Maximum Overbid: Laying Out a Classic $2 Million ’80s Home
Sometimes it’s the minor things you really love: In this case, certain floorplans. Truth is, there’s actually nothing all that remarkable about the layout of our top overbid of the week, the Outer...
View ArticleInside a $45,000/month San Francisco Apartment
Maximum Luxury is a Front Steps column where we sneak a peek at the most expensive home listings in San Francisco just because we can. But today we’re going to wander a bit outside of our sphere with...
View ArticleMaximum Overbid: Will SF Home Prices Finally Dip?
This week’s top overbid, 546 Head, is a real looker, even though the sellers marketed it as a real fixer; if the new owners do overhaul this one we hope they spare some of the woodwork, because there’s...
View ArticleSF Condos Are Taking Longer To Sell. Does It Matter?
We keep hearing that SF condos are in decline. It’s a plausible idea; as we’ve noted already, condos are virtually all the city has built these last ten years, and they’ve proven fairly sensitive to...
View ArticleMaximum Overbid: Summer Slowdown Speeds Right Back Up
Looks like last week’s slow week for overbids was just that: A slow week. This week on SF’s housing front everything is right back to the business of business as usual, with a top overbid that not only...
View ArticleSF’s Top Neighborhoods Are the Marina, Noe Valley, Richmond, and the...
The spring quarter (April through June) in SF was an exercise in uncertainty, as everyone sat around waiting for a big drop in housing demand and prices…one that never quite came before June closed...
View ArticleAn Entirely Sympathetic Guide To San Francisco Eyesores
The news broke this week that Claes Oldenberg, one of the artists behind Cupid’s Span, the roughly 60-foot bow and arrow sculpture along the Embarcadero a few blocks from the Bay Bridge, had died at...
View ArticleMaximum Overbid: The Photos Really Do Matter
It was another downbeat week for oversells, at least compared to the surreal highs we’ve been used to for the past 12 months and more. For all that, the top seller this week, 150 Morningside, still...
View ArticleSoaring Eichler Condo Sales Kinda-Sorta Breaks Record
Back in June we gandered at these mammoth penthouses roosting atop an Eichler tower at 999 Green Street, on sale after the deaths of previous owners Charles and George Shultz–more on that here if those...
View ArticleMaximum Overbid: First-Time Sale Goes Way Over
This week’s top overbid is the overweeningly handsome 300 Twin Peaks, a four bed, four bath blue number that sold for $3.15 million after two weeks on the market. According to CoreLogic, this place has...
View ArticleForgotten Neighborhoods: Sherwood Forest
Sometimes a San Francisco neighborhood falls into obscurity because times change, or demographics change, or in some case there just wasn’t really enough to distinguish the area in the first place. But...
View ArticleMaximum Overbid: Great Highway, Great Payday
Your eyes are not deceiving you: 2136 Great Highway Highway is indeed the listed address for this week’s top overbid home, and this of course is due in part to the fact that there are two Great...
View ArticleNeighborhood Guide: Liberty Hill
If you’ve ever been driving down a stretch of Mission and found yourself suddenly taken by an unusually gorgeous cluster of homes, odds are you just stumbled on Liberty Hill, one of San Francisco’s...
View ArticleDo “Haunted” Houses Really Sell For Less?
The real estate game is full of superstitions, as befits a business where so much of your success depends on invisible market forces and the whims of buyers and sellers. When the spooky season rolled...
View ArticleMaking Sense of SF’s Stupid Housing Measures
It’s an election year (as usual), and San Franciscans are voting on housing (as usual), and if you can’t make sense out of what you’re being asked to vote on then we can hardly blame you. This year’s...
View ArticleDo San Francisco Housing Prices Ever Drop?
While having lunch with a friend recently, she put forth a potentially disarming question: Have San Francisco home prices ever actually gone down for any significant period? Not just wobbly...
View ArticleNeighborhood Guide: Mission Bay
Even longtime San Franciscans can take Mission Bay for granted. Although both the city and housing watcher have tagged it as a hot up-and-coming SF neighborhoods for years, it still lingers a bit...
View ArticleWhat Exactly Is a Modern House?
Last year marked the 100th anniversary of the Schindler House in LA, often hailed as the “first modern home” in California history. Of course, when critics say “modern,” they’re not referring to just...
View ArticleWhen Is San Francisco’s Real Birthday?
We’re about a month away from the city of San Francisco’s 173rd birthday…depending on who you ask. The modern city of San Francisco first incorporated on April 15, 1850, and thus many locals observe...
View ArticleA Photo Tour Of the Great Earthquake
This was the day when, in 1906, San Francisco changed forever, with a 7.8-magnitude earthquake and subsequent fires leveling most of the city. Photography from that grim two-or-three day span presents...
View Article