Market Notes, Issue #21, August 30, 2026
The TIC Turn
Behind the houses and the condos sits a third product, and most buyers were taught to skip it. This issue takes the tenancy in common flat seriously: what the structure is, what it costs to carry every month, which districts have turned competitive, and why the old warnings about it, cash only and hard to sell, do not survive contact with the numbers.
By David Juarez, Level Up Group · Compass · Published August 30, 2026
Data source POTM, governed SFAR MLS data
Buyers here get handed a two-product market on day one. House or condo. A third product exists, and the standard advice is to walk past it. Over the last six months it beat the condo market on every measure.
Start with the structure, because that is where the confusion lives. A tenancy in common is not a legally separate unit. You and your neighbors own percentages of one building, and a written agreement gives you the exclusive right to occupy your flat. That arrangement is how thousands of Victorian and Edwardian buildings in this city became homes an ordinary buyer could purchase, and it arrived carrying a reputation: hard to finance, hard to resell, the thing you settle for when the real thing is out of reach. Some of that reputation was fairly earned, years ago. Most of it no longer matches the sales.
What changed
Twelve months ago this looked like the slow lane, and the figures agreed. Across the six months ending August 2025, the median TIC sold at asking and took 37 days to get there. Just 13.6% of sales beat asking by 10% or more.
Then the last six months: +5.8% over asking at the median, 16 days at the median, and 39.8% of sales beating asking by double digits. That last share almost tripled inside a year and now sits above condos, which cleared 10% or more on 29.6% of sales. The sample held steady, 176 sales now against 169 then, so this is one market changing speed rather than a different set of buildings.
Condos got warmer this year as well, which Issue #20 covered. The TIC move is simply bigger everywhere you look: time on market more than halved, the over-asking share up 21 points, the median price climbing from $1,000,000 to $1,205,000.
Now put ten years behind it
One improving year proves nothing by itself. So the same measures run back to 2016, every year clipped to January 1 through August 29 so no season gets a head start, and the team put the whole table in By the numbers. Read it and four distinct acts show up.
Act one, 2016 through 2019: a small but genuinely competitive niche, a few points over asking and about a month on market, topping out in 2018 at +5.6% with 38.5% of sales clearing double digits. Act two is the odd one. 2020 stalled outright, then 2021 produced the decade's heaviest volume, 294 sales by late August, at the decade's slowest pace of 45 days, with pricing flat. Buyers took the discount product in bulk and did not compete for it. Act three, 2022 through 2025, is the long flat: four consecutive years of the median sale landing exactly at asking, and 2023 as the floor, when only 2.2% of sales beat asking by 10% or more.
Act four is 2026, and it does not fit the pattern. The over-asking share, 61.2% year to date, is back at 2016-2018 levels, and the double-digit overbid share of 34.2% is beaten only by 2018. Those parts rhyme with the old peak. The speed rhymes with nothing: 18 median days, against a decade in which no year broke 29. Price and price per foot, $1,178,000 and $978 year to date, are both decade highs, and the 2018 peak never cleared $899 a foot. So 2026 is matching 2018's competition at roughly twice 2018's speed, at prices neither year came near. Calling that a return to an old normal would be wrong. Nothing in the last ten years looks like it.
One caution before you compare figures across this page. The decade table runs January to August, and on that basis 2026 sits at +2.9% over asking. Everywhere else here I am quoting the trailing six months, which is +5.8%. Neither number is wrong. The year-to-date version carries a cool January and February inside it.
What you would actually own
The picture the sales draw is a specific one. A TIC on the market in 2026 sits in a building that went up around 1909, where the median condo's building dates to 1989. Floor area is close to a wash, roughly 1,200 square feet either way. Carrying cost is not: median reported dues of $450 a month against $823, because a small self-managed building has no tower staff to pay. And the price gap is real, a median $986 per square foot against $1,101, a 10.4% discount on a home of similar size.
Issue #20 found that the hottest corner of the attached-home market was low-dues flats in older buildings. Line that up against the paragraph above and the TIC turn stops looking like a surprise. A TIC is the original low-dues flat in an old building. Same product, different legal wrapper.
