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72 Townsend: six closings this year at $1,144 a foot behind an 1874 grain-warehouse façade, and three of the building's 2015 to 2018 buyers sold at a loss
Every 2026 closing at 72 Townsend, the 74-unit KB Home building in the South End landmark district, against the record since 2015
Six closings at 72 Townsend Street through October 15, against four in the 2025 window; $7.2 million of volume against $6.5 million. Median sale $1,189,000; median $1,144 a square foot, against $1,226 last year. Four paired resales: the 2015 and 2018 buyers of #501, #506 and #504 sold 16, 10.5 and 3.9 percent below their purchase price; the 2024 buyer of #402 gained 12 percent.
72 Townsend is a 2015 building that kept the front wall of an 1874 grain warehouse, and this year its resale record has started to show what the first buyers paid. Six condominiums closed between January 1 and October 15, 2026, against four in the same window of 2025; $7,210,000 of volume against $6,450,000. The median sale is $1,189,000 and the median price per square foot is $1,144, against $1,226 in the 2025 window.
The year-by-year table is the one to read with care. Last year's five closings ran at a median of $1,539 a foot and $1,825,000, the highest in the building's record; this year's six sit 26 percent under that figure, and about where the building stood in 2023. Three two-bedrooms sold at a median of $1,490,000 and $1,183 a foot; the one one-bedroom, #501, went at $901,000 and is the low sale, 815 square feet after 27 days.
Four paired resales are on record. #402, bought in July 2024 for $1,230,000, sold on August 3 for $1,378,000, up 12 percent in two years. The three earlier buyers all sold below their purchase price: #506, bought new in November 2015 for $1,720,500, sold on June 1 for $1,540,000, down 10.5 percent, and it is the high sale of the year; #501, bought new in November 2015 for $1,072,000, sold for $901,000, down 16 percent; #504, bought in June 2018 for $1,550,000, sold on August 14 for $1,490,000, down 3.9 percent, after six days. The median listed sale took 22 days; one of four went inside two weeks.
KB Home built 72 Townsend with SB Architects: 74 condominiums behind the preserved façade of Hooper's South End Grain Warehouse of 1874, the oldest one-story warehouse in the South End district to survive 1906, with seven below-market-rate units (AOL/Business Wire; SB Architects; MEDA). The previous developer went bankrupt in 2009 and the permits sat until the end of 2012 (SocketSite). Four transfers under $300,000 are left out of every median above.
2026 so far, against the same window in 2025
Closings at 72 Townsend 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 | 4 | 6 |
| Dollar volume | $6,450,000 | $7,210,000 |
| Median sale price | $1,550,000 | $1,189,000 |
| Median $/sq ft | $1,226 | $1,144 |
| Median days on market | 15 | 22 |
| Under 15 days (of MLS sales) | 1 of 3 | 1 of 4 |
Year by year
Every recorded closing at 72 Townsend St since November 2015, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 3 | $2,550,000 | $2,092 | — | $2,550,000 |
| 2018 | 7 | $1,515,000 | $1,202 | — | $1,960,000 |
| 2019 | 1 | $1,050,000 | $1,234 | — | $1,050,000 |
| 2020 | 2 | $1,431,500 | $1,260 | 20 | $1,488,000 |
| 2021 | 5 | $1,180,000 | $1,381 | 25 | $1,495,000 |
| 2022 | 3 | $975,000 | $1,028 | 105 | $2,825,000 |
| 2023 | 2 | $1,167,750 | $1,108 | 21 | $1,380,000 |
| 2024 | 6 | $1,070,750 | $1,013 | 43 | $1,380,000 |
| 2025 | 5 | $1,825,000 | $1,539 | 15 | $2,650,000 |
| 2026 | 6 | $1,189,000 | $1,144 | 22 | $1,540,000 |
The building's highest median price per square foot in any year with five or more closings was $1,539 in 2025 (5 closings). 2026 year to date stands at $1,144.
