Dublin Home Values Surpass San Francisco’s

First came Fremont, where typical home values surpassed San Francisco’s last year. Then came San Jose in July. And now the East Bay city of Dublin.

In San Francisco, once the priciest of the Bay Area’s five largest cities, home values have remained mostly flat, with a typical house worth $1.26 million in September, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, citing figures from Zillow.

The sluggish market has allowed cities that once had cheaper homes to catch up. Compared to San Francisco, many cities in the East and South Bay are seeing rising home values, according to Zillow.

From March to September, home values in Dublin, the fastest-growing city in California, rose 4 percent to $1.29 million, from $1.24 million.

The uptick comes despite higher interest rates, which last year helped cause a drop in values across the region.

While San Francisco is still expensive — with buyers needing to earn at least $400,000 a year to afford a typical home — the recent rise in home values in other cities has caused many current buyers to look elsewhere.

And they’ve become especially picky about their choice of homes.

“The buyers are really very particular right now because of the interest rates,” Shameran Anderer, an agent with the Barbagelata Group of San Francisco, told the Chronicle. “They’re thinking, ‘If I’ve gotta deal with this monthly payment, (the home has) gotta be pretty darn perfect.’”

What locals call The City still has winning homes, Anderer said. It only takes a week or two to sell renovated properties with EV chargers and choice views.

But homes that aren’t of that rank generally take much longer to sell.

San Francisco homes that changed hands in September spent a median 33 days on the market, five days longer than the median number of days for homes sold across the state, according to Redfin.

It took a median 11 days to sell a home in San Jose. And a median 10 days to move a house in Fremont and Dublin.

Anderer encourages sellers to lower their prices if they don’t sell within 30 days. But some sellers are standing fast, Michael Soon, a San Francisco broker with Compass, told the newspaper.

Many buyers, Soon said, continue to acquire bigger homes elsewhere in the Bay Area at prices they wouldn’t be able to find in San Francisco.

“San Francisco always has a competitive edge,” Soon said, “but at some point the property itself may be out of line with what the buyer is looking for, and that’s the challenge.”

— Dana Bartholomew