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181 Fremont: three closings this year at $1,558 a foot, 40 percent under its 2018 high, in the tower with Perplexity on its office floors and Anthropic's 466,000 square feet next door
Every 2026 closing on floors 41 to 57 of 181 Fremont, the 802-foot Jay Paul tower beside Salesforce Park, against the record since 2018
Three closings at 181 Fremont Street through October 15, against six in the 2025 window; $4.6 million of volume against $20.8 million. Median sale $1,150,000; median $1,558 a square foot against $1,806, and 40 percent under the building's 2018 high of $2,589. #56C, bought in December 2021 for $3,090,000, resold for $2,435,000; #54J, bought in May 2019 for $1,400,000, resold for $1,150,000. Perplexity's 80,561-square-foot sublease on the office floors closed on March 12.
181 Fremont is the one building in this series where the AI boom is inside the elevator bank, and its condominium prices are 40 percent under their 2018 opening. Three condominiums closed between January 1 and October 15, 2026, against six in the same window of 2025; $4,622,500 of volume against $20,790,000. The median sale is $1,150,000 and the median price per square foot is $1,558, against $1,806 last year and the building's high of $2,589 in 2018, when 15 units closed at a median of $5,750,000.
The three sales are small by the tower's standards. #56C, a 1,605-square-foot two-bedroom, closed at $2,435,000 on April 10 after 54 days. #54J, a 666-square-foot one-bedroom, closed at $1,150,000 on July 10 after 63 days, and #54M, the same 666 square feet, at $1,037,500 on March 9 without listing. The median listed sale took 54 days to contract, and one of three went inside two weeks.
Both paired resales are losses. #56C was bought in December 2021 for $3,090,000 and sold for $2,435,000, down 21.2 percent. #54J was bought in May 2019 for $1,400,000 and sold for $1,150,000, down 17.9 percent.
The tower is 57 floors and 802 feet to its spire, 684,000 square feet, developed by Jay Paul Company and designed by Heller Manus with Arup, groundbreaking in November 2013 and completion in May 2018 at about $500 million; offices fill floors 3 to 38, an amenity floor with an open-air terrace sits at 39, and 67 condominiums occupy floors 41 to 57, with a seventh-floor sky bridge into Salesforce Park (Wikipedia; Jay Paul).
2026 so far, against the same window in 2025
Closings at 181 Fremont between January 1 and October 15, 2026, set against January 1 to October 15, 2025. Days on market is median days from listing to contract on MLS-listed sales; "under 15 days" counts how many of those went into contract inside two weeks.
| Measure | 2025 (same window) | 2026 year to date |
|---|---|---|
| Closings | 6 | 3 |
| Dollar volume | $20,790,000 | $4,622,500 |
| Median sale price | $3,650,000 | $1,150,000 |
| Median $/sq ft | $1,806 | $1,558 |
| Median days on market | 76 | 54 |
| Under 15 days (of MLS sales) | 0 of 6 | 1 of 3 |
Year by year
Every recorded closing at 181 Fremont since May 2018, by calendar year. 2026 runs through October 15, 2026. Days on market is available for MLS-listed sales from 2020 onward.
| Year | Closings | Median price | Median $/sq ft | Median days | High sale |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 15 | $5,750,000 | $2,589 | — | $15,000,000 |
| 2019 | 8 | $4,192,750 | $2,332 | — | $5,910,000 |
| 2020 | 1 | $2,150,000 | $1,340 | — | $2,150,000 |
| 2021 | 7 | $4,709,000 | $2,405 | 60 | $7,600,000 |
| 2022 | 3 | $4,000,000 | $2,028 | 103 | $4,200,000 |
| 2023 | 3 | $2,300,000 | $1,823 | 927 | $3,200,000 |
| 2024 | 8 | $2,605,000 | $1,836 | 95 | $4,250,000 |
| 2025 | 10 | $3,712,500 | $1,852 | 96 | $6,000,000 |
| 2026 | 3 | $1,150,000 | $1,558 | 54 | $2,435,000 |
The building's highest median price per square foot in any year with five or more closings was $2,589 in 2018 (15 closings). 2026 year to date stands at $1,558.
By bedroom count, 2025 against 2026
| Beds | 2025 closings | 2025 median | 2025 $/sq ft | 2026 closings | 2026 median | 2026 $/sq ft |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 bed | 0 | — | — | 2 | $1,093,750 | $1,642 |
| 2 bed | 5 | $3,495,000 | $1,845 | 1 | $2,435,000 | $1,517 |
| 3 bed | 5 | $3,800,000 | $1,860 | 0 | — | — |
Every closing in 2026
All 3 closings through October 15, 2026, highest price first. Square footage and days on market are as recorded on the MLS; county-recorded transfers that never listed show no days.
| Unit | Bd | Sq ft | Sold | $/sq ft | Days | Closed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 181 Fremont Street, #56C | 2 | 1,605 | $2,435,000 | $1,517 | 54 | Apr 10 |
| 181 Fremont Street, #54J | 1 | 666 | $1,150,000 | $1,727 | 63 | Jul 10 |
| 181 Fremont Street, #54M | 1 | 666 | $1,037,500 | $1,558 | 0 | Mar 09 |
Paired resales
Units that closed in 2026 and had a prior recorded sale in the same building. The change is gross, before any improvements, fees or carrying costs.
| Unit | Prior sale | Prior price | 2026 sale | 2026 price | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 181 Fremont Street, #56C | Dec 2021 | $3,090,000 | Apr 2026 | $2,435,000 | -21.2% |
| 181 Fremont Street, #54J | May 2019 | $1,400,000 | Jul 2026 | $1,150,000 | -17.9% |
0 of these resold above the prior price, 2 below.