By bedroom count, 2025 against 2026
| Beds | 2025 closings | 2025 median | 2025 $/sq ft | 2026 closings | 2026 median | 2026 $/sq ft |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Not stated | 0 | — | — | 2 | $950,500 | — |
| 1 bed | 1 | $700,000 | $914 | 1 | $901,000 | $1,106 |
| 2 bed | 4 | $1,850,000 | $1,548 | 3 | $1,490,000 | $1,183 |
Every closing in 2026
All 6 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 72 Townsend Street, #506 | 2 | 1,176 | $1,540,000 | $1,310 | 47 | Jun 01 |
| 72 Townsend Street, #504 | 2 | 1,260 | $1,490,000 | $1,183 | 6 | Aug 14 |
| 72 Townsend Street, #402 | 2 | 1,309 | $1,378,000 | $1,053 | 18 | Aug 03 |
| 72 Townsend St Unit 709 #706 | — | — | $1,000,000 | — | — | May 22 |
| 72 Townsend Street, #501 | 1 | 815 | $901,000 | $1,106 | 27 | Jun 02 |
| 72 Townsend St Unit 709 #501 | — | — | $901,000 | — | — | Jun 02 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 72 Townsend St Unit 709 #501 | Mar 2020 | $1,375,000 | Jun 2026 | $901,000 | -34.5% |
| 72 Townsend St Unit 709 #706 | Mar 2020 | $1,375,000 | May 2026 | $1,000,000 | -27.3% |
| 72 Townsend Street, #501 | Nov 2015 | $1,072,000 | Jun 2026 | $901,000 | -16.0% |
| 72 Townsend Street, #506 | Nov 2015 | $1,720,500 | Jun 2026 | $1,540,000 | -10.5% |
| 72 Townsend Street, #504 | Jun 2018 | $1,550,000 | Aug 2026 | $1,490,000 | -3.9% |
| 72 Townsend Street, #402 | Jul 2024 | $1,230,000 | Aug 2026 | $1,378,000 | +12.0% |
1 of these resold above the prior price, 5 below.
Townsend between Second and Colin P. Kelly Jr.
The building sits on the north side of Townsend between Second Street and Colin P. Kelly Jr. Street, inside the South End Landmark District the city designated in 1991; 64-72 Townsend is one of four surviving 19th-century buildings in the district, and the California Warehouse of 1882 at 88 Townsend, rebuilt behind two original walls as housing, shares the block (CEQAnet; NoeHill). South Beach Harbor Park, 42,000 square feet of lawn between Pier 40 and Oracle Park, is at the foot of the street (Port of San Francisco). The Caltrain terminal at Fourth and King carried 6,874 weekday riders in fiscal 2025, and the federal government has committed $3.8 billion to the 1.3-mile tunnel that extends it downtown, with revenue service estimated for 2035 (Wikipedia; Mass Transit).
Two blocks north, a 36-story, 260-unit condominium tower is proposed at 329 Bryant on the block bounded by Bryant, Federal and Rincon; it went to the Planning Commission on January 22, 2026 (Mission Local). The nearest large AI lease is Sierra's 258,000 square feet at 185 Berry in China Basin, a few blocks west along Townsend and King; Anthropic's Howard Street buildings are seven blocks north (McCarthy Cook; Business Wire).
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://www.aol.com/2013/09/30/kb-home-to-construct-mid-rise-luxury-condo-buildin/
- https://backup.10sb.co/?p=7881
- https://medasf.org/?p=15618
- https://socketsite.com/archives/tag/72-townsend
- https://ceqanet.lci.ca.gov/2006012057
- https://noehill.com/SF/LANDMARKS/sf_south_end.asp
- https://www.sfport.com/visit/parks-open-spaces/south-beach-harbor-park
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_4th_and_King_Street_station
- https://www.masstransitmag.com/rail/infrastructure/article/55310870/inside-the-four-block-long-train-station-quietly-taking-shape-beneath-downtown-san-francisco
- https://missionlocal.org/2026/01/sf-housing-project-south-beach-bryant-street/
- https://www.mccarthycook.com/?p=5544
- 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
- 72 Townsend 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.