Market Notes, Issue #21, August 30, 2026
The TIC Turn
There is a third product in San Francisco that almost nobody sets out to buy: the tenancy in common flat. This issue lays out what one actually is, what it costs you every month, which districts have gone competitive for them, and why the received wisdom, cash only and impossible to resell, is not what the closings say.
By Michael Bilger, Level Up Group · Compass · Published August 30, 2026
Data source POTM, governed SFAR MLS data
Buyers here get taught a market with two shelves on it, houses and condos. A third shelf exists. Most people have been advised to walk right past it, and over the last six months the thing sitting on it beat condos outright.
Start with what it is. A tenancy in common gives you a percentage of an entire building rather than a legally separate unit, held alongside your neighbors, with a written agreement that hands you the exclusive right to live in your own flat. That structure is how thousands of San Francisco's Victorian and Edwardian buildings got divided into homes ordinary people could afford to buy. It also arrives buried under folklore. You cannot finance it. You will never resell it. It is what you settle for when you lose. Parts of that were true once. Most of it does not survive contact with the current numbers.
The turn
Rewind twelve months and this was the slow lane. Across the six months to August 2025 the median TIC changed hands at asking, and it took a median 37 days to get there. Just 13.6% of them beat asking by 10% or better.
Then look at the six months just closed. 39.8% of TIC sales beat asking by double digits, roughly triple the share a year earlier, and that is ahead of condos, which managed 29.6% clearing 10% or more. Median sale: +5.8% over asking. Median time on the market: 16 days. The counts are 176 sales now and 169 then, so what you are looking at is one market at a new tempo, not some different market that showed up.
Condos warmed up as well, which Issue #20 laid out. The TIC move is simply bigger on every line: time on market cut to well under half, 21 more points of sales clearing asking, and a median price that went from $1,000,000 to $1,205,000.
The decade behind the turn
A single good year can be noise, so the team took the same measures back to 2016, holding the window at January 1 through August 29 every year so no season gets a head start. That full table sits in By the numbers. Read across it and four acts appear.
Act one, 2016 to 2019: a real niche with real competition, a few points above asking and about a month to sell, topping out in 2018 at +5.6% with 38.5% of sales clearing double digits. Act two is the odd one. 2020 stalled out. Then 2021 put up the decade's biggest volume, 294 sales by late August, while running at its slowest, 45 days, with pricing flat. People bought the discount product in bulk and did not compete for it. Act three, 2022 through 2025, is the long flat: four straight years where the median TIC closed exactly at asking, with 2023 the floor, only 2.2% of sales clearing asking by 10% or more.
Set 2026 beside that run. The competition looks familiar: 61.2% of sales over asking year to date, which is 2016-2018 territory, and a 34.2% double-digit overbid share that only 2018 has beaten. The speed looks like nothing in the record at all. 18 median days, in a decade where no year got below 29. Price sits at the top too, $1,178,000 and $978 a foot year to date, both decade highs, while the 2018 peak never cleared $899 a foot. So the shape of it is 2018's competition running at double 2018's speed with record numbers on the price line. That is not a market coming back to an old normal. Nothing in ten years of this data looks like 2026.
One housekeeping note, because two figures here will look like they argue. The decade table runs January through August, and on that basis 2026 sits at +2.9% over asking. Everywhere else this issue quotes the trailing six months, which gives +5.8%. Neither one is wrong. The year-to-date version simply carries January and February, and those months were cooler.
What the product actually is
Here are the ingredients of a 2026 TIC, before anyone tells you what the dish is. A 10.4% discount is the first one: $986 per square foot against $1,101 for condos. Next, the carrying cost, $450 a month against $823, since a small self-managed building has no tower payroll behind it. Size is a wash, roughly 1,200 square feet either way. What differs most is age. The median TIC building dates to 1909 and the median condo to 1989, most of a century between them.
Issue #20 found that the hottest corner of the attached-home market was low-dues flats in older buildings. A TIC answers that description exactly, only sitting under a different legal structure. Line the two findings up and the turn stops looking like a surprise. It starts looking like the same fact told twice.
