San Francisco, CA

San Francisco was written off as dead. Now, real estate investors are flocking back.

Published

9 months ago

June 24, 2025

San Francisco was written off as dead. Now, real estate investors are flocking back.

The clouds hanging over San Francisco since the pandemic appear to be finally lifting — leading to predictions of a real estate rebound.

Following years of emptying office buildings and vacated storefronts, Fog City is buzzing again, thanks to return-to-office mandates at Amazon, Google, Salesforce, and more. This is good news for the city’s apartment buildings — and now some professional investors are taking notice.

“San Francisco had become an unsavory city, but we believe we’re starting to see a real recovery and we think it’s a good time to buy,” said Tom Shapiro, the president and founder of GTIS, a New York City based real estate investment firm with $4.7 billion of assets under management.

Shapiro is predicting rents will grow between 4% and 6% this year and next. Property values, meanwhile, have declined 30% to 50% from their pre-pandemic highs, creating an attractive buying opportunity.

Asking rents in San Francisco were about $3,500 a month in the first quarter of 2020 and fell 25% by the end of the year as a result of the dislocation caused by the pandemic, according to estimates from the residential brokerage firm Compass. Average rents are now about $3,200 a month, closing in on pre-pandemic levels, including a 6.4% year-over-year jump in the first quarter, the Compass data showed.

Shapiro is also seeing growing competition in the space, including a nearly $100 million apartment property in the city that he said he is vying with three other bidders to purchase.

“There’s more people interested,” Shapiro said. “It’s not a secret like it was a year ago.”

Tom Shapiro, president and founder of GTIS, a New York City based real estate investment firm

GTIS

Dealmaking is back

About $363 million of individual multifamily real estate assets were sold in San Francisco in the first quarter of 2025, according to data from MSCI, triple the dollar volume during the same period last year and the year prior. MSCI’s analysis omitted large, multi-property deals, such as Brookfield’s acquisition of a portfolio of more than 70 apartments buildings in the city in early 2024, because they can artificially inflate the data.

Eli Edwards, the US head of real estate equity investments at Fortress Investment Group, said it has acquired 13 rental buildings in San Francisco in the past two years. The firm is currently under contract to acquire two more rental buildings in the city and has offers out for several more rental properties. Edwards said he is looking to double the number of apartments in the firm’s portfolio there this year.

Edwards, who lived in the city’s Russian Hill neighborhood until recently, urged Fortress to become an early investor in the city’s turnaround because he felt that negative perceptions were overblown and that much of the homelessness and disorder associated with the city were focused in only a handful of areas, including its Financial District and the Tenderloin, a nearby neighborhood.

Homeless encampments in the city’s Tenderloin in 2023

Anadolu/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Edwards said the firm has signed over 20 leases in the last year with rents “about 10% above” what the firm had expected to fetch when the units were vacated.

“The Fortress DNA is, find a situation where the perception of risk is higher than the actual risk,” Edwards said. “That was San Francisco.”

Philip Saglimbeni, a senior managing director at Institutional Property Advisors, a commercial real estate sales firm, said he and his team recently found a buyer for Presidio Landmark, a 161-unit luxury rental building controlled by Brookfield through a long-term ground lease. Saglimbeni said the buyer was offering “north of a hundred million” dollars for the property, which is located in the Presidio, a national park south of the Golden Gate Bridge.

He declined to disclose the purchaser’s identity, saying the agreement was still being finalized, but said it was an “investment advisory shop.”

A spokeswoman for Brookfield declined to comment.

New inventory is scarce

The city’s anemic pipeline of new housing, which could raise rents even higher, adds to its appeal among investors, who believe the city’s scarcity of apartments will inflate rents.

A report by the San Francisco Planning Department that was released in April stated that 1,597 units of new housing were added in the city in 2024, 56% below the yearly average over the last decade. 1,024 units were permitted for construction during the year, 67% below the 10-year annual average.

“It’s a massive imbalance and it will be perpetual,” Saglimbeni said, describing the discrepancy between the demand for housing and new supply in San Francisco. “That’s what investors see and that’s why they gravitate to regions like this.”

The city’s beleaguered office market has also begun to improve, offering another potential boost to the apartment market’s recovery by luring in more workers who may want to rent apartments.

Office attendance in San Francisco recently reached about 43% of its pre-pandemic levels, according to employee swipe data from Kastle System, far above its record low of about 8% in 2020. 1.7 million square feet of space was leased in San Francisco during the first quarter, the most activity since 2019, according to data from the real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield.

Early last year, Brookfield paid more than $600 million to acquire distressed loans tied to more than 2,000 apartments spread across more than 70 buildings in San Francisco and took ownership of the properties.

“When we made that investment, people weren’t going to the office, people weren’t going downtown,” said Mike Greene, a managing director at Brookfield who oversees its residential investments in the western US. “And that’s dramatically changed.”

Greene said that the 75 buildings in the portfolio now have a 95% occupancy rate, up from 67% when Brookfield took ownership.

“We feel pretty good about that,” Greene said.

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San Francisco, CA

Daniel Lurie sparked confrontation that injured security team: Police report

Published

6 hours ago

March 10, 2026

Press Room

Daniel Lurie sparked confrontation that injured security team: Police report

Mayor Daniel Lurie sparked the altercation that led to a fight and injuries to two San Francisco police officers in his security detail, according to a police report of the incident obtained by the Standard.

On Thursday evening at 5:38 p.m., Lurie, an aide, and two members of his security team were driving north on Larkin St. when they spotted several people sitting on the sidewalk on the corner of Cedar St., an alley in the Tenderloin.

The mayor ordered the driver of his Rivian SUV, Officer Nicholas Boccio, to pull over. Lurie hopped out of the SUV. His second bodyguard, Officer Joel Aguayo, followed.

What happened next would result in two injured officers, a gun aimed at a man’s chest, two arrests, and renewed questions about the public safety under the mayor’s leadership.

While footage of the incident after the officer pushed one of the men has been published by Mission Local (opens in new tab), details about what led up to the fight have not been previously revealed.

After leaving the safety of his vehicle, the mayor took matters into his own hands, the report says. Lurie attempted to get the group hanging out on Cedar St. to move, but one of the men refused.

“On whose behalf do I need to move?” asked one of the men named Tony Phillips, according to Aguayo’s statement.

According to the narrative of the combined witness statements, “Mayor Lurie addressed the group and requested that they move along, as they were standing in the roadway. Phillips became immediately argumentative, stating that he did not have to move.”

Lurie told Phillips that Aguayo was an SFPD officer. Aguayo repeated that and requested that Phillips comply and move out of the way. Phillips again refused.

The police report said the mayor and Aguayo asked Phillips to move at least four times, at one point saying they would call uniformed officers to remove him.

Still, Phillips refused, as the mayor paced a few feet away from Aguayo, video of the incident shows.

While most of the group of four men appeared to stay put, according to footage of the incident, Phillips stepped toward Aguayo, who was standing in front of the mayor.

According to the police report, Phillips then said, “I’ll Bruce Lee kick your ass.” Aguayo then swiftly pushed Phillips to the ground. Phillips got up and was pushed again before rushing the officer. The pair grappled and then fell to the ground, and Aguayo struck the back of his head.

During the fight, Lurie ran to the parked SUV to tell the driver, Boccio, that his partner was in trouble. When Boccio rushed to help, another man in the alley — Abraham Simon — grabbed the officer and reached for his waistband. Simon backed off after Boccio pulled his service weapon.

Boccio then helped Aguayo but was unable to restrain Phillips. It wasn’t until several uniformed officers arrived that Phillips was taken into custody.

Aguayo, who suffered cuts to the back of his head, facial bruising, and a back injury, said to investigating officers that he had to use force on Phillips because he was threatened verbally and got within inches of him. The officer also said he tried to de-escalate to no avail. Boccio’s hand was cut during the confrontation.

No body camera footage was captured of the incident because officers in the mayor’s security detail did not wear them.

The incident, about which Lurie has made brief statements, has raised questions about whether Lurie’s freewheeling approach to walking the streets could put him into danger. The mayor told reporters last week after the incident that he asked the people to move because he was concerned for their safety and that of other pedestrians and drivers.

“I’m out here walking the streets of San Francisco like I do every day. I believe that you can’t solve what you can’t see,” Lurie said in an Instagram post Monday, seemingly doubling down on his approach to interacting with San Franciscans.

When asked for comment, the mayor’s spokesman Charles Lutvak referred to the Instagram post and a story Lurie shared in his State of the City speech about approaching a man who appeared to be an addict, who told the mayor to mind his own business.

The mayor’s reply: “You are my business.”

Lurie’s own account of the incident was not included in the police report, although the document says he later would be contacted for a statement.

Phillips is set to be arraigned Tuesday on charges of threatening an officer, inflicting great bodily injury, and contempt of court for violating a stay-away order from the alley. District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said her office will request that Phillips remain in custody as he is a threat to the public.

Simon is also set to be arraigned Tuesday on charges of interfering with an officer.

The incident is also being investigated by the Department of Police Accountability, according to The Chronicle.

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San Francisco, CA

San Francisco man charged with attempted murder in unprovoked daylight Chinatown stabbing

Published

18 hours ago

March 9, 2026

Press Room

San Francisco man charged with attempted murder in unprovoked daylight Chinatown stabbing

SAN FRANCISCO – A 37-year-old man has been charged with attempted murder in what authorities described as an unprovoked, broad daylight stabbing in San Francisco’s Chinatown last week.

Suspect charged

What we know:

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announced that Jian Feng Huang was charged with attempted murder in connection with the attack at Stockton and Sacramento streets.

Huang, of San Francisco, will be arraigned Tuesday. He remains in custody.

Jenkins described the incident as a “horrific attack of an innocent man waiting to cross the street.” She said there is no indication that the victim and the suspect knew each other.

Surveillance video captures attack

Dig deeper:

Surveillance footage circulating online shows a man in a black hoodie walking down Stockton Street before suddenly lunging at a man who was waiting at a corner to cross the street.

The attacker stabbed the victim in the back and then walked away, according to the video. The victim is seen collapsing to the ground.

The attack occurred shortly after 1 p.m.

Bystanders rush to help

Local perspective:

Bystanders and business owners rushed to help the wounded man.

“We bring the ice and the towels to stop bleeding,” said Rawnie Chan, manager of Flags International Services. Chan said the victim was speaking in Cantonese and said he was in pain.

One business owner said she grabbed frozen dumplings from an office refrigerator to place on the wound because there were no restaurants nearby with ice available.

Victim recovering

Jenkins said the victim is recovering at a local hospital. Authorities previously said the victim suffered life-threatening injuries and has undergone at least two surgeries.

The Source: This story was written based on information from San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins.

San FranciscoCrime and Public Safety

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