Yes, you read that right.
In one of the hottest Spring markets San Francisco has seen in years, we’ve been telling some of our buyer clients to pump the brakes. Not because the market is bad — because it’s been on fire. In real estate, like in investing, knowing when to sit out is just as important as knowing when to strike.
Here’s the full picture — including why we think a narrow window might be cracking open right now.
First, the Numbers 📊
Let’s talk about how hot this Spring actually was.
Across all of San Francisco, for all property types combined, prices are up 14.7% year-over-year. But zoom in on single-family homes? Up 22.8%. Condos? Up 20.5%. (And, more in hot neighborhoods.) All of that — in a single year.
The energy people were throwing at offers was palpable. On multiple occasions this Spring, we watched bidding wars escalate beyond reason. And on those occasions, we did something some agents might not: we suggested that our clients walk away.
Why? Because we believe in protecting our clients from themselves in the heat of the moment, just as much as we believe in fighting for them when the deal is right.
The Age-Old Question: When Is the Right Time to Buy? 🏡
There’s a saying in real estate (and investing) that holds up every time:
“Time in the market is more important than timing the market.”
If you’re buying your forever home — or even a 10+ year home — this is essentially all you need to know. Get in as soon as you can. Full stop.
Don’t believe me? Just look at this 35-year chart that says everything:
Single-family homes in San Francisco have appreciated by 648% over the last 35 years, with a median price of $2,150,000 as of March 2026. Yes, there are dips along the way. But the trend line is unmistakably up and to the right.
And the wealth-building implications are staggering. Research cited by the Federal Reserve data shows that the real household net worth per capita for homeowners reached $396,200 in 2022, vs. just $10,400 for renters. That’s not a small gap. That’s a completely different financial life.
But if you’re looking at a 5-7 year horizon? You care a lot more about where you’re buying in the cycle. And that’s where it gets interesting…
Here's the Controversial Part: Is a Window Opening?
We don’t have hard data yet — real estate data always lags by at least a month. But we’re on the ground every single day, and our instincts are telling us something may be shifting. Very subtly. Very quietly. But shifting.
Here are 3 examples of very simple indicators we’ve seen, just this week:
- #1: Fewer Offers on Good Homes. We recently got a buyer into contract on a single-family home in SF — a great property with one complication (related to past tenants). Once we confirmed the risk was manageable, we wrote the offer. The home received 3 offers total. We strongly believe that the same home would have received 7-10 offers earlier this Spring.
- # 2: Agents Are Working Harder In a hot market, listing agents wave around high disclosure download counts like a prize. Right now? I’m seeing more agents call me to ask if my buyer is still interested. There’s a subtle nervousness in some of those conversations. That tells me not every agent is confident they can just list and watch the bidding war begin.
- #3: Some Buyers Are Pulling Back. Geopolitical uncertainty, tariff noise, inflation concerns — some buyers are retreating to the sidelines. And while that’s understandable, this is exactly where we invoke our favorite Warren Buffett quote: “Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”
We've Called This Before 👀
A quick bit of receipts: On August 1, 2025, we published a newsletter titled “This Might Be the Best Time to Buy in SF (Here’s Why).” At the time, our indicator was that we were seeing the rental market surge and sensed the sales market was just barely lagging behind.
Now, looking at the data, you can see that August 2025 was indeed the start of a lull — the market softened through October before picking back up and ultimately soaring into 2026. We spotted that window in real time, before the data confirmed it.
Are we saying we’re in that same moment right now? We’re saying it’s possible. And if we’re right, this window will be short.
The IPO Wave Is Coming — and It Always Moves Housing 🚀
Here’s the macro tailwind that makes us pay extra attention to any opening in the market right now.
The Bay Area is sitting on the edge of the largest IPO wave in history. (Thank you, AI)
OpenAI, Anthropic, Databricks, SpaceX, Rippling, and Cerebras are all preparing to list, with combined private valuations that could exceed the entire 2025 U.S. IPO market by 2 to 4 times. We’re already seeing early liquidity — OpenAI employees sold $6.6 billion in stock last fall, with per-employee sale caps rising as high as $30 million, accelerating pre-IPO wealth conversion.
This matters enormously for SF housing — and history tells us exactly why.
A UC Berkeley economics study (from 2021) examining 711 Bay Area IPOs over 20 years (1996–2015) found that IPO offer size had a statistically significant impact on home values not just in the same zip code as the company’s headquarters, but up to 20 miles away — and the effect showed up in both the short and long term.
We’ve seen this play out in real time, too. In 2019, when stock markets soared, and Bay Area unicorns went public in quantity, the spring market rebounded dramatically — and Q2 2019 median home sales prices surpassed the highs hit in 2018.
Unlike in past booms, AI companies may not even need to go public to unlock vast wealth for their workers — secondary sales are already underway. But when the IPOs do hit, the capital concentration in San Francisco (where most of these companies are headquartered, not the South Bay) could be massive.
If there’s a brief moment of relative calm before that wave hits — this could be it.
But, We’ll Say it Again: The Long Game Always Wins ✨
Even if you don’t nail the timing, history is overwhelmingly on your side as a Bay Area homeowner.
- SF single-family homes have appreciated 648% over 35 years
- Homeowners hold a real household net worth nearly 38x that of renters
- Bay Area housing prices rose 14% year-over-year, with average luxury property values reaching $7 million, up from $5 million in 2020, and the pipeline for future demand is only growing
So, What Does This All Mean for You?
If you’re a long-term buyer: There will always be a reason to wait. Interest rates. Headlines. Elections. Uncertainty. But the people who bought through those moments — on balance — are the ones who built wealth. Get in when you can.
If you’re a 5-7 year buyer trying to time it, pay attention right now. The very slight softening we’re seeing on the ground — combined with the IPO-driven surge we anticipate in the back half of this year — suggests this might be a narrow window. We don’t have hard data yet (it will lag). But we’re watching, and we’ll tell you what we see.
If you’re a seller: The market has been exceptionally strong. If you’ve been sitting on the fence about listing, conditions remain favorable — but strategy still REALLY matters. The homes that are winning are the ones that are prepared, priced correctly, and marketed well. The ones that aren’t? They’re either sitting and/or getting fewer offers.
As always, we don’t say any of this to create urgency for its own sake. We say it because this is exactly what we’d tell our closest friends and family — which is the standard we hold ourselves to every time.
If you want to talk through what this means for your specific situation, you know where to find us. 📩