Fremont Street, beside the Transit Center
The office floors below the residences tell the city's leasing story in one building. Meta leased all of them in 2017, put all 435,000 square feet on the sublease market by May 2023, and the tower stood fully vacant; Zendesk moved its headquarters in during 2024, Strava took four former Meta floors in March 2025, Perplexity's 80,561-square-foot sublease closed on March 12, 2026, Mercor and Lila Sciences followed, and by June 25, 2026 CoStar reported the building near full occupancy (Wikipedia; Traded; CoStar; Heller Manus).
The building next door is 199 Fremont, also addressed 300 Howard, the 27-floor tower that Fitbit and StubHub left and that stood empty in late 2025; Anthropic leased all of it in February 2026, 466,000 square feet, 412,875 of them rentable, at $87 a foot on a 144-month term worth $508 million, commencing in August 2026 (Wikipedia; Business Wire; CompStak). Across Howard at First, the company's 400, 405, 500 and 505 Howard make six buildings in two blocks (Bisnow). Salesforce Park, 5.4 acres on the Transit Center roof, is reached from the tower's sky bridge; the $8.25 billion rail extension into the station is projected for 2032 (Wikipedia).
The timetable that every South of Market building now sits inside is the public-offering calendar. Anthropic filed a confidential draft registration with the SEC on June 1, 2026, a week after a funding round that set its valuation at $965 billion (TechCrunch). As of this week the Standard reports the Anthropic listing has been pushed to November, after the midterms, that OpenAI's has moved to 2027, and that Anthropic is weighing a lockup longer than the usual six months (SF Standard). The same piece carries a Redfin estimate that current and former OpenAI and Anthropic employees could in theory buy close to a third of the metro area's homes with their proceeds, and the counter-argument from UC Berkeley's Enrico Moretti and the Bay Area Council's Jeff Bellisario that the money is concentrated in fewer hands than past booms and that these firms create fewer jobs per dollar because so much goes to data centers rather than headcount. The record in this report ends on October 15. None of it reflects a single share that has been sold.
Two citywide facts frame every building figure here. First, the office recovery is lopsided: CBRE put Q3 2026 vacancy at 27.7 percent citywide, down 6.6 points in a year, but Avison Young splits that into roughly 12 percent for Class A and north of 31 percent for Class B, and a Presidio Bay executive told Bisnow the headline number is misleading for that reason (Bisnow). Second, the condo market is still digging out: the Chronicle's May analysis found that only eight Bay Area ZIP codes showed inflation-adjusted condo gains over the year, all of them in San Francisco, and that Noe Valley's typical condo remained close to $400,000 below its 2019 level in real terms (SF Chronicle).
How this was counted
Two records feed this review. The MLS layer is one row per listing and carries days on market and square footage. The county layer reaches back further and catches transfers that never listed, but records the same closing once per data source, so the two were merged on unit, date and price and each closing kept once. Below-market-rate units and transfers under $300,000 are listed but excluded from every median. "Same window" means January 1 to October 15 of each year. Nothing here is a valuation of any unit, and nothing here is advice.
Tim McMullen · CA DRE #02016832
[email protected] · (415) 691-9272
- https://therealdeal.com/san-francisco/2026/04/07/anthropic-signs-another-san-francisco-office-lease/
- https://therealdeal.com/san-francisco/2026/03/16/openai-inks-another-mission-bay-lease/
- https://sfstandard.com/2026/04/07/i-leaderboard-san-francisco-office/
- https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/the-city/sfs-high-office-vacancy-rate-drops-again-as-ai-fueled-recovery-shows-legs/article_14d60cc1-a6dc-4228-9a44-b5b8c4d36b8c.html
- https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/01/anthropic-files-to-go-public/
- https://sfstandard.com/pacific-standard-time/2026/10/14/pst-anthropic-openai-ipos-sf-wealth/
- https://www.bisnow.com/news/san-francisco/office/ai-surge-driving-sf-office-market-leasing-to-strong-totals-in-decades
- https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/bay-area-condo-values-still-120000717.html
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/181_Fremont
- https://jaypaul.com/portfolio/181-fremont
- https://traded.co/deals/california/office/lease/181-fremont-street-3/
- https://www.costar.com/article/1592559408/high-profile-san-francisco-skyscraper-nears-full-occupancy-thanks-to-ai-boom
- https://www.hellermanus.com/news/181-fremont-st-has-become-a-desired-location-for-tech-companies
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/199_Fremont_Street
- https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260202207061/en/DivcoWest-and-Blackstone-Real-Estate-Secure-Full-Building-Lease-with-AI-Leader-Anthropic-at-300-Howard-Street
- https://compstak.com/blog/q1-2026-office-lease-deals-the-comps-that-set-the-national-bar
- https://www.bisnow.com/news/san-francisco/office/anthropic-cements-240k-sf-lease-howard-street-133989
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salesforce_Transit_Center
- 181 Fremont · 181 Fremont St · South Beach
Tim McMullen, CA DRE #02016832. Real estate services provided by Tim McMullen, Broker, CA DRE #02016832. Figures are from recorded sales; nothing here is an opinion of the value of any home.