San Francisco real estate is booming: median family home now ~$3M as AI liquidity floods the market

powers the apps you use to spend, save, borrow, and invest, securely connecting bank accounts to move money, fight fraud, and improve lending now with AI. And without further ado, our next guest is in the reream waiting room. We have Rohin Dar. He is uh a real estate expert. Thank you so much for joining the show. How are you doing, Rohan? Good to meet you.

Good. Happy to be here. Uh since this is your first time on the show, would you mind kicking it off with an introduction on yourself and I'd love to know uh some of your background, how you got to where you are today?

Yeah, I um I'm a San Francisco real estate agent and I'm you know among the top highest producers by volume in the city and uh I came from a little bit of a traditional background. I did a YC startup. I went to Stanford business school. I did a bunch of startups and then

got into real estate when kind of learning about Airbnb early on and built a small portfolio of that and uh and then learned the real estate craft from that.

Did you have to get a license at some point? Did you join a big firm or did you just sort of strike that?

I mean I was my Twitter account started growing cuz I was like posting interesting houses that I was like

just kind of curious about and then people were messaging me like, "Oh, I actually like bought that house you

No way. uh posted about and so I was like, "Dang, like someone's making a lot of money off of this and it's not me." So then I like decided to get licensed. And originally I was going to focus on like Airbnb markets and short-term rentals and vacation areas, but I live in San Francisco and I could see the prices were like after the pandemic just like crashing here

while they were shooting up everywhere else in the country and I was like, "Oh, they're converging and that's that's like odd to me." And so I was like, okay, well YC moved here. Open AAI is just sort of like getting traction and the city's getting better. I think everyone was sort of agreeing to that. And then I was like, well, this is the opportunity and I'm getting licensed and like this is what I'm going to focus on. And then uh and then I had a lot of traction with it. So I just sort of got sucked in to be sort of a, you know, full service like, you know, Rowan in your corner real estate agent when you're trying to buy or sell a place. So

I love it. Uh when did the actual rebound start? where where was the trough after co

um so the interesting thing about like co was 2020 2021 everyone was leaving San Francisco but the prices kept going up because interest rates were like practically zero and there were all these liquidity events so prices were

rising even though things were looking like a little bit desperate in the city

and then when interest rates rose that sort of like tampered the liquidity in the market and then sort of at very end of 2022 things like abruptly dropped. So 2022, end of 2022, 2023, 2024 prices were way down. Um, and then 2024 by the end of it there was like a little trickle and 2025 you sort of hit had come out of the bottom, but it was like a slow,

you know, like you know, pretty stable market, but on the upward trajectory. and then end of 2025 then it just sort of started booming like crazy in terms of pricing and then even from like you know March 2026 is like way up compared to like 2 months ago. So,

so yeah, what does it actually take to raise a family if you're working at a tech company in San Francisco? Because I think a lot of people will move to suburbs, but walk me through, you know, if you're coaching someone that has a couple kids, they want schools, they want access to their employer, like how should they be thinking about what it takes to find a great place in San Francisco these days?

Um, you know, I don't even know if people think of it that way. I think it's like

San Francisco is just like such a scarce place in in all ways. Uh it's like

they there's not enough housing, there's not enough like restaurants, there's not enough this or that. And it's sort of like

if you want a place like in San Francisco, you're like so convicted on the idea of it of the city of like the tech industry, you're like, you know what, I'm just going to like do this and then I'll figure the rest of it out. Mhm.

Um, and so like I don't think people are like, "Oh, now I have to figure out like what school my kids are going to go to or like what my commute will be or this or that." It's like if you sort of like dillydally around the edges, you sort of end up never really sort of being so committed and that kind of ends up being like what makes it hard to buy a place. But like the people that like actually win these uh homes, whether they're at like, you know, any price point, it's it's like there's something mentally inside them that's like this is the place for me. Mhm. And what does the the the like the down the fairway place in San Francisco look like these days? Is everything over two million, three million? Like where are we in terms of single family?

Kind of trying to find a place that is uh that would fit four people and might have parking and a second bathroom and two or three bedrooms. um say like a year ago it was like around 2 million and then if you were slightly above that price there'd be like a big drop off in competition.

Uh and now it's like that level is sort of definitely moved up to like threeish million.

Um but there the bigger change too is that like there's like huge level of competitions at any price point now.

Okay.

Um if it's like one that sort of checks the box for buyers.

So give me some advice if I'm trying to win one of those competitions. What do I have to do? I have to show up with all cash. just put the cash in the bag. What do I do?

I mean, all c I mean, in any given offer process, like there'll be a decent number of allcash buyers. So, it's not like it's going to you can walk in and be like, "Oh, I'm going to

win this cuz I'm all cash." Like, assume like a third or you know,

half might be over a certain price point. Um, and like I think what you sort of have to realize is there's going to be a range of competition on any given house. So, like some houses,

uh, you know, this could be like a five or $6 million house, a pretty expensive house, and there might be like 15 offers.

Whoa.

And like the seller's not like going to just sell it to you cuz you're a cool guy. Like they're they the market will sort of dictate the price. And unfortunately

for buyers, you just have to say, you know, the highest price and the best terms to win.

Okay.

Um, and so like what you're sort of trying to navigate is the level of competition any one house is going to have. So like say it doesn't have as many bathrooms as you want, but you could figure out how to add one or say it's like offmarket and only a few people know about it, so there's less competition. And so like

your lever of getting a good deal on a house isn't like just like participating in a massive auction. It's like trying to participate in a in an auction only you know about or a smaller sort of you know a different kind of property. So,

and you're probably expecting it to go a lot higher, I imagine, with IPOs. The labs are getting bigger, there's more liquidity, there's new investment rounds happening. What's your forecast?

Um, well, obviously it's like uh, you know, hard to ch, you know, predict the future, but I wasn't like, oh, I want I'm a San Francisco real estate agent, you know, like I'm going to say like, you know, whatever. or like I decided to get into the market cuz I thought like this was going to happen. I was like, "Oh,

like these scarce homes are going to become more valuable and people will wish they bought them and like I should focus on this." And so like personally I'm convicted like

the city is on the right trajectory now. Uh so it's not like contrarian to buy a place here at the moment. Yeah.

Um and then there are like liquidity rounds and like that has made a big impact on the market and if the liquidity rounds get bigger like there's it's a fixed number of homes that the you know that money goes into. So

what do you think uh expansion looks like over the next few years? Are we going to I know Mil Valley is booming. There's other suburbs. Is Oakland going to happen? There's this California Forever development that's happening that's further out. like uh are you starting to broaden your horizons or do you want to stay focused and what do you think the real estate buyer will want to do in the near future? So, I I solely focus on San Francisco like buyers and sellers. Um

cuz like I found that like

in order to like every time especially on the buyer side to win, it's sort of like p pulling off this like mission impossible like heