I hadn’t heard that about Delta. My understanding was that for the original COVID you got very significant protection even shortly after the first dose.

          1. The story is still unfolding as to the long term efficacy of the vaccine. Pelosi and Biden’s aides were fully vax’d and they got Covid over the past few days.

          2. I believe the ‘r” for Delta is much higher…so the cutoff will be higher; ‘herd immunity’ equates to GRADUAL disappearance…not instantaneous. And regardless, I don’t think we ever hit the magic number – 70-80% – even for the original.

        2. Don’t know exactly what SF’s population is these days but 20% of 835,000 (guessing) is 167,000 folks walking around SF that are not vaccinated at all. Add to that those that only got one jab. Add to that the number of vaccinated people who can carry the virus asymptomatically and pass it to unvaccinated people. Notice how many have ditched the masks?

  2. the latest estimates are that there are 880K people in SF. only 69% are FULLY vaccinated. that means that there are 272,800 people walking around who are not fully vaccinated. That’s still a lot of dry powder.

    Delta is >2x contagious (much higher R), so instead of getting to 70-75% fully vaccinated for herd immunity, we now have to get to 85-90%. at this point, we wont get there, but we still can completely defang the virus. need to get vaccine approved for children <12 to have a shot at wiping it out.

    1. Someone commented to me that the herd immunity models assume a uniform distribution. And if you have some connected groups with high immunity mixed with some groups with low immunity that changes things. i.e. having 80% of people randomly vaccinated/immune is not the same as having 80% of people fully immune and 20% with no immunity (assuming tight connections/contacts within each group) You’d think this would average out the same, but I guess the exponential growth in the un-immune clusters can dominate the case reductions in the hyper-immune clusters.

      1. Of course; now take this to a national level: say 80% of the country was vaccinated but it was 100% in states making up 80% of the population and 0% elsewhere (or more realistically we might say 90%/85% + 25% elsewhere) there would be whole states it could sweep thru.
        Just hypotheticalyl, of course. ?

      2. this is correct. unvaxed people probably associate with unvaxed people meaning more contact and spread. the herd immunity pictorials you see show the unvaxxed spread and protected among the vaxxed, but if they are associated and not just randomly mixed in, the unvaxxed will continue to burn like dry kindling sitting next to each other, instead of spread out. just look at the parts of the city where its spreading now. not evenly distributed at all

  3. I personally know 3 people who have it right now and those are the first people I actually know who have gotten covid since the pandemic started.

    Shza’s study above notwithstanding, Isreal says the vaccine fails 35% of the time for the Delta variant (name link).

    And SF infections are doubling every three days. The slope of the graph is steeper than it has ever been since the start of the pandemic that was not on or immediately after a holiday. We’re already higher in daily case counts than we were last July when vaccines were unavailable. Search: COVID-19 Cases and Deaths – San Francisco Open Data

    1. Reminder: even when the vaccine doesn’t prevent infection, it will probably keep you out of the ICU.

      1. but it does prevent symptomatic infection, at least 95% of the time. a positive covid test in a vaxed person without symtoms is simply a positive test, meaning theyve been exposed. it doesnt mean they can spread or will get sick. PCR tests are very sensitive and can pick up a very small viral load

        1. all of the phase 3 studies looked at symptomatic infection, not just positive tests. so they are 95% effective against symptomatic disease

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