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Yerba Buena Lofts at 855 Folsom: five closings this year at $935 a foot, up from the 2024 floor and 17 percent under 2019, with the cheapest loft taking 306 days
Every 2026 closing at Yerba Buena Lofts, Stanley Saitowitz's 200-loft block on Folsom between Fourth and Fifth, against the record since 2002
Five closings at 855 Folsom Street through October 15, against two in the 2025 window; $4.7 million of volume against $1.3 million. Median sale $729,000; median $935 a square foot, against $776 last year and the building's 2019 high of $1,127. Median 51 days to contract. #335, a 787-square-foot loft, closed at $650,000 after 306 days on market.
Yerba Buena Lofts is the building that fell furthest after 2019 and has started back. Five lofts closed at 855 Folsom Street between January 1 and October 15, 2026, against two in the same window of 2025; $4,734,000 of volume against $1,335,000. The median sale is $729,000 and the median price per square foot is $935, against $776 last year and $782 for all of 2024, the building's low. The high was $1,127 in 2019, so this year sits 17 percent under it.
Three one-bedroom lofts sold at a median of $705,000 and $926 a foot; two two-bedrooms at $1,325,000 and $952. The high sale is #505, 1,394 square feet at $1,350,000 on July 1 after 51 days. #519, 1,390 square feet, closed at $1,300,000 on April 22 after 212 days. The low, #335, 787 square feet, closed at $650,000 on October 2 after 306 days, the longest listing in this series. The median listed sale took 51 days to contract, and one of five went inside two weeks.
No unit that closed in 2026 has a prior recorded sale in the building, so there is no paired-resale table. Four transfers in the record fall under the $300,000 line and are left out of every median; the building carries required below-market-rate units (SocketSite).
The building is Stanley Saitowitz's best-known residential work in the city: 200 two-story lofts in a 338-foot-long poured-concrete slab with translucent glass bays, built by Pankow for about $40 million and finished in 2002 with four parking levels inside the lower floors; it took the AIA San Francisco design excellence award in 2003 (Architecture News Plus; Watry Design). #539 sold new for $690,000 in 2002; #911, 838 square feet, sold for $1,098,000 in May 2017 and about 30 percent below its asking price in May 2024 (SocketSite).
2026 so far, against the same window in 2025
Closings at Yerba Buena Lofts 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 | 5 |
| Dollar volume | $1,335,000 | $4,734,000 |
| Median sale price | $667,500 | $729,000 |
| Median $/sq ft | $776 | $935 |
| Median days on market | 45 | 51 |
| Under 15 days (of MLS sales) | 0 of 1 | 1 of 5 |
Year by year
Every recorded closing at Yerba Buena Lofts since February 2002, 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 | $927,500 | $1,157 | — | $1,061,500 |
| 2017 | 3 | $890,000 | $1,171 | — | $1,230,000 |
| 2018 | 7 | $1,075,000 | $1,037 | — | $1,310,000 |
| 2019 | 7 | $1,050,000 | $1,127 | — | $1,155,500 |
| 2020 | 10 | $888,500 | $1,044 | 30 | $1,465,000 |
| 2021 | 8 | $840,000 | $874 | 36 | $1,375,000 |
| 2022 | 4 | $1,052,500 | $933 | 11 | $1,395,000 |
| 2023 | 5 | $800,000 | $807 | 70 | $1,350,000 |
| 2024 | 2 | $611,232 | $782 | 92 | $779,000 |
| 2025 | 3 | $685,000 | $830 | 30 | $695,000 |
| 2026 | 5 | $729,000 | $935 | 51 | $1,350,000 |
The building's highest median price per square foot in any year with five or more closings was $1,127 in 2019 (7 closings). 2026 year to date stands at $935.
By bedroom count, 2025 against 2026
| Beds | 2025 closings | 2025 median | 2025 $/sq ft | 2026 closings | 2026 median | 2026 $/sq ft |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Not stated | 1 | $650,000 | $776 | 0 | — | — |
| 1 bed | 2 | $690,000 | $883 | 3 | $705,000 | $926 |
| 2 bed | 0 | — | — | 2 | $1,325,000 | $952 |
Every closing in 2026
All 5 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 855 Folsom Street, #505 | 2 | 1,394 | $1,350,000 | $968 | 51 | Jul 01 |
| 855 Folsom Street, #519 | 2 | 1,390 | $1,300,000 | $935 | 212 | Apr 22 |
| 855 Folsom Street, #311 | 1 | 787 | $729,000 | $926 | 18 | Mar 20 |
| 855 Folsom Street, #127 | 1 | 740 | $705,000 | $953 | 8 | Mar 23 |
| 855 Folsom Street, #335 | 1 | 787 | $650,000 | $826 | 306 | Oct 02 |
Folsom between Fourth and Fifth
The lofts fill the south side of Folsom mid-block between Fourth and Fifth, with Shipley Street at the back; across Folsom at 832 is the Salvation Army's headquarters building (Architecture News Plus; Starboard CRE). The Folsom Streetscape Project, a two-way protected bikeway with 21 bulb-outs from Second to Eleventh, has been under construction since May 2024 and is scheduled for substantial completion in October 2026 (Streetsblog). On December 5, 2025 permits were filed for a 26-story tower at 896 Folsom, across Fifth, with more than 100 apartments, and two days earlier for a 21-story tower at 360 Fifth (SF YIMBY).
Three blocks northeast at Third and Howard, Harvey AI's lease at 201 Third grew to about 150,000 square feet in April 2026; the Golden Eye Social darts bar opened at 311 Third at Folsom in May 2025 (CoStar; Yerba Buena Partnership). The Anthropic buildings on Howard begin five blocks east.
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://socketsite.com/archives/tag/855-folsom-street
- https://architecturenewsplus.com/projects/852
- https://watrydesign.com/project/yerba-buena-lofts
- https://starboardcre.com/property/832-folsom-street-premier-office-building-well-positioned-in-the-central-soma-neighborhood
- https://sf.streetsblog.org/2026/03/24/eyes-on-the-street-progress-on-folsom-streetscape-project
- https://sfyimby.com/?p=44423
- https://www.costar.com/article/990492675/legal-ai-startup-expands-san-francisco-hq-as-companies-channel-record-fundraising-into-real-estate
- https://yerbabuena.org/release/new-restaurants-bars-and-cafes-opening-in-yerba-buena-are-a-tonic-for-the-downtown-neighborhood
- Yerba Buena Lofts · 855 Folsom St · Yerba Buena
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.