The HOA Line

You have probably read the same headline all year. Houses are hot. Condos are not.

The gap is real and it is wide. Over the last six months the median San Francisco house sold at +22.5% over asking, against +1.3% for the median condo, on 1,276 houses and 1,375 condos.

It is also not very useful. There is no single condo market to describe. Two markets sit inside that one word, and what separates them has nothing to do with location, the age of the building or whether a parking space comes with it. It comes down to the dues bill each month.

Sorting the market by one number

Here is the test. Group every San Francisco condo that closed in the last six months by what its owners pay in monthly association dues, three groups in all, then put a single question to each of them. How many of those sales beat the asking price by 10% or more?

The answer comes back as a clean ladder. 59.9% of sales under $500 a month. 26.0% between $500 and $1,000. 11.1% above $1,000. Each step roughly halves the one before it. In plainer terms, under $500 a month three sales in five end in a double-digit overbid, and they get there in a median 13 days. Above $1,000 a month it is one in nine.

Look at the top of the ladder and the same point arrives from the other direction. Among condos with dues over $1,000, the most common single outcome is a sale below asking. That was 39.9% of them, against 38.9% over asking and 21.2% landing exactly on it, at a median 19 days. So above that line on the dues sheet, negotiating the price down is not unusual. It is what usually happens.

A fair question is whether the brackets were drawn to make the point. The By the numbers table below carries the full four-bracket detail, and the honest answer is that the cut lines do not matter. Put them at $500 and $1,000, or at $800 and $1,200, and the order of the overbid shares holds either way. More dues, fewer bidding wars, and a market that stretches from 13 days at the bottom of the ladder to about three weeks at the top. These are slices of one continuous slope rather than real categories. When a pattern survives every way of cutting it, the pattern is doing the talking.

One more thing, and I want to keep it short because the evidence is thin. You might expect high-dues buildings to trade at a visible discount per square foot. They mostly do not. Both ends of the range land close to each other. Different buildings in different neighborhoods make that a rough comparison at best, so I would treat it as suggestive rather than settled.

How this reads on the map

Two familiar claims turn out to be this one fact in different clothes. Age of building first. Anything built in 2015 or later sold at asking over these six months, while pre-1940 stock sold at +10.7% over. Then neighborhood. Some are stronger, and that is real, but neighborhoods sort themselves by building type. Victorian and Edwardian flats sit in the house districts. Towers sit downtown and along the waterfront. Same fact, different label.

South Beach on its own carries 168 sales, as many as the five strongest neighborhoods combined, and that alone explains much of why the citywide condo figure looks the way it does. That corridor is the weak end. Yerba Buena, Downtown and SoMa closed below asking, while South Beach, Mission Bay and Van Ness landed right at it, and those sales took a month or more. It is where Issue #19 found cash buyers negotiating real discounts. The strong end is house-district throughout. North Panhandle leads the city at +19.5% over asking. Noe Valley follows at +15.9%, Eureka Valley at +14.2%, Mission Dolores at +11.6%. Among neighborhoods with 20 or more sales, Noe Valley had the highest clearing rate, 92.7%. The Marina no longer sits between the two ends. It ran +10.3% over asking these six months and Pacific Heights +6.7%. My read is that the pre-war flat side of those mixed streets is doing the selling. Take Marina, Pacific Heights and Cow Hollow together and 40.4% of 1 and 2 bedroom condo sales cleared asking by double digits, in a median 9 days. Cole Valley, Corona Heights, Inner Richmond and Bernal Heights look strong as well. Each had fewer than 20 sales this half, so the map leaves them unrated.

All of these angles describe one mechanism. A flat carved out of a 1926 four-unit Victorian carries almost no dues, because there is no elevator, no lobby, no doorman and no gym to pay for. A 2015 tower carries $1,200 a month, permanently, and that number rises over time. Anyone shopping on a fixed monthly budget feels this right away. Dues come out of the same pocket as the mortgage payment, and lenders treat them the same way when they qualify you, which the CFPB's plain-language explainer sets out clearly. So a low-dues building is not simply cheaper to own. It has a far larger pool of buyers who can afford to bid on it, and that is what ends up in the sale price.

Two sales that outran their bracket

Two homes from this cycle, both sitting in the middle of the dues range, the $500 to $800 group. In that bracket the median sale closes a little over asking and roughly three in ten clear double digits. Neither of these behaved anything like the bracket.

7 Casa Way, Unit 1, in the Marina. One bedroom, one bath, in a 1926 building, with dues of $626. It listed at $929,000 and closed August 19 at $1,260,000. That works out to +35.6% over asking, reached in 12 days. The building has done this before. Unit 5 there sold at $1,600,000 against a $1,195,000 ask in July 2024, also in 12 days.

1945 Washington Street, Unit 204, in Pacific Heights. Dues of roughly $797 on a two bedroom, two bath with parking, listed at $1,095,000. It drew 12 offers and is in contract above $1.4M. The building went up in 1987, so this is not a pre-war conversion, which is part of why I am including it. One caveat. It was still pending when this issue went to press, so the exact price is not a matter of record yet. I will update it once the sale records.

I want to be careful with these two, because they could easily be used to argue something they do not show. They are not evidence that low dues win. If anything they cut the other way. Two homes from the ordinary middle of the dues range went straight through what their bracket predicted, and one of them sits in a 1987 building. What a bracket gives you is the odds. In the $500 to $800 group, roughly three sales in ten clear double digits over asking, and both of these were in that three. A buyer who reads that condos are flat and writes an offer to match, on a home like either of these, does not lose narrowly.

What the strong sales share

Low dues only get a home into the running. What decides the bidding is whether it lives like an actual home instead of a room with a nice view.

Genuine square footage rather than a clever floor plan. Windows on more than one side. A second bedroom an adult can actually sleep in. Outdoor space, or a view that does not depend on where a neighbor's roofline sits. Parking helps, though less than the folklore suggests. Units with parking cleared double digits over asking 30.6% of the time, against 23.3% for units without.

The nearer a condo comes to working like a house, the more it sells like one, and bedroom counts show that without any interpretation needed. Three-bedrooms cleared double digits 48.2% of the time at a median 13 days. Two-bedrooms, 31.5% and 14 days. One-bedrooms, 13.0% and 22 days. And of 45 studio sales, not a single one cleared double digits, with studios taking a median 26 days.

My read

If you are shopping for a condo, pull the dues early, before the kitchen wins you over.

This is not because high dues are a bad deal. For some people the elevator, the front desk and the roof deck are exactly the point. A building like that also tends to be a calmer purchase with room to negotiate, which is a genuine advantage if you honestly value what you are paying for.

Pull them because the dues tell you which negotiation you are about to walk into. Under $500 a month, plan for competition and be ready for it. Over $1,200, you likely have time, and I would use it. The mistake I see most often is carrying one plan into both rooms. A buyer reads that condos are flat, offers near asking on the best low-dues flat they have seen all year, and loses it to someone who understood which room they were standing in. The next comparable listing arrives four months later and costs more.

Sellers in high-dues buildings have the harder job here, and the dues are the thing to address first rather than hope nobody asks. California law calls for a reserve study at least every three years, so make sure yours is current and readable, then pair it with a straightforward account of what the money covers each month. That will move your result further than another 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

The condos near the new AI offices are the softest corner of the market right now. One reading on them per issue, so you can follow the turn while it happens rather than after.

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.

Sale-to-list, market time and inventory sit in the market explorer for every San Francisco neighborhood, each with a reliability label attached. I would pull the dues on the building first, then read your own subdistrict, and only then write the offer.

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.