San Francisco Condo Market indexes 12,183 condominiums across 142 buildings. Last year 471 of them sold. Everything a journalist needs in one place — the story, the numbers, the images and the contact. Every figure below is drawn from the platform's own database and can be re-run on request. For anything not here, email [email protected].
A San Francisco condominium is worth about $1.3 million and is one of the least liquid assets a person can own. Not because buyers are scarce — because the act of finding out what someone will pay costs the owner up to $110,000 and four months out of their own home, and a third of that is spent before a single offer exists.
Run the arithmetic on a median unit and the barrier stops being abstract. Paint and repairs. Staging. Two to four months renting somewhere else while the unit sits empty — and the mortgage and HOA dues on that empty unit never stop. Then commission, then the City's transfer tax at closing.
Nobody pays commission on a sale that doesn't happen. But the paint, the staging and the rent are spent whether or not an offer ever arrives — $15,000 at the low end, $35,000 at the high — If it doesn't sell, that money is gone and a stale price history follows the unit for years.
So most owners never find out. Across the 12,183 units this platform indexes, 471 changed hands last year — 3.9% turnover. The other 96% weren't unavailable. Nobody had asked, and finding out cost too much to risk.
San Francisco Condo Market inverts the sequence. It publishes the full recorded sale history of every tracked building, free and without an account, then lets a buyer submit a written offer on any unit in any building — listed or not. A buyer can send as many as they like. An owner receives a real number on the home they already live in, having spent nothing, and simply decides.
No one asks a homeowner to spend thirty-five thousand dollars and move out for a quarter just to get a price on anything else they own. That is the whole reason this market doesn't move.
Tim McMullen, founder
Four separate stories live here. Most journalists take one.
Every off-market product to date has been seller-initiated. Zillow's Make Me Move needed an owner to post a price; iBuyers need an owner to request one; pocket-listing networks need a signed agreement. Here the owner has done nothing at all — and still gets an offer.
Selling a median $1.3M unit costs $110,000. Subtract commission and transfer tax, which fall due only on a close, and $35,000 remains — the price of simply finding out whether anyone will buy. That number, not commission, is what freezes the market.
SF condos are the one Bay Area segment that never recovered from 2020. In 2026 they posted the sharpest single-year move in the modern dataset — while transaction volume went nowhere. Fewer trades at higher prices is a liquidity story, not a demand story.
Built by a San Francisco condo agent who has sold everything from one-bedroom TICs and co-ops to the top of the market — including the launch team for the $1.2B Four Seasons Private Residences.
On a $1,300,000 sale — the 2026 year-to-date median across indexed buildings. Every line is a real, ordinary cost of listing conventionally in San Francisco.
| Cost | Low | High | When it's paid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paint & repairs | $3,000 | $5,000 | Before listing |
| Staging | $4,000 | $6,000 | Before listing |
| Renting elsewhere — 2 to 4 months at $4,000–$6,000 | $8,000 | $24,000 | While it sits |
| Commission — 5%, split 2.5% each side | $65,000 | $65,000 | At closing |
| SF transfer tax — $3.75 per $500 | $9,750 | $9,750 | At closing |
| Total | $89,750 | $109,750 | 6.9% – 8.4% |
Total, minus commission and transfer tax. Paint, staging and rent — spent before anyone has named a price, and gone whether or not the unit sells.
Commission and transfer tax. Paid out of the proceeds, only on a close. Nobody has ever declined to sell because of this column.
Excluded from the table, and all real: escrow and title fees, HOA transfer and document fees, the natural hazard report, the cost of the move itself, capital gains, and the mortgage and HOA dues that keep running on the empty unit for the whole marketing period. The figures above are conservative.
That is the illiquidity. Not commission — commission is contingent, and it is paid by people who already got what they wanted. It is the $35,000 you must spend before anyone will tell you whether the answer is yes.
The thing nobody tells you: this was always legal. There was simply no mechanism.
You have always been allowed to approach an owner and offer to buy their home. Almost nobody does, because there's no road — most buyers don't know it's possible, and most agents don't know how to structure the conversation with someone who wasn't thinking about selling.
On San Francisco Condo Market a buyer opens any of the 142 indexed buildings, sees every recorded sale in it, picks a unit, and submits a structured written offer. Listed or not. As many units, in as many buildings, as they want. The addressable market stops being the handful of listings on a portal and becomes every unit in the index.
Find out what your home is worth without spending a dollar to ask.
| Selling conventionally | Through Condo Market |
|---|---|
| Move out for 2–4 months and rent elsewhere — $8,000–$24,000 | Stay put. $0 |
| Paint, repair and stage before anyone sees it — $7,000–$11,000 | Nothing to prepare. $0 |
| Keep paying mortgage and HOA on an empty unit | No vacancy, no carrying period |
| Public price history; a withdrawn listing follows the unit for years | No public listing, no stale-listing penalty |
| $15,000–$35,000 at risk before you know if it sells | Nothing at risk. A number arrives, you decide |
Year-to-date, January 1 to July 24, same window each year. Median price per square foot across indexed buildings.
| Year | Sales | Median price | Median $/sq ft |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 222 | $1,375,000 | $1,354 |
| 2023 | 172 | $1,227,500 | $1,100 |
| 2025 | 256 | $1,166,500 | $1,071 |
| 2026 | 249 | $1,299,000 | $1,187 |
Year over year that is +11.4% on median price and +10.8% on price per square foot — the sharpest single-year move in the modern dataset. It is also still 12% below the 2020 peak. Both halves are true, and the second one matters: San Francisco condos are the only Bay Area segment that never came back.
Volume is the quieter finding. 249 sales against 256 a year earlier — flat, while prices climbed double digits. Fewer trades at higher prices is what a market looks like when demand meets a very small pool of willing sellers.
142 buildings, each with its full recorded sale history, unit-by-unit. Free, no account.
Citywide and neighborhood price trajectories, a live sales feed, and a $/sq ft map of the city.
How an offer on an unlisted unit actually works, for buyers and for owners.
San Francisco Condo Market is a marketplace indexing 142 San Francisco condominium buildings and 12,183 units, where a buyer can submit a written offer on any indexed unit — listed or not. It publishes the recorded sale history of every tracked building free of charge.
San Francisco Condo Market is a marketplace for San Francisco condominiums built on a single observation: only about 4% of the condominium stock it indexes trades in a given year, because selling a median unit costs roughly $110,000, and $35,000 of that is spent before anyone has said what they would pay. The platform publishes the full recorded sale history of the 142 buildings and 12,183 units it indexes, free and without an account, then allows a buyer to submit a structured written offer on any unit, whether or not it is for sale. It is operated by McMullen Properties, founded by ten-year San Francisco condo agent Tim McMullen, CA DRE #02016832.
Tim McMullen has spent a decade selling San Francisco condominiums across the full width of the market, from one-bedroom TICs and co-ops to full-floor residences. He was a sales executive on the launch team of the $1.2 billion Four Seasons Private Residences, and has since built six real estate marketplaces across Northern California.
Tim McMullen is available for interview and will go on record on any figure on this page. The underlying sale data can be supplied as a spreadsheet so any claim here can be checked independently — including the year-by-year series and the methodology behind it.
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