Here are the Bay Area’s Buzziest Real Estate Stories in 2024

In a year of slow and not always steady recovery for the Bay Area’s resi and commercial markets, TRD readers looked for signs or guideposts, be it a big-name buyer or seller, a one-of-a-kind property or a focus on the future. That’s based on web traffic statistics showing the website’s most accessed local stories.

In the office market, the story for the year was the promised AI-led recovery, so any news about where sector heavyweight Open AI would take office space proved to be especially popular. But the most-read story featuring the ChatGPT maker wasn’t about the nearly 1 million square feet it now occupies in the city. Rather, readers wanted to know everything about the 37,000 square feet it left behind in the Mission after a rift with Elon Musk, who had been paying the company’s rent there.

Part of the story’s appeal was that it featured Musk, and fed into a deep desire to read about what the Bay Area’s tech illuminati were up to this year. On the commercial side, stories about Google co-founder Sergey Brin buying a San Francisco apartment building loan for $55 million, Applied Materials’ $100 million purchase of a former Fry’s Electronics site in Sunnyvale and tech investor Neil Mehta’s retail property purchases near his Pacific Heights home were all popular reads.

On the residential side, big names in tech also loomed large, starting with the biggest sale in San Francisco history from Laurene Powell Jobs in July. While no other sale came close to her $70-million purchase, readers were also fascinated by Iconiq Capital’s buy, presumably on behalf of one of its tech family-office clients, of a $54-million property in Woodside in July.

Notable tech names were also on the sell side of high-interest transactions this year. Sun Microsystem founder Scott McNealy sold his Portola Valley home for $35 million in July after an original list price of $100 million. Tech founder, investor and one-time San Diego Padres owner John Moores got a record $45 million for his long-time home on the 18th hole at Pebble Beach.

In San Francisco, Hotwire co-founder Karl Peterson sold his Presidio Heights home, and its controversial pickleball court, for $24 million. Bebo founders Michael and Xochi Birch got $29 million for their Gold Coast mansion with a British pub after several years on the market.

Stories that focused on the bizarre were also a hit this year. Readers couldn’t believe a buyer had been found for San Francisco Bay’s only private island this summer, or that two former Caltrain officials had been illegally building apartments in two Peninsula stations. The strange tale of a San Jose condo foreclosure auction that might have been too good to be true was also riveting to readers, as was a kooky caveat on a low-priced San Francisco home that would require keeping the owner’s elderly mother in place until 2053.

Continuing a theme from last year, readers kept up interest in the implications of distress on the apartment market. $1.8 billion in debt on Parkmerced moved to special servicing. Ballast and Brookfield acquired the distressed Veritas portfolio in January, before Ballast defaulted on 82 other properties it owned with Goldman Sachs in the city.

Given the rocky times, perhaps it’s no surprise that readers also liked stories that looked forward, from a possible recovery on the horizon in the San Francisco condo market to what the “office of the future” will look like, with an exclusive video tour from Gensler, the world’s biggest architecture firm.