Curbed Cup Round 1: (5) Bayview vs. (12) Noe Valley

The Curbed Cup, our annual award for the San Francisco neighborhood of the year, is kicking off with 16 areas vying for the prestigious (fake) trophy. This week we'll have two matchups per day, and all the results and the full tournament bracket will be reviewed on Friday. Voting for each pairing ends 24 hours after it begins. Let the eliminations commence!

Bayview photo via Patricia Chang/Noe Valley photo via Ambiance
In response to the sometimes-invoked notion that Bayview is the new Bernal Heights, one tipster maintained, "Actually, there is nothing like the Bayview." The neighborhood, once cut off by Muni maps, is definitely on the rise. There's activity all around, from the big developments going in nearby at the San Francisco Shipyard and Candlestick Point to the new park at 900 Innes that will complete the Blue Greenway walking and bike path around the water. Tipsters wrote in to laud local standbys like Trouble Coffee, Radio Africa Kitchen, and the bird sanctuary at Heron's Head Park. And lots more want to get in on the action in a part of SF that still feels like a small town: Home prices are up 75 percent in the neighborhood since 2011—the highest level of home price appreciation in the city. It's a place where you can still find card-carrying members of our Under $500K Club, but where you'll also run into bidding wars.

A neighborhood once characterized by good views and modest homes, Noe Valley has, in the past few years, begun seriously stalking the hyper-luxe territory of northerly neighborhoods like Pacific Heights and Cow Hollow. Noe homes routinely make it into our weekly roundups of top sales, and the neighborhood is pretty popular with flippers, too. (In our recent map of the year's most heartstopping flips, we counted three homes in Noe that saw price increases of at least 100 percent, a tally that now sounds rather low.) No surprise, then, that this is also the neighborhood where a landlord recently advertised a 216-square-foot "micro-studio" on Craigslist, judging that $1,425/month in exchange for a door, a bathroom, and a drawer would lure in someone who'd sleep in a closet just to get close to the 24th Street shopping corridor.

· Previous Coverage of the San Francisco Shipyard [Curbed SF]
· Previous Coverage of Candlestick Point [Curbed SF]
· Bayview Booming: SF Home Appreciation by Neighborhood [Curbed SF]
· Want a Decent Deal in San Francisco? Head for the Bayview [Curbed SF]
· This House in Bayview Just Sold for $316K Over Asking [Curbed SF]
· Eureka, Noe, Cole Valleys Reach New Heights in Luxury Market [Curbed SF]
· Real Estate Sold Archives [Curbed SF]
· Yikes, Flippers Turn Modest Noe Home into $4.895M Swankfest [Curbed SF]
· An Entire Year of SF's Most Heartstopping Flips, Mapped [Curbed SF]
· The Smallest Apartment for Rent in SF is Just 216 Square Feet [Curbed SF]