Exhausted by San Francisco’s frenzied bidding wars and offers of hundreds of thousands of dollars over asking, a growing number of homebuyers are retreating across the city’s bridges to the surrounding counties—only to discover that they have brought the competition with them.
Barr Haney, the founder of Own Marin real estate, says he was recently contacted by new clients living in San Francisco’s Russian Hill neighborhood with their baby. The family originally planned to stay in the city until their 3-month-old reached kindergarten age before moving to the suburbs, but the intense market forced them to act sooner.
“They literally told me on the phone call, ‘This San Francisco market is too crazy for us. We don’t even want to begin to try, and we just want to come to Marin,'” Haney tells Realtor.com®. “And I said, ‘Well, that’s great. You’d better hurry, because we’re starting to see that overflow already from San Francisco.'”
A Realtor.com housing data analysis reveals that the median listing price in San Francisco County in April was $1.17 million, down more than 2% from a year ago. Meanwhile, active listings in the city itself plunged 32% year over year, signaling a tightening market likely driven by the AI boom.
Simply put, the explosion of the tech sector, anchored by industry leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic, has funnelled a wave of high-earning professionals into the San Francisco Bay Area. While this influx is vital for the city’s post-pandemic recovery, it has put immense pressure on the metro’s already-limited housing stock, elevating competition to new heights.
Comparison shopping
“You start to see huge percentages of appreciation and price jumping because the competition is so strong and inventory is somewhat limited,” says Haney, “and therefore, these properties in the city are getting five-, 10-, 15-, 20-, 25-plus offers on them and selling for double, triple the asking price, and it starts to get a little crazy.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, more and more would-be shoppers are giving up on purchasing properties in the city.
“You start to see these buyers getting fatigued and sick of getting beat out in these crazy multiple-offer situations, and they start to look at alternate options,” says Haney.
For many of the elite tech workers, it means having to adjust their real estate strategies. The broker explains that rather than buying a starter home in San Francisco for five to seven years, these “new money” clients are bypassing the city entirely to “cut to the chase.”
Instead, they are moving directly to the suburbs to secure long-term family homes that offer better weather, schools, and outdoor activities, while still maintaining an easy commute to the city by car or ferry.
Located directly across the Golden Gate Bridge, Marin County has emerged as a popular destination for city dwellers scarred by bidding wars, along with Alameda and Contra Costa counties situated in the East Bay area.
Notably, the latest housing data shows that these suburban enclaves do not always offer buyers a lower entry point. In April, Marin County’s median list price stood at $1.44 million, surpassing San Francisco’s by nearly $300,000. Alameda and Contra Costa were slightly more budget-friendly, at $929,472 and $799,000, respectively.
However, the true suburban advantage emerges when looking past the total price: When adjusted for home size, the asking prices per square foot were significantly lower in Alameda, Contra Costa, and Marin counties compared to San Francisco.
“In other words, San Francisco–based buyers are able to find better value beyond the Golden Gate Bridge,” says Realtor.com senior economist Jake Krimmel. “Not only that, they’re also finding less competition.”
Yet, area real estate professionals like Haney and Alexander Kalla, an agent specializing in Bay Area luxury properties, warn that “search fatigue” is already spreading in high-end suburban communities. With inventory remaining constrained, they are seeing intense jockeying for well-priced homes in premium locations.
“Those expecting a ‘bargain’ compared to the city are often surprised and left empty-handed,” says Kalla. “We are seeing significant upward pressure on prices here because the buyer pool is increasingly coming from that affluent San Francisco demographic.”
For this well-capitalized clientele, the condition of the listings tends to take precedence over price.
“I’m seeing more buyers prioritize turnkey properties,” adds Kalla. “They’ve lost out on multiple bids in the city and are now willing to pay a premium in Marin just to secure a finished home and end the search process.”
Moving to the suburbs
When it came time to buy a home, Emillie Scherrer says she and her husband had a change of heart about city living.
“We were originally thinking of living in San Francisco, staying here, putting our roots down,” Scherrer tells Realtor.com. “After living here for five years, we realized we preferred the vibe of Marin.”
Scherrer, a mother of two who grew up in San Francisco and lived in London for a decade, says she was drawn to the Bay Area suburbs’ superior lifestyle amenities, including good public schools and access to nature.
Scherrer began her search last summer and secured a home by September, closing for roughly $2.5 million. Scherrer finalized the purchase without facing competing offers, which have marked this spring’s surge in spillover competition from the AI gold rush.
“I see that we really lucked out, because now the homes around our house are going for, like, $5 million within a week and over asking,” she notes.
When comparing San Francisco and Marin County, Scherrer says that while she likely could have found a similar square footage in the city, her suburban property comes with spacious back and front yards nestled in a desirable neighborhood.
“And that’s not something that you can get in San Francisco,” she stresses.
Spotlight on Marin County
Haney, a sixth-generation Marin County resident who has been selling homes in the area for over 20 years, says that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the local housing market reached historic heights, fueled by a mass exodus of people from San Francisco untethered from their offices by remote work and craving homes with outdoor spaces.
After a brief cooling period triggered by rising interest rates in 2022, Haney says the market “popped” again last month. However, today’s clients are more judicious. Unlike the COVID-19-era rush, this new wave of buyers is selective, arriving with specific preferences and a long-term strategy.
Haney says shoppers are looking for a home they can grow into over 20 years or more, usually requiring at least three bedrooms, a yard, a garage, and easy access to the freeway. They also crave a sense of community, seeking neighborhoods with parks, schools, and restaurants nearby.
“They’re not just buying anything that’s available, but they’re kind of picking and choosing what they really want,” says the broker.
In terms of price ranges, Haney says he is seeing a very noticeable increase in activity in the ultraluxury market where homes are listed for $6 million-plus.
In one striking case from a few weeks ago, a house requiring cosmetic repairs hit the market at $6.44 million. It attracted seven offers and was ultimately sold for over $8 million—a huge premium for a property that was not even in turnkey condition.
Haney says that in Marin County, the higher-valued properties tend to be in the flats or close to the flats, rather than in the hills. Homes in these premium locations are known to generate fierce competition and sell over asking “99.9% of the time.”
