When Bay Area agent Ken DeLeon took over the listing for 35 Barry Lane in February, the sprawling Atherton estate had sat on the market for three years with no offers.
After cosmetic upgrades and international marketing, DeLeon re-listed the property for $24 million. Within nine days, he had three offers.
Two were from China, another came from an executive in the artificial intelligence industry. The tie went to AI, and the buyer paid just above the listed price.
After a yearslong slump as high-paid locals decamped to remote-work locations, the artificial intelligence boom has set off a mad dash to secure property around the industry’s San Francisco nucleus, and brokers in the region say multiple multimillion-dollar offers on property are becoming more common.
“I’ve never seen a stronger luxury market in the last 25 years,” DeLeon said.
DeLeon ranked first among Bay Area brokers in The Real Deal’s annual ranking. The data is pulled from closings above $100,000 on the Multiple Listing Service, including buy- and sell-side deals between May 15, 2025, and May 15, 2026. His Palo Alto-based DeLeon Realty also made the list of TRD’s top 20 brokerages for the same period, at No. 19.
“I did the math, and that guy buying a $20 million property is the equivalent of me right now buying a Big Mac sandwich.”
Though DeLeon closed fewer deals than during the 12 months prior, his total sales volume was up 7.5 percent, at $844.6 million.
He’s not the only winner: Wealth created by the latest tech gold rush has pumped demand, dwindled supply and juiced pricing, contributing to a good year for the region’s top brokers and brokerages.
Compass and Coldwell Banker Realty maintained their positions atop the region’s top brokerages, the rankings showed, with $30.7 billion and $15.9 billion worth of deals. Across the top 25, agents closed $7.6 billion worth of sales this year, as the average deal size rose to $3.2 million, a more than 11 percent surge compared to the 12 months prior. That mirrored the rise in the number of transactions. In 2025, only DeLeon and the Tse Group out of Intero Real Estate Services reached $300 million in total sales and only 10 teams hit $200 million. In 2026, the top six teams cleared $300 million, and only a single team in the top 25 didn’t reach $200 million.
Yet, this year’s peaks likely precede higher highs, insiders say. Chatbot behemoths OpenAI and Anthropic plan to go public before year’s end, and thousands of new local millionaires and billionaires may be looking for homes.
“We already don’t have enough inventory,” said Stanley Lo, who closed $259 million worth of deals with his Burlingame-based Green Banker Realty, 11th on the list. “So my advice has been, buy now.”
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Staying on top
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The agents and brokerages on both lists have navigated tight supply, as well as changing buyer tastes and demographics, to keep their transactions and sales values high.
For many, AI has fundamentally changed their jobs inside and outside the office. Jennifer and Andrew Oldham, the husband-and-wife leaders of Compass’s Oldham Group who placed third on the rankings, said Anthropic’s chatbot, Claude, has become their team’s COO, allowing them to handle four times as many clients as even just a few years ago.
More important, wealth created by the industry is driving deal size higher. Earlier this year, the Oldham Group helped a client place a bid on a turnkey home in Potrero Hill, one of the neighborhoods within what San Francisco brokers now term “Area AI,” since so many firms and employees cluster there. The home, listed for $1.4 million, received 13 offers. (The Oldhams’ client dropped out after the price reached $2.1 million.)
This happens at higher price points too. Andrew Oldham said he took one high-net-worth client to view a $20 million home in the city, only to walk in and find the CEO of one of the major AI companies in the middle of a tour. “I did the math, and that guy buying a $20 million property is the equivalent of me right now buying a Big Mac sandwich.”
Oldham chalks the pricing power up to location: Many AI leaders now want to be in San Francisco, though that could change.
In April, someone threw a Molotov cocktail at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s Russian Hill home, and DeLeon said some clients have prioritized privacy and security since then. That could mean more interest in the sprawling estates of Silicon Valley and Marin County, he said, including the neighborhoods where his team focuses: Atherton, Palo Alto and Los Altos.
DeLeon said international demand is also juicing the business. At $20 million-plus properties in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, most of the inquiries are from Chinese buyers.
“Certain zip codes are famous in China,” he said. “Properties in Atherton and Palo Alto are almost like Louis Vuitton handbags.”
Years ago, DeLeon Realty invested in a Mandarin-speaking team with expertise in Chinese marketing and internet platforms. It’s paying off.
“I would spend $2 million to be fluent in Mandarin if I could, because I would make that money back very quickly,” he said.
Coming crest
Many insiders see today’s surge in demand and value as a warmup for the explosion of wealth expected in the coming months.
Compass agent Brent Gullixson spent much of June 12 with one eye on the day’s big financial news: SpaceX’s IPO. The stock had jumped 20 percent in its first few hours of trading, minting an estimated 4,000 new millionaires.
“When you have all this newly minted wealth, typically the biggest purchase [you] make is going to be a new residence,” said Gullixson, who runs Compass’s luxury-focused Gullixson Team with his mother, Mary. The pair ranked No. 4.
Many of SpaceX’s current and former employees live in Southern California and Texas — though the venture capitalists along Silicon Valley’s Sandhill Road got a nice payday. But the effect is a precursor for this fall, when Anthropic and OpenAI are expected to go public. The anticipation of that major wealth event has already started rippling into the Bay Area housing market.
Sellers of at least three multimillion-dollar Bay Area homes this year said they’d accept pre-IPO Anthropic and OpenAI stock as payment. Many brokers believed this was a stunt to get eyes on the property.
Rachel Swann, an agent with Coldwell Banker Realty who represented the seller on one of the properties, said that home eventually traded in a traditional transaction.
She said pre-IPO stock deals are “absolutely” happening at the higher echelons of the market, just with no fanfare. She is urging clients to try to buy now to get ahead; the future will be even more competitive.
All the new wealth could unlock supply, Gullixson said, if buyers offer enough for sellers to part with their homes.
“A lot of people have a crazy number in their head that, if somebody were to offer it, you’d have to think about it,” Gullixson said. “I feel like that conversation has started within the last two weeks. People are starting to formulate what that number is for them.”
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