The folklore check
Start with the loudest claim: TICs are cash only. Of the TIC sales in the last six months that reported financing, 24.7% were cash. Condos over the same window came in at 37.0% cash. About half of TIC sales closed on conventional loans. Sit with that for a second, because it runs backward from the story everyone repeats. The product called unfinanceable had the smaller cash share of the two. Fractional TIC lending is an established market today. Rates and terms are not identical to condo loans, and that is a conversation for a lender who does TICs regularly, not a reason to skip the open house.
Next claim: the format is dying out. Every year since 2016, the everything-spike of 2021 aside, the city has closed somewhere between 232 and 326 TIC sales, and this year is pacing near the top of that band. Holding a steady tenth of the flat market for ten straight years is not a fad, and it is not a fade either. It is a lane.
Where the heat is, and one puzzle
Districts 3, 4 and 10 recorded zero TIC sales this window, which tells you most of what you need: where the blocks are single-family, this product does not exist. Everything else clusters north. District 6, +12.0% over asking, with 80% of its sales clearing. District 1, the Richmond, +12.7%, on a thinner Directional sample. District 7, the Marina and Pacific Heights, +11.9%, and the Marina on its own +17.8% across 9 Directional sales. Mission Dolores, +10.6% on 13. None of that matches the condo map.
The busiest district is the calm one. District 5 accounted for 63 TIC sales, better than a third of the city's total, at a median +3.2%. And there is one result I cannot tidy up. Over those same six months, Noe Valley TICs closed at asking on 19 sales while Noe Valley condos ran +16.6%. Same neighborhood, two attached products, sixteen points between them. Small samples move around, so I would watch that gap rather than invent a reason for it.
What I would do with it
For a buyer priced out of condos in the neighborhoods they actually want, the TIC is the discount door, and the discount is not cosmetic: roughly 10% less per square foot, with dues at around half. What you trade away is legal structure, not the location and not the light. Bring in an attorney and a lender who both know TICs and you are negotiating from knowledge while the rest of the pool recites folklore. Do not take a season over it, though. A 16-day market does not wait for anyone's research to finish.
If you own one and selling has crossed your mind, the data has not offered a better window in ten years of record. Close to two in three TIC sales clear asking now, and no year in that record moved faster. The mistake would be pricing it as the old discount product. Price it in your own subdistrict, against the last six months, as the competitive thing it has become.
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 weakest thing in San Francisco right now sits next to the new AI offices. One condo reading here per issue, so a turn shows while it is turning.
| 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. |
- Speed first, because it is the part with no precedent: a median 16 days, where ten years of record never produced a year under 29. A year ago the median TIC sold at asking after 37 days; now it sells +5.8% over. The share clearing asking by 10% or more went 13.6% to 39.8%, nearly triple, and passed condos at 29.6%. Volume held, 176 sales against 169.
- A 10.4% discount for the same amount of home is the headline: $986 a square foot against $1,101 for condos. Dues are the other half of it, $450 a month reported against $823. And the buildings are older by eighty years, median 1909 against 1989. This is the original low-dues flat.
- Cash-only is stale information. Among TIC sales reporting financing, 24.7% paid cash, which is under the condo figure of 37.0%, and half of them closed on conventional loans. Fractional lending for TICs is real. The terms are not condo terms, so bring in a lender who knows the product early rather than late.
- The geography runs opposite the condo map. Heat sits in Districts 6, 7 and 1, with the Marina at +17.8% on a Directional 9 sales. District 5, which does the volume, came in at +3.2%. And Noe Valley TICs closed at asking on 19 sales while Noe condos ran +16.6%.
- Call it a stable niche rather than a fad or a fade. Every year since 2016 has closed 232 to 326 TIC sales, the 2021 spike aside, and 2026 is running near the top of that band. It is still the discount door into the neighborhoods buyers genuinely want.
The market explorer holds sale-to-list, market time and inventory for every San Francisco neighborhood, each carrying its own reliability label. If a particular TIC has your attention, pull up its subdistrict there before anything else, then get the right people 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. Michael reads this market every day.