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Watch Million Dollar Homes Overrun SF

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The number of seven-figure homes in the city more than doubled in the last four years, making us the highest saturation of million dollar houses in the country

A million dollars is the new normal for a house in San Francisco. That’s the word from a Trulia report released today titled "Million Dollar Creep," according to Curbed National. On average, million dollar homes make up three percent of the national market. But in San Francisco, it’s 57.4 percent, up from 19.6 just four years ago.

San Jose spiked to 46.3 percent from 17.4 percent during the same period, and Oakland’s million dollar home values nearly quadrupled, from 5.2 percent in 2012 to 19.7 percent today. Those Bay Area cities own the top three spots on the list. Orange County comes in at number four with a comparably frugal 16.1 percent.

The effect across the entire city is close to awe-inspiring, but it becomes downright alarming when you peer into which neighborhoods have been most affected. Potrero Hill’s million dollar home stock tripled to 76.7 percent, as did the Mission’s. Mission Terrace went from just 0.4 percent of homes breaking the million-dollar mark to over 50 percent.

Mission Bay jumped from 14 percent to 88.9, one of the biggest swings in the entire city.

The absolute biggest groundswell: The Westwood Park neighborhood , south of Monterey Boulevard and west of City College. In 2012, only 2.9 percent of homes hit a million dollar valuation. Today, 96 percent of them do.

Two points to keep in mind: These numbers reflect only the listings on Trulia, which don’t comprise every listing in the city or in that neighborhood, and Westwood Park is not particularly big, so the sample size may be small. Only 11 Westwood Park homes sold on Trulia since last August.

But in the end, even those mitigating factors don’t matter very much, because it’s still 96 percent.

(Note that this study was conducted based on estimated home values, not recent sales prices, which wouldn't necessarily tell us anything in the case of homes that haven't sold in many years.)

Even some of the smallest spikes are illuminating. Only 14.4 percent of homes sold in Chinatown broke a million, but that’s more than double the 6.5 percent it was four years ago. Only 6.5 percent of homes in Bayview and 2.9 percent of homes in Visitacion Valley are in the millionaires club, but in 2012 they were 0.9 and 0.4 percent, respectively. The Tenderloin’s million-dollar figure more than doubled to 5.4 percent.

You can find a list of the top 25 million-dollar San Francisco neighborhoods by degree of change at the end of this blog. In the meantime, watch the reddening of the Bay Area:

Of 333 Bay Area neighborhoods surveyed, only 20 showed either no increase or a statistically insignificant increase of 0.2 percent or less. In places like Stanford Hills and Palo Alto’s St Claire Gardens, this is because they had nowhere to go: 100 percent of homes cost more than a million dollars before, and they still do now.

Only 10 neighborhoods saw a decline, and half of those were a decline of just 0.2 percent or less. The only really significant drop was Daly City’s Southgate neighborhood, which dipped 12.7 percent. Buy low while you can.