A new multifamily trade on a rare non-rent-controlled building in San Francisco’s Marina District is the city’s most expensive per-door trade “by a wide margin” so far this year, according to Compass agent Adam Filly, who listed 3322 Buchanan last fall and represented the buyer in the competitive offer situation as well.
Even though it quickly went into contract in late October, the sale closed April 1 at the request of the previous owner’s estate, Filly said.
The winning buyer was Garrett Brasseaux, the managing principal of Cypress Capital Investments, according to the deed. He picked up the 29-unit three-story complex with an interior courtyard and parking for 45 cars for $17.5 million, or just over $600,000 per unit. That’s nearly twice as much as the citywide average of $317,000 per unit for five-plus-unit buildings, according to Compass data for the first quarter of 2025.
Brasseaux was busy in the latter half of last year, buying several other apartment buildings in the city in just a few months. Brasseaux declined to comment on the Marina buy, but Filly said, “Institutional quality assets on the north side of San Francisco are extremely rare and Garrett and his capital partners recognized that they may not see another opportunity like this for years to come.”
The seller was a trust representing the estate of Emmett Hegarty, who bought the 2001-built property from developer Wilson Meany for $13.9 million in 2003, according to public records.
Filly listed the property, which has 27 residential rentals and two commercial spaces, for $18 million on Sept. 30. It went into contract one month later after Filly received six offers, all from local investment groups or family offices, he said.
The 36,000-square-foot property elicited major interest both because it is an unusual San Francisco apartment building not subject to rent control and because there are repositioning opportunities in its 10,000 square feet of vacant commercial space, which fronts Lombard Street. Brasseaux has a “strong vision” for that space, he added.
Other than the vacant retail space, the building was 100 percent occupied at the time of sale, Filly said, with one-bedrooms renting at just under $3,000 a month and two-bedroom, two-bath units renting for between $4,000 and $5,000 a month. San Francisco one-bedroom rents are up about 10 percent this year, according to Zumper, with a monthly median of $3,200.
Using proforma projections for the vacant commercial space, the sale price represents a 5.7 percent cap rate, outperforming the market, which Filly said has been trading at about a 6.5 percent cap rate for larger mixed-use sales, with some as high as 7 percent.
Cap rates for five-plus-unit apartments more generally were 6.2 percent in the first quarter, according to Compass data. There were over 30 apartment sales in the first quarter, the highest Q1 count since 2018 and a 50 percent year-over-year improvement.
Filly said that the sale was indicative of a strengthening market and that he was encouraged to see a variety of buyers, including apartment operators, tenancy-in-common developers, and even an owner-user for the commercial space, interested in a building at that price point.
“We will continue to see other examples of how much investors believe in San Francisco’s recovery in the coming months,” he said.
Not including this sale, there were only four San Francisco apartment sales over $7 million reported to the multiple listing service in the last 12 months, according to Compass. One of the biggest sales in the city so far this year is the Normandy Apartments in Cathedral Hill, which sold for $35 million and will be turned into affordable housing by the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation. It bought the property with funding from the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development and is planning a major rehabilitation of the 1968-built, 108-unit complex.
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