Compass agent Neal Ward said he was “anxious inside” as San Francisco’s spring season kicked off this year. But when his $15 million Presidio Heights and $9 million Presidio Terrace listings hit the market in March and got 15 showings apiece in their first week, he was able to breathe again.
“The high-net-worth buyer is back,” Ward said, adding that last year those same listings would have had fewer than 5 showings over several weeks. “They are excited about San Francisco and ready to engage again.”
The city’s other top agents agreed, pointing to this past spring as the season when the city began shaking itself loose from the doldrums of the last few years. The market, weighed down by high interest rates and a general sense of apprehension about San Francisco’s future, seems to be back. But it is not a full recovery: Agents said they still had to expand their offerings or marketing efforts in order to stay at the top or move up in the ranks.
Last fall was “absolutely horrendous in the high-end market,” said returning No. 1 agent Nina Hatvany. Nothing moved for months.
“Finally, it unfroze this spring, and that continues,” the Compass agent said. “It’s not spectacular, but it’s so much better than last year.”
Hatvany had $277 million in volume over 80 sales, according to data compiled by The Real Deal, which tallied agent sales on the buy and sell sides in San Francisco between May 2023 and May 2024. The numbers do not include off-market sales.
That’s a $67 million jump from last year, when Hatvany and her team, which consists of her three children, nabbed the top spot with only $210 million over 58 sales, but still well below the $446 million over 128 deals the team brought in during the 2021-2022 tally, which included the market peak.
Hatvany said that this year, her team expanded its efforts outside of its key north side neighborhoods and was busy in popular southern neighborhoods like Noe Valley and Bernal Heights. They also did a lot of private sales to “get our clients something special that wasn’t on the market” amidst continued low inventory.
“We don’t set out to be No. 1,” she said. “We’re not heavily invested in advertising or promoting that. We set out to do a good job for our clients, and we’re fortunate that the volume comes with that.”
Compass’ Ward is the city’s second-biggest agent this year, with over $178 million in volume over 19 deals. His three off-market sales during the data collection window would have meant another $50 million added to his total if they were counted, he said.
Ward moved up from fourth place last year, when he had $121 million in volume over 17 deals. The low-transaction, high-end agent said that this year he began offering free design and project-manager services to his clients to help them prepare their homes, which are often in the city’s toniest neighborhoods, like Pacific Heights, Presidio Heights and Sea Cliff. The housing stock is often 100 years old and has been in the same hands for decades, so the cosmetic updates are often needed.
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“What happened back in the early 1900s is what we have today for the most part,” he said.
“It’s part of the service that we provide as a luxury agent in the marketplace,” he added about the “hours and hours” of work done by his staff at no charge to the client. “Things are spit-and-polished just the way it has to be, and it’s important for me and my brand that we adhere to that.”
Sotheby’s agents took the third and fourth positions this year. Neill Bassi, another low-transaction, high-price-point agent, in third, had $170 million in volume over just 16 sales, and Gregg Lynn saw $155 million over 44 sales. Both declined to comment.
Compass agent Ruth Krishnan joined TRD’s Top 5 club for the first time this year, with $130 million in volume over 65 sales. Krishnan said she transacts on homes at all price points all around the city but that her sweet spot is the $2 million-to-$5-million range, with a disproportionate number of her sales in and around Noe Valley. Last year she was ranked eighth, with $97 million in volume over 51 sales.
She said other agents she knows saw their volume drop by 50 to 70 percent when the market slowed in 2022 and 2023, while her team’s only fell by 10 percent. This, she said, was “a very big win.” During the slowdown, she created her own YouTube channel to help build her business, with fresh videos weekly. A year in, the media effort is paying off: Several new listings have resulted, and she has more recognition from other agents around town, she said. What’s more, it has the potential to really explode given that “we’re really out there on our own doing it,” Krishnan said.
“The ROI is not there yet, but I think by this time next year it’ll be really, really good. I can see it very, very clearly based on what’s in the pipeline,” she said.
With inventory still low and new listings limited, Krishnan said she’s been building up clients on the buy side and now represents buyers around 60 percent of the time. She said buyers are very aware of the NAR changes around who is responsible for paying brokers’ commissions, but that so far sellers are still paying in the majority of deals.
“The reality is that whoever is willing to spend the most money on the house, regardless of what bucket that you put it in, is going to be the person who’s going to win,” she said. “So from that standpoint nothing has changed, but I think buyers are still trying to get their heads around all of this.”
Ward said that buyers’ psychology this fall had been positively impacted by Laurene Powell Jobs’ record-breaking $71 million buy this summer on aptly named Billionaire’s Row. A sale that high, with a famous buyer attached, “in a very significant way filters down through all the price points,” he said.
“It signals that that buyer is willing to commit to live here in a prime Pacific Heights wonderful home like that,” he said. “It says that San Francisco is strong and vital. We’re a boom-and-bust city, and we’re booming again.”
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