Why Sunset District Is Most Competitive SF Neighborhood

“White collar surfers,” fewer fogged-in days and relatively affordable single-family homes are all pushing demand in the formerly sleepy Sunset District, especially the Outer Sunset, according to agents. The San Francisco neighborhood, which stretches southwest from Golden Gate Park to Ocean Beach, has quietly become the city’s most competitive, according to Compass data.

“There’s no neighborhood or category of real estate in the city that I think has more interest and activity than the homes out here,” said Coldwell Banker agent Jeremy Rushton, who specializes in Outer Sunset listings. “It’s definitely the nicest part of the city where you can get a house for well under $2 million, which is like the new $1 million. It’s just a high quality of life for what you’re paying.”

Houses in the Sunset, which includes Parkside and Golden Gate Heights, sell the fastest in the city with an average of just 19 days on market, according to Compass data for the last 12 months, ending in mid-April. The neighborhood also had the highest percentage of listings that sold over asking during that 12-month period at 86 percent of listings. Homes there sold for an average of 20 percent over asking, compared to an average of 12 percent citywide.

Agents say those numbers make sense because even in a city where the norm is underpricing to elicit multiple bids, the Sunset takes that tactic to an extreme.

“The asking price is just the marketing price to get you in the door,” said Janice Lee, a top agent in Coldwell Banker’s Sunset office.

She said the neighborhood’s agents are “notorious” for listing properties hundreds of thousands of dollars below market to create a competitive situation, which means most of the homes there are sold within a one- or two-week marketing period. There’s typically just one or two open houses, a brokers tour and then an offer date. Those who deviate from that formula do so at their own risk, she said.

“If you price too high above market or at market, people won’t see it because they’re used to overbidding by $200,000 to $400,000,” she said.

Even with the overbidding, the Sunset is still one of the most affordable places to own a single-family home in San Francisco. The citywide median for a house is $1.8 million, according to Compass. In the Central Sunset, the median price is about $1.6 million and the price drops to $1.45 million for Outer Parkside. That accessibility has pushed home sales in both areas to the highest per neighborhood in the city, with 200 sales for the Sunset between April 2024 and April 2025, and 203 for Parkside, according to Compass.

“This is the last frontier of affordability,” Lee said.

While the Inner Sunset has bigger, grander homes from the turn of the century, and therefore higher price points, the Outer Sunset features smaller starter homes, many originally occupied by returning soldiers after World War II. Rushton often represents the former grocery store managers and machine shop workers who are selling after decades of owning their Outer Sunset homes. As they move out, Tesla engineers, cryptocurrency investors and other “white-collar surfers” are moving in, he said.

“They’re still starter homes, but now the bar to entry is so much higher,” he said.

For example, in April, Rushton listed a 1,070-square-foot two-bedroom, one-bathroom home at 1523 46th Avenue at just under $1.1 million. Even in the midst of general market concerns caused by the Trump tariffs, it got nine offers and sold in seven days for $1.6 million.

Rushton said the 1500 block of any avenue in the Sunset is typically the most popular because it’s close to Golden Gate Park, the commercial amenities on Irving Street and the N Judah line, but not so close that residents can hear the noise of the train. West of 41st and North of Moraga is the “most-coveted pocket” in the Outer Sunset, he added.

The immigrant Chinese families that were once among the biggest buying blocs in the Sunset are also getting priced out, Lee said, and moving to “the outskirts of San Francisco,” though some immigrant Chinese are looking for two- to four-unit buildings in the Sunset, which have a much lower cost per square foot. Asian-American and white techies now make up the majority of the buying pool, she said.

Hotter days, hotter market

The price isn’t the only thing that has changed in the Sunset since the previous generation made the neighborhood home. There is also a new cool factor that has arrived just as the notably brisk microclimate is seeing fewer and fewer foggy days.

Compass multifamily agent John Antonini grew up in the nearby Lakeside neighborhood and went to high school at St. Ignatius in the Sunset. As he got into real estate and heard his friends bemoan the lack of affordability in the city, he’d suggest the Sunset, which at that point in the early 2000s was averaging about $600,000 for a single-family home. They wouldn’t even consider it, he said, given the neighborhood’s ho-hum reputation at the time.

“I bet they’d kill to make that purchase right now,” he said. “The Sunset has just gotten cooler. It doesn’t have a stigma like you’re in the middle of nowhere.”

He said he saw demand for apartments in the neighborhood “pep up” during the pandemic, when people began prioritizing outdoor amenities and didn’t have to worry about commute times. While much of the city’s rents were “going backwards” in 2020, he said, the opposite trend was happening there. And once people arrived, they liked what they saw, he said, including new restaurants, bars and boutiques that are “kicking butt” and not putting out a “sleepy product.”

“The pandemic brought people into the Sunset and had them say, ‘Wow, this is actually a nice place to live. It’s not this hinterland that we thought it was,” the agent said.

Rising home prices and increased interest in rentals have helped make the Sunset apartment market a bright spot, Antonini said. In February, he sold 1249 18th Avenue so fast it never even officially went to market, he said. There were four or five offers on the fully occupied 1960s-era building with 18 units and 18-car parking, and the all-cash buyer was an “investment-grade” group, he said.

Those kinds of investors are interested in the Sunset today, whereas five to 10 years ago they only wanted to be North of Fulton and East of Park Presidio, he added, meaning new competition for the traditional independent owners who had dominated the multifamily scene in the avenues.

“The mom and pops could run that market because the more institutional investors were hesitant to go out there, unless it was a really good deal,” he said.

One of the main “hot zones” is near Ocean Beach, he said, which despite the proximity to the water had always had the built-in deterrent of the socked-in fog.

But there’s been more sun in the Sunset as of late, perhaps thanks to climate change, and that has made homes in the Outer Sunset, especially along the beach with a Great Highway address, particularly popular.

“Whenever I’m giving a consultation to somebody who owns a property on the Great Highway, I only bring Great Highway sales [as comps],” said Rushton, who said the beachfront premium began back in 2018 when a “very average” home sold for well over $2 million, which was “a big shocker to a lot of people” at the time.

The recent closing of Great Highway to car traffic has been controversial, with Sunset Supervisor Joel Engardio now facing recall efforts over his support for keeping the road car-free. Rushton said it was too early to say how the new park, now dubbed Sunset Dunes, will impact sales and prices, but that he’d be willing to bet “closing the Great Highway is probably more popular with the buying demographic than it is with the selling demographic.”

The chill, but not too chilly vibe has been appealing to young people with high paying jobs who a generation ago would have gone to the Marina or Pacific Heights but now “seem to chase a more understated aesthetic for their lives,” Rushton said.

They want to be close to the surf, but also close to amenities, which the Outer Sunset is in a unique position to offer, he added.

“The Marin coast is picturesque, but it’s not convenient. It’s not walkable. There’s no transportation really,” he said. “So if you need those things, the Great Highway is literally your only option. It’s such a finite resource.”

Marin may still have more sunny days, but Antonini said Sunset residents, like San Franciscans overall, seem willing to take on the city’s famously cold summers.

“If you’ve got a big aversion to fog, San Francisco might not be your place,” he said.