The HOA Line

You have read the same headline all year. Houses are hot and condos are not.

And it holds up. Across the last six months the median single-family home in San Francisco went +22.5% over asking and the median condo went +1.3%, on 1,276 house sales and 1,375 condo sales. No argument there.

The trouble is what you do with it. There is no single condo market to be flat or hot. There are two of them, and what separates them has nothing to do with the district, the vintage of the building, or a parking space. It comes down to the dues line.

One number sorts the whole thing

Line up every condo that closed here in the last six months, then split the pile three ways by what the homeowners association charges each month. Now put the same question to each pile. How many of those sales finished at 10% or more above the asking price?

The bottom bracket, dues under $500 a month, returns 59.9% of sales. The middle, $500 to $1,000, returns 26.0%. The top, above $1,000, returns 11.1%. Each step down the ladder roughly halves it. Put another way: three in five below $500, sold in a median 13 days, against one in nine above $1,000.

Turn the top bracket over and it reads the same. Where dues run past $1,000, the most frequent result is a sale below the asking price. That is 39.9% of them, with 38.9% above asking and 21.2% landing right on it, in a median 19 days. Once you cross that line on the dues sheet, talking a price down is not the unusual outcome. It is the normal one.

By the numbers carries the full four-bracket version, and it behaves the way you would want it to. These brackets are cuts across a continuous slope, not real categories sitting out there in nature. Put the lines at $500 and $1,000, or move them to $800 and $1,200, and the ordering holds every time: more dues means fewer bidding wars, and a market that stretches from 13 days at the low end to roughly three weeks at the high one. A pattern that survives every way you slice it is the pattern talking, not the slicing.

One more thing, and I want to keep it short because that is all it can carry. You would expect high dues buildings to trade at a visible discount per square foot. That discount does not clearly appear. The figures land near the low dues group at both ends of the range. Different buildings in different neighborhoods make it a rough comparison, so I would call it suggestive and leave it there.

How it looks on the map

Two things people repeat about this market are both true, and both are mostly the dues wearing a costume. First, older buildings do better: pre-1940 condos ran +10.7% over asking across these six months, while anything built 2015 or later sold at asking. Second, certain neighborhoods do better. But neighborhoods sort themselves by what is standing on them. Flats cut out of Victorians and Edwardians sit in the house districts. Towers sit downtown and along the water.

Volume comes first, because it distorts everything else. South Beach alone closed 168 sales, as many as the five strongest neighborhoods put together, and that is a large part of why the citywide condo figure reads the way it does. South Beach itself landed right at asking, alongside Mission Bay and Van Ness, while Yerba Buena, Downtown and SoMa finished under it, and that whole below-asking corridor took a month or more to move. Same corridor where Issue #19 found cash buyers negotiating genuine discounts. The strong end is elsewhere. North Panhandle tops the city at +19.5% over asking, then Noe Valley at +15.9%, Eureka Valley at +14.2%, Mission Dolores at +11.6%. Noe Valley also cleared asking on 92.7% of its condo sales, the highest share of any neighborhood with 20 or more. The Marina no longer sits in between: +10.3% for the half, Pacific Heights +6.7%, because the pre-war flat side of those mixed streets is what sells. Across Marina, Pacific Heights and Cow Hollow, 1 and 2 bedroom condos cleared asking by double digits 40.4% of the time, in a median 9 days. Cole Valley, Corona Heights, Inner Richmond and Bernal Heights all ran hot too, but on fewer than 20 sales each this half, so the map leaves them unrated.

Every one of those angles is looking at the same object. A flat carved out of a 1926 four-unit Victorian carries almost nothing in dues, because there is no elevator to service, no lobby to staff, no doorman and no gym. A 2015 tower carries $1,200 a month, carries it permanently, and raises it. To a buyer working from a fixed monthly figure, that is not an abstraction. Dues and the mortgage payment leave the same pocket, and lenders count them the same way, which the CFPB's plain-language explainer spells out. So the low-dues building is not simply cheaper to own. Many more people can afford to bid on it.

Two sales that outran their bracket

Two homes from this cycle, both out of the middle of the dues range, the $500 to $800 group, where a median sale closes a touch over asking and roughly three in ten go double digits above. Neither one behaved anything like its bracket.

7 Casa Way, Unit 1, in the Marina. One bedroom, one bath, 1926 building, dues of $626. The ask was $929,000; it recorded August 19 at $1,260,000, a 35.6% overbid, and it took 12 days. The building has done this before: Unit 5 went for $1,600,000 against a $1,195,000 ask in July 2024, also in 12 days.

1945 Washington Street, Unit 204, in Pacific Heights. Two bedrooms, two baths, parking, dues around $797, asking $1,095,000. It pulled 12 offers and went into contract north of $1.4M. It was still pending when this issue went to press, so treat the final price as unrecorded; I will post it once the sale records. Look at the year on that building, though. 1987. Nothing pre-war about it.

Here is where I want to be careful, because a pair of sales like these is easy to misuse. Neither one proves that low dues win. They prove close to the reverse. Both came out of the ordinary middle of the dues range, one of them in a 1987 building, and both went straight past what that bracket would have predicted. A bracket sets odds and nothing more. In the $500 to $800 group about three sales in ten clear double digits over asking, and these two were among them. The buyer who reads that condos are flat and writes an offer to match on a home like either of these is not losing narrowly.

What the strong ones share

Low dues put a home in the running. Winning it depends on whether the place lives like a home or like a room with a view.

Actual square footage, not a clever plan that reads bigger than it lives. Daylight from at least two directions. A second bedroom an adult can sleep in. Outdoor space, or a view that does not depend on what a neighbor does with a roofline. Parking helps, though less than the folklore claims: 30.6% of units with it cleared double digits over asking, against 23.3% of units without.

Bedroom counts make the point with no interpretation needed. Studios: 45 sales, not one of them a double-digit overbid, a median 26 days. One bedrooms: 13.0%, 22 days. Two bedrooms: 31.5%, 14 days. Three bedrooms: 48.2%, 13 days. The nearer a condo comes to working like a house, the more it trades like one.

My take

Shopping for a condo? Pull the dues before the kitchen wins you over.

This is not an argument that high dues are bad value. There are buyers for whom the elevator, the front desk and the roof deck are precisely the point, and those buildings come with a quieter purchase and room to bargain. Priced honestly, that is worth something real.

Pull them because they tell you which kind of negotiation is waiting for you. Below $500 a month, plan on company and come prepared. Above $1,200, you probably have time, so use it. What I watch go wrong is a buyer carrying one plan into both rooms. They read that condos are flat, write near asking on the best low-dues flat they have laid eyes on all year, and lose it to somebody who understood which room they were standing in. The next one like it turns up four months later and costs more.

Selling in a high-dues building? Get out in front of that number. A current, clean reserve study, which California requires at least every three years anyway, plus a straight account of what the money buys, is worth more to your result than one more week of staging.

By the numbers

Monthly HOA dues	Sales	Median vs asking	Median days on market	Went 10%+ over	Median $ per sq ft
Under $500	302	+13.0%	13	59.9%	$1,184
$500 to $800	335	+1.8%	16	31.0%	$1,021
$800 to $1,200	342	At asking	20	17.3%	$1,003
$1,200 and up	342	At asking	18	9.1%	$1,187

AI Corridor Scoreboard

Weakest slice of the city, tracked one figure at a time: the condos beside the new AI offices, read here in every issue while any turn is under way.

Issue	Date	Reading	Call
#20 (this issue)	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.
#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.

Show the 16 earlier readings

Issue	Date	Reading	Call
#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.

Reliability labels, sale-to-list, market time and inventory for every San Francisco neighborhood all live in the market explorer. Get the dues on your building first, then read your own subdistrict there, and write the offer after that.

Methodology and sources

Source: POTM Command, governed MLS analytics, closed sales through August 21, 2026. Condo figures cover 1,375 closed condo and townhouse sales over the trailing six months, of which 1,321 reported HOA dues; the citywide house and condo comparison uses the same six months, 1,276 houses and 1,375 condos. Every figure is an exact median, never an average and never an approximation. Dues brackets are cuts of a continuous relationship, not categories; the ladder holds under any bracketing, which is why the shares lead this issue rather than the medians. Neighborhood figures use the same six months and are rated only at 20 or more sales; Cole Valley, Corona Heights, Inner Richmond and Bernal Heights fell under that floor this half and are shown unrated on the map. 1945 Washington Street was in contract and had not recorded as of publication; its figure is described in general terms and will be updated when it records. Everything here is observed, not causal. Updated August 25, 2026: every figure refreshed from the launch twelve-month window to the trailing six months.