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San Francisco's housing market is overheating. Tech buyers will make the situation worse

San Francisco's slumping housing market is suddenly hot again. A fresh wave of tech wealth is poised to squeeze out even more buyers

David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images

San Francisco's housing market looked like it was finally cooling. As recently as the fall of 2025, the city was one of the few major metros where home prices were still falling.

That reversed in less than a year. The median home sale price hit $1.7 million for the three months ending in May, a 16.1% increase from the same period a year earlier, according to Redfin. The national median rose just 2.3% over the same stretch, according to Redfin's California housing data.

OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX are all heading toward IPOs that could create about 12,000 new millionaires, and the influx of cash could turbocharge bidding wars for property in a city where prices are already climbing faster than anywhere else in the country.

San Francisco's vanishing inventory and rising sales

San Francisco's available housing supply dropped to just over 900 homes at the end of May, down from 1,400 a year earlier, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, citing Redfin data. With inventory that thin, any concentrated influx of wealthy buyers can move citywide prices within........

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