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

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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.

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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

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

GTIS

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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

Homeless encampments in the city’s Tenderloin in 2023

Anadolu/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

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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.

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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.

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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

San Francisco could vote again on whether to allow cars on the Great Highway

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San Francisco could vote again on whether to allow cars on the Great Highway


In San Francisco’s Sunset District, controversy continues over what to do with the Great Highway.

Friday, the newly-appointed supervisor for that district, Alan Wong, confirmed he is running to keep his job. He also shared that he would support a ballot measure that would bring cars back to the now-closed stretch of road. Some residents in the district already said they would be prepared to fight back against that ballot measure if it came to fruition.

This has been a politically tumultuous year for the Sunset District. In November of 2024, San Francisco voters narrowly approved Proposition K, which moved to close the highway along Ocean Beach to cars and to transform it into a park. In March of 2025, the stretch of road was permanently closed to cars, and in April, the area was officially reopened as Sunset Dunes Park. In September, voters recalled then-Supervisor Joel Engardio, with many in the campaign against Engardio expressing frustration with his support for turning the Great Highway into a park. In November, Mayor Daniel Lurie appointed Isabella “Beya” Alcaraz as the new supervisor for District 4, only to have her resign a week later amid growing questions about her actions as a small business owner.

At the start of December, Mayor Lurie swore in Alan Wong as his new appointee to serve as supervisor in District 4. Wong grew up in the Sunset, attended Lincoln High School, and has served as both an elected member of the San Francisco City College Board of Trustees and as a legislative aid to former supervisor Gordon Mar.

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In an interview with NBC Bay Area on Friday, Wong shared that he has not hidden the fact that he voted no on Prop. K in the 2024 election. However, in his first three weeks in office, Wong said he set out to “have conversations with different constituent groups and listen to them” about the issues.

“After three weeks of listening and having these conversations, I believe that my values and how I voted before align with the majority of the district,” Wong said.

San Francisco Supervisor Alan Wong supports a ballot measure that calls for cars to return to the Great Highway.

“And as the district supervisor, I need to take a leadership role in representing the district that I am here to serve,” he continued.

Wong said he is now prepared to be one of the four supervisors supporting a ballot initiative to reopen the Great Highway to cars on weekdays.

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Molly Rose, with Sunset Parent Advocates, worries that when Wong was listening to community voices over the past three weeks, some voices may have been left out.

“If he talked to the Sunset residents, he didn’t talk to me, and he didn’t talk to us– the family groups I am a part of,” Rose said.

“We are all very pro-park, we use it very heavily as a park,” she continued.

Rose said there are several hundred parents involved with her group. As a parent, Rose said her children love going to the park there.

“Sunset Dunes is the place where I take my kids to have a safe place to play,” she said.

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Rose said that she has been asking for Wong to meet with her group, but has been waiting to hear back from his scheduling team.

Wong’s office confirmed that Rose is in touch with their office and that Wong’s scheduler is “actively coordinating a time” for them to meet.

“While I do think there is a very loud, anti-park contingent of people in the Sunset, I don’t think they’re the majority,” Rose emphasized.



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San Francisco, CA

New SF supervisor supports reopening Great Highway on weekdays

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New SF supervisor supports reopening Great Highway on weekdays


SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — Alan Wong, the new supervisor for District four in San Francisco, has publicly expressed his support for reopening the Great Highway to vehicles on weekdays. This statement comes amid ongoing debates surrounding the highway’s conversion into a park last spring, which was met with mixed reactions from the community.

The Great Highway was transformed into a public park earlier this year, a change that many residents have embraced, while some local neighbors have pushed back. Joel Engardio, the former supervisor who supported this conversion through Measure K, was recalled this year, highlighting the division among constituents in District four.

Wong, who was appointed as supervisor following Engardio’s recall, filed paperwork to run for the elected position on the board. His term is set to last until January 2027, during which he aims to solidify his platform around reopening the Great Highway.

In his statement, Wong emphasized, “I believe my values align with a majority of Sunset residents who support reopening the Great Highway to cars on weekdays. As a result, I am prepared to be one of four supervisors needed to sponsor a ballot initiative to restore that compromise.” This suggests Wong’s intent to address community concerns head-on while building a wider consensus.

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Prior to its conversion, the Great Highway allowed vehicles during the week and served as a park on weekends, a compromise Wong supports restoring. He aims to return to this model in response to feedback from local constituents.

All facts in this report were gathered by journalists employed by KRON4. Artificial intelligence tools were used to reformat information into a news article for our website. This report was edited and fact-checked by KRON4 staff before being published.



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San Francisco, CA

Women’s volleyball professional team headed to San Francisco

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Women’s volleyball professional team headed to San Francisco


Pro volleyball will soon be coming to San Francisco and this latest team is part of a surge of women’s sports.

League One Volleyball officially launched this year with six teams. Now the league has announced it’s expanding to nine teams, and that one of those expansion teams will be based in the city by the bay.

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Three-time Olympic volleyball medalist Kelsy Robinson Cook is on the ownership team for LOVB San Francisco, bringing professional volleyball to the city. “Can tell you it’s going to be amazing,” said Robinson Cook. “Then, when you bring in the fandom of the Bay Area and SF I think personally it’s going to make for an incredible atmosphere.”

Team ownership said starting a team in the Bay Area is a natural with colleges and universities in the region turning out top talent. “It’s the number one sport for women and girls and I think that just speaks volumes as to where we’re headed, not only in club and college, but professionally,” said Robinson Cook.

Pro women’s volleyball is part of a growing list of professional women’s sports teams calling San Francisco and the Bay Area home.

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The women’s professional baseball league announced plans for a team in San Francisco. Bay FC and the Golden State Valkyries are already proving there is a market for professional women’s sports.

When pro-volleyball was looking to expand, San Francisco was a natural choice. “You’re seeing Bay FC, the Valkyries, the success that they have, and this market loves sports, and they’ve also proven they love women’s sports,” said Robinson Cook.

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San Francisco leaders said the city has already proven that it supports pro-women’s teams, and will welcome professional volleyball. Mayor Daniel Lurie pointed to the city’s rich sports history and enthusiasm to support the home teams. “Now, as we saw with the Valkyries selling out every single home game last year, there is an appetite, there is a fan base, and this new league understands that,” said Mayor Lurie.

At this time, there are still a lot of questions up in the air, including exactly where LOVB San Francisco will play. Organizers say they have a lot of plans in the works to get the team ready to bump, set and spike starting in January 2027.

 

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