San Francisco's spring 2026 market arrived with conviction. After years of recovery from pandemic-era declines, the data coming out of April is unambiguous: this is a seller's market with real urgency behind it. Inventory is near historic lows. Prices are up sharply year-over-year. And the listings that are hitting the market aren't sitting — they're generating multiple offers, often within days.
The catalyst is well-documented at this point: AI. The concentration of artificial intelligence companies in San Francisco — Anthropic, OpenAI, and dozens of well-funded startups — has created a new class of buyer with compensation packages that would have seemed implausible two years ago. Reports of $500,000 signing bonuses for 22-year-old engineers aren't outliers. They're becoming the floor.
What makes this market particularly difficult for buyers is the supply side. Sellers who might have listed a year ago are holding — because they've heard the market keeps improving, and in many cases they're right. The result is a city where demand is surging and inventory is down nearly 28% for single-family homes and 29% for condos compared to last April. That math is brutal for anyone trying to buy.
What follows is a full breakdown of the April 2026 data from Vanguard Properties' May 2026 Market Update, with neighborhood-level detail and the context you need to make sense of it.
Single-Family Homes
The most competitive segment in the city
Single-family homes in San Francisco are selling faster and for more money than at any point in recent memory. The April 2026 median sale price of $2,105,000 represents an 18.3% increase over April 2025 — a gain of more than $325,000 in twelve months. The median price per square foot climbed 11.3% to $1,188. And homes are selling in a median of 11 days, down from 12 a year ago.
The overbid figures tell the fuller story. Sellers received 125.1% of list price on average — up from 114.3% the prior April. 85.4% of single-family homes sold over asking, compared to 77.8% a year ago. Closed sales were up 9.8%, a meaningful gain in the context of inventory that fell 27.6% year-over-year. There were only 213 single-family homes for sale city-wide at the end of April.
The competition for well-positioned listings is fierce in a way that extends beyond the headline numbers. Many properties are trading in "Coming Soon" status before they ever appear on the open market, which means the effective inventory available to unprepared buyers is even lower than the official count.
April 2026 vs. April 2025 — Single-Family Homes
Condominiums, TICs & Co-ops
The condo market's biggest turn in years
If there's one market segment that defines the spring 2026 story, it's condos. After years of sluggish recovery — during which remote work crushed urban condo demand while single-family homes surged — the condo market has snapped back sharply. The numbers are striking in both their magnitude and their speed.
The April 2026 median condo sale price of $1,377,500 represents a 17.5% year-over-year gain. Closed sales rose 24.8% — the biggest volume increase of any segment. Pending sales were up 17.9%. And days on market collapsed from 28 to just 13, a 53.6% improvement. That is a wholesale shift in buyer behavior, not a seasonal blip.
The overbid transformation is equally dramatic. In April 2025, 34.9% of condos sold over asking. In April 2026, that figure was 57.7% — a 65.3% increase. The average price received climbed from 101.9% to 108.5% of list. Inventory fell 29.0% to 529 units city-wide, compressing the options available to buyers.
For buyers who were waiting on the sidelines while the condo market recovered: the wait is over. The window of relative value that existed in 2024 and early 2025 has largely closed.
April 2026 vs. April 2025 — Condominiums / TIC / Co-ops
Market Drivers
AI wealth, tight supply, and rates that finally cooperated
Three forces are converging to create the current market: a surge in high-income buyers driven by AI compensation, structurally low supply, and mortgage rates that have pulled back from their 2023–2024 peaks.
The AI demand story is now well-established. The concentration of Anthropic, OpenAI, and a deep bench of well-capitalized AI startups in San Francisco has created a buyer cohort with purchasing power unlike anything the city has seen since the peak of the 2021 tech boom — and arguably more concentrated. TechCrunch has described the current moment as the SF housing market having "lost its mind," with homes regularly selling for $1 million over asking. Reports of 20-offer scenarios on quality listings in desirable neighborhoods are common.
The supply problem is structural and self-reinforcing. Many would-be sellers are holding because they've watched the market improve and expect it to continue. Zoning constraints and slow permitting limit new construction. With only 213 single-family homes for sale city-wide at the end of April — in a city of approximately 900,000 people — supply has essentially no ability to absorb the incoming demand wave.
The result is what Fortune has characterized as "a tale of two markets": luxury home sales up 22% year-over-year, non-luxury sales up just 3.8%. The AI boom is not lifting all boats equally — but for the neighborhoods and price points where Tom focuses, the demand is unmistakably real.
