What have 10 years meant for San Francisco real estate prices? Real estate website PropertyShark set out to answer that question with an interactive map of changes in prices per square foot for median home sales; the map compares prices in 2004 with those in 2014. The neighborhoods that have changed the most include Duboce Triangle, where prices have gone up 52 percent, and the perpetually contentious Mission District, where prices have soared 47 percent. Other neighborhoods with big price hikes included fast-changing Yerba Buena, where new condos have pushed up prices by 43 percent, and the Dogpatch, a former neighborhood of warehouses that has also seen a 43 percent increase in prices as new developments have moved in.
Neighborhoods on the city’s southern fringes have seen the smallest price increases, and in many places prices have even gone down. The narrow Lakeside neighborhood, squeezed between Ingleside Terrace and Stonestown, has seen a big 59 percent drop over 10 years. Larger neighborhoods like Bayview and Hunters Point have experienced more modest 11 percent and 8 percent drops, respectively. The only neighborhood outside of the city’s southern reaches to see lower prices is Alamo Square, where prices have gone down 14 percent, although Russian Hill has also been flat.
Of course, many of these neighborhoods have not seen steady trends in any direction over the past 10 years. As the real estate cycle has bubbled and burst, prices have risen, fallen, and then risen again. We are currently in a boom, but what will the next 10 years bring for San Francisco?