Checking the folklore
Folklore item one, the loudest: TICs are cash only. Among TIC sales in the last six months that reported financing, 24.7% were cash, while condos in the same window ran 37.0% cash. Roughly half of TIC sales closed on conventional loans. Sit with that for a moment. The product people call unfinanceable carried a smaller cash share than the mainstream one. Fractional TIC lending is an established market at this point. Its rates and terms genuinely differ from condo loans, so put that question to a lender who does TIC work, but it is not a reason to skip the open house.
Folklore item two: the format is dying out. Since 2016 the city has closed somewhere between 232 and 326 TIC sales in every single year, setting the everything-spike of 2021 aside, and this year is pacing near the top of that band. Holding a steady tenth of the flat market for a decade is not a fad, and it is not a fade. It is a lane.
The map, and one thing I cannot explain
Start with where the product is missing. Districts 3, 4 and 10 recorded no TIC sales in this window at all, because those are single-family blocks with nothing to divide. What remains concentrates on the north side, and it does not track the condo map. District 6 cleared asking on 80% of its sales at a median +12.0%. Pacific Heights and the Marina, District 7, came in at +11.9%, and the Richmond, District 1, at +12.7% on a thinner Directional sample. Two smaller readings, both Directional: the Marina alone at +17.8% on 9 sales, Mission Dolores at +10.6% on 13.
The district with the most volume is the calmest. District 5 turned out 63 TIC sales, over a third of the city's total, at a median +3.2%. Which leads to the part I cannot explain. In Noe Valley, TICs closed at asking on 19 sales during the same six months in which Noe Valley condos ran +16.6%. One neighborhood, two attached products, sixteen points between them. Small samples move around, so I am flagging that gap and watching it rather than inventing a reason for it.
How I would use it
Buyers who keep getting priced out of condos in the neighborhoods they want should look hard at this door. The discount behind it is real, roughly 10% per square foot plus about half the monthly dues. What you trade away is legal structure, not the block, the light or the floor plan. Bring an attorney and a lender who have done TIC work and you negotiate on information while the buyers beside you are still repeating what they heard. Do not take a month over it. A 16-day market does not wait for anyone to finish their research.
Owners who have been turning a sale over in their heads are looking at the strongest exit window anywhere in this decade of data. Nearly two in three TIC sales now clear asking, and no year in the last ten moved faster. So build the pricing path from what your own subdistrict did over the last six months, and price it as the competitive product it has become rather than the discount one it used to be.
By the numbers
| Year, Jan 1 to Aug 29 | Sales | Median vs asking | Median days | Sold over asking | Went 10%+ over | Median $ per sq ft |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 152 | +2.6% | 39 | 62.5% | 21.1% | $695 |
| 2017 | 155 | +3.4% | 34 | 61.3% | 25.2% | $737 |
| 2018 | 174 | +5.6% | 29 | 67.2% | 38.5% | $863 |
| 2019 | 182 | +1.4% | 31 | 57.7% | 19.2% | $896 |
| 2020 | 139 | At asking | 35 | 43.2% | 9.4% | $899 |
| 2021 | 294 | At asking | 45 | 45.9% | 16.0% | $891 |
| 2022 | 220 | +0.1% | 34 | 51.4% | 20.9% | $892 |
| 2023 | 178 | At asking | 36 | 30.9% | 2.2% | $863 |
| 2024 | 171 | At asking | 34 | 41.5% | 15.2% | $861 |
| 2025 | 204 | At asking | 37 | 41.2% | 12.7% | $850 |
| 2026 | 219 | +2.9% | 18 | 61.2% | 34.2% | $978 |
AI Corridor Scoreboard
The softest corner of the city gets one reading in every issue. These are the condos near the new AI offices, tracked here so the turn is visible while it is happening rather than afterward.
| Issue | Date | Reading | Call |
|---|---|---|---|
| #21 (this issue) | Aug 30, 2026 | Still the calm end of the map. South Beach at asking on 167 sales with 29.9% over; SoMa, Mission Bay and Van Ness / Civic Center at asking; Yerba Buena 1.7% below. Meanwhile 56.6% of condos citywide now clear asking, up from 36.4% a year ago. | The negotiator's end of the market, with the floor rising underneath it. |
| #20 | Aug 25, 2026 | Two markets, one label. Corridor towers still at or below asking over the past six months (South Beach at asking on 168 sales, Yerba Buena -2.2%) while low-dues flats citywide cleared 10%+ over in 59.9% of sales. | Check the dues before you plan the offer. |
Show the 17 earlier readings
| Issue | Date | Reading | Call |
|---|---|---|---|
| #19 | Aug 18, 2026 | Where cash buys the most and shouts the least. Corridor condos ran 41.7% cash in the past 12 months, the heaviest concentration this series tracks, yet cash and financed closed at the same price, 99.2% versus 99.3% of asking. Cash's whole edge here is the clock: 20 median days on market against 39 financed. | Financed buyers give up nothing on price here; they pay in patience. |
| #17 | Aug 9, 2026 | Zero, which is the cleanest reading this scoreboard has produced. Across 368 corridor condo closings so far in 2026, not one sold $1,000,000 over asking, and the typical one closed slightly under asking: South Beach 0.7% below on 183 sales, South of Market 1.0% below on 79, Yerba Buena 2.4% below on 53, Mission Bay exactly at asking on 53. In an issue about where the overbidding is, the corridor is where it is not. | Buyer opening holds, and this issue measures exactly how wide it is. |
| #16 | Aug 6, 2026 | Flat in every window, which this issue argues is the whole point. South Beach condos read 100.0% of asking at 30, 90 and 180 days and 99.0% over the trailing year. South of Market reads 99.4, 99.8, 99.6 and 99.0. Four windows, one answer. Every house lane in this issue moved when the window moved; the corridor did not, and a segment that reads the same no matter how you slice it is a segment that is not turning. | Buyer opening holds, and now it is measured four ways instead of one. |
| #15 | Aug 2, 2026 | Unchanged at the bottom of the same ladder. This issue extended the over-asking gradient into small multifamily, and the corridor still anchors the low end: right at asking, while two-unit buildings cleared 11.7% over and houses 23.8%. The ordering is by how much a property lives like a house, and a corridor tower is the furthest thing from one. | Buyer opening holds, and this issue explains why it persists. |
| #14 | Jul 29, 2026 | Read on supply this time, not price. Citywide condo and townhome months of supply fell from 3.9 to 1.7 in a year and active listings from 772 to 480, so even the calmest lane in the city now offers less to choose from. This issue did not re-measure corridor pricing. | Buyer opening holds on price; the shelf behind it is thinner. |
| #13 | Jul 25, 2026 | Graduated to the essay. Back at asking for the first time since 2022, after three springs about 1% below it, and the clock changed: median market time fell from 38 days to 19 and the share selling over asking roughly doubled, from the low twenties to the mid forties. Price at par, speed doubled. | Negotiating room intact; the window now narrows in speed, not price. |
| #12 | Jul 21, 2026 | Still the calm corner, and it proves the point. District 9 condos, SoMa, Mission Bay, and South Beach, sold right at list, about 100%, with only 31% over asking on 836 sales, while mid-priced houses cleared 123 to 127% of list. Condos rarely get listed low to start a war, so the overbid never appears. | Buyer leverage holds where the list-low tactic is not used. |
| #11 | Jul 17, 2026 | Unmoved by the house story. While overbidding ran one tier below the trophy core, the corridor and condo core cleared near asking, and the two flat lanes the field named as spillover candidates, Hayes Valley and Lower Pacific Heights, stayed calm in closed data. | Still the clearest buyer opening in the city. |
| #10 | Jul 14, 2026 | Still soft while the headline is elsewhere. June's million-over-asking story is a west-side and central house market, not the AI-corridor towers. District 9 condos, SoMa, Mission Bay and South Beach, ran about 10% below last year even as volume climbed. Activity returns to the corridor; pricing has not. | Still the clearest buyer opening in the city. |
| #09 | Jul 10, 2026 | Still the soft floor at the halfway mark. District 9 condos, SoMa, Mission Bay, and South Beach, sold near 100% of list with only about 36% over asking on roughly 290 sales this year, while citywide houses ran near 121% of list. The widest lane in the city stays open. | Clearest buyer opportunity holds into the second half. |
| #08 | Jul 5, 2026 | Still the soft floor even as the top books records. District 9 condos, SoMa, Mission Bay, and South Beach, sold near 100% of list with heavy cash and light competition, while $5M+ houses set a decade volume record at about 112% of list on roughly 64% cash. Cash without a crowd here. | Buyer opportunity intact where the crowds are not. |
| #06 | Jun 25, 2026 | Still the calm corner while the house middle runs hot. District 9 condos, SoMa, Mission Bay, and South Beach, sold right at list, about 100%, with only 35% over asking on 300 sales, against the $1.5M to $3M house band at 122 to 125% of list. | Buyer opportunity holds where the bidding wars are not. |
| #05 | Jun 21, 2026 | Cash, not heat. Corridor condos carry heavier cash than the citywide condo average, about 42% versus 37%, yet still sell near 98.7% of list with only about 20% over asking versus 45% citywide. Cash concentrates here; competition does not. | Negotiating room for financed buyers. |
| #04 | Jun 17, 2026 | Still the soft floor while houses raced ahead. Corridor near 98 to 99% of list versus 103.8% citywide and about 123% for single-family in the last 30 days. | Buyer opportunity holds; the gap to houses only widened. |
| #03 | Jun 13, 2026 | Still the bottom of the overbid table. Corridor sale-to-list at about 98 to 99% versus 103.6% citywide, trailing year. | Opportunity intact for negotiators. |
| #02 | Jun 10, 2026 | Turning at the edges. Citywide condos hit 101.4% of list in May; inventory fell to 584 from 905. The corridor towers remain the soft end. | Window narrowing, not closed. |
| #01 | Jun 7, 2026 | Soft. Only 37 to 43% of SoMa, Mission Bay, and downtown condos sold over asking. | Clearest buyer opportunity in the city. |
- One year of change: the median TIC went from at asking in 37 days to +5.8% over asking in 16 days, on 176 sales against 169. The share beating asking by 10% or more almost tripled, 13.6% to 39.8%, and now runs ahead of condos at 29.6%. Speed is the part without precedent, since no year in ten posted a median under 29 days.
- This is the original low-dues flat. Buildings from 1909 at the median, where condos median 1989. Reported dues of $450, where condos run $823. And $986 a square foot, where condos fetch $1,101, which is the 10.4% discount, at similar size.
- Cash only is out-of-date advice. Of the TIC sales reporting financing, 24.7% paid cash, under the condo figure of 37.0%, and about half closed on conventional loans. Fractional TIC lending is available, on different terms than a condo loan, so bring in a TIC-experienced lender early.
- The geography runs opposite to the condo map. Heat shows in Districts 6, 7 and 1, with the Marina at +17.8% on a Directional 9 sales, while District 5, which carries the most TIC volume, sat at +3.2%. Noe Valley is the outlier: TICs at asking on 19 sales, condos at +16.6%.
- Neither a fad nor a fade. The count has landed between 232 and 326 sales in every year since 2016, with only the 2021 spike outside that band, and 2026 is pacing near the top of it. That is a durable lane, and still the cheapest door into the neighborhoods buyers actually want.
The market explorer carries sale-to-list, market time and inventory for every San Francisco neighborhood, each with a reliability label attached. If a TIC listing has your attention, read its subdistrict there before anything else, then put the right team around you before you write an offer.
Methodology and sources
Source: POTM Command, governed MLS analytics, queried August 30, 2026. All current figures cover closed sales from March 3 through August 29, 2026; year-ago figures use the identical window in 2025. Counts: 176 TIC sales now, 169 a year ago, 1,364 condo and townhouse sales now. Every figure is an exact median, never an average. Sale-to-list is the ratio of sold price to final list price. Dues are reported on 144 of the 176 TIC sales and financing on 158; both shares use the reported denominator only, and unreported sales are never assumed. The decade table and chart compare January 1 through August 29 of each year, 2016 through 2026, so the year-to-date figures (2026 at +2.9% over asking) sit beside the trailing six-month figures (+5.8%) without contradiction; annual year-to-date samples run 139 to 294 sales. District figures at 13 or more sales meet at least the Directional reliability threshold for this window; the Marina (9 sales) and North Panhandle (5) are labeled in the text and read accordingly. Houses and 2-4 unit buildings are excluded throughout. General information, not legal, lending or tax advice: TIC ownership and financing have real legal and lending differences from condominiums, and the right professionals for those questions are a TIC-experienced attorney and lender.
Level Up Market Intel
What does this mean for your home, or the one you want?
The page above is the data and the context. What it means for one address, one budget and one timeline is a conversation. David reads this market every day.