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The Heublein Lofts at 601 Fourth: three closings this year at $741 a foot, all inside two weeks, in the 1991 conversion that started the SoMa loft market
Every 2026 closing at the Heublein Building lofts, 88 units Rick Holliday and David Baker carved out of a 1916 wine warehouse at Fourth and Brannan, against the record since 1999
Three closings at 601 4th Street through October 15, against two in the 2025 window; $2.6 million of volume against $3.2 million. All three were one-bedroom lofts of 1,091 to 1,228 square feet. Median sale $880,000; median $741 a square foot, against $993 last year and 25 percent under the building's 2019 high of $982. Median nine days to contract; all three inside two weeks. #225, bought in October 2006 for $695,000, resold for $880,000.
The Heublein Building is where the San Francisco loft conversion began, and this year it is the cheapest loft per foot in this series. Three units closed at 601 4th Street between January 1 and October 15, 2026, against two in the same window of 2025; $2,649,000 of volume against $3,160,000. The median sale is $880,000 and the median price per square foot is $741, against $993 last year and the building's high of $982 in 2019, so this year sits 25 percent under the peak.
The three are large one-bedroom lofts: #110, 1,228 square feet at $910,000 on August 28 after twelve days; #225, 1,091 square feet at $880,000 on July 20 after eight; and #209, 1,227 square feet at $859,000 on February 23 after nine. The median listed sale took nine days to contract, and all three went inside two weeks, against none of the listed sales last year, when the median was 101 days.
One paired resale is on record: #225, bought in October 2006 for $695,000 and sold for $880,000, up 26.6 percent in 20 years.
Rick Holliday's McKenzie, Rose and Holliday converted the 151,000-square-foot Heublein wine warehouse in 1991 with David Baker as architect, 85 condominiums and three roof-garden penthouses with 14- to 16-foot ceilings and octagonal mushroom columns, after the city relaxed its live-work code in 1988; reservations on all 88 units were taken in one day, at an average of 1,360 square feet and $285,000, and it was billed as the city's first commercial-to-residential loft conversion (Holliday Development; The Spaces; SocketSite). Dues on #225 run $805 a month (MLSListings).
2026 so far, against the same window in 2025
Closings at 601 4th St 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 | 2 | 3 |
| Dollar volume | $3,160,000 | $2,649,000 |
| Median sale price | $1,580,000 | $880,000 |
| Median $/sq ft | $993 | $741 |
| Median days on market | 101 | 9 |
| Under 15 days (of MLS sales) | 0 of 1 | 3 of 3 |
Year by year
Every recorded closing at 601 4th St since September 1999, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 4 | $1,296,000 | $868 | — | $1,349,000 |
| 2017 | 4 | $1,074,000 | $816 | — | $1,200,000 |
| 2018 | 3 | $1,000,000 | $875 | — | $1,075,000 |
| 2019 | 6 | $1,580,000 | $982 | — | $1,900,000 |
| 2020 | 1 | $965,000 | $941 | 33 | $965,000 |
| 2021 | 4 | $984,000 | $828 | 28 | $1,195,000 |
| 2022 | 3 | $1,531,000 | $1,335 | 18 | $1,531,000 |
| 2023 | 3 | $1,531,000 | $756 | 82 | $1,600,000 |
| 2024 | 1 | $924,000 | — | 80 | $924,000 |
| 2025 | 3 | $1,280,000 | $834 | 102 | $2,300,000 |
| 2026 | 3 | $880,000 | $741 | 9 | $910,000 |
The building's highest median price per square foot in any year with five or more closings was $982 in 2019 (6 closings). 2026 year to date stands at $741.
By bedroom count, 2025 against 2026
| Beds | 2025 closings | 2025 median | 2025 $/sq ft | 2026 closings | 2026 median | 2026 $/sq ft |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Not stated | 1 | $2,300,000 | $993 | 0 | — | — |
| 1 bed | 1 | $860,000 | — | 3 | $880,000 | $741 |
| 2 bed | 1 | $1,280,000 | $675 | 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 601 4th Street #110 | 1 | 1,228 | $910,000 | $741 | 12 | Aug 28 |
| 601 4th Street, #225 | 1 | 1,091 | $880,000 | $807 | 8 | Jul 20 |
| 601 4th Street, #209 | 1 | 1,227 | $859,000 | $700 | 9 | Feb 23 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 601 4th Street, #225 | Oct 2006 | $695,000 | Jul 2026 | $880,000 | +26.6% |
1 of these resold above the prior price, 0 below.
Fourth and Brannan, by the Central Subway
The Fourth and Brannan T Third stop sits in the median of Fourth Street at the door, an island platform with a ramp to Brannan that opened on November 19, 2022 and closed for two weeks in early 2025 for leak repairs at the Chinatown end of the line (Wikipedia). Across Fourth at Townsend, Tishman Speyer's revised filing for 655 Fourth proposes two towers of 38 and 40 floors with more than 1,100 homes on land bought for $40 million in 2019, replacing three buildings and seven surface lots (CoStar). On the same block, the owner of Marlowe at 500 Brannan filed plans in September 2023 for a five-story office and retail building on the restaurant's site (SF Standard).
Two blocks south on Townsend and King, Sierra signed 258,000 square feet at 185 Berry in November 2025; four blocks west at 650 Townsend, Scale AI subleased about 180,000 square feet in 2024 and Amazon Robotics was reported in June 2026 to be in final talks for 250,000 more (McCarthy Cook; Bisnow; SFist).
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://hollidaydevelopment.com/portfolio/601-4th-more.php
- https://thespaces.com/?p=40435
- https://socketsite.com/archives/2007/01/the_heublien_building_lofts_601_4th_street.html
- https://www.mlslistings.com/property/SF426139646
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4th_and_Brannan_station
- https://costar.com/article/1788631392/tishman-speyer-plans-more-than-1000-multifamily-units-near-san-francisco-transit-station
- https://sfstandard.com/2023/09/29/san-franciscos-marlowe-burger-restaurant-could-become-new-building/
- https://www.mccarthycook.com/?p=5544
- https://www.bisnow.com/news/san-francisco/office/ai-startup-sierra-doubles-space-in-soma-128112
- https://sfist.com/2026/06/30/amazon-robotics-expected-to-join-growing-tech-and-ai-hub-in-sfs-design-district/
- 601 4th St · SoMa
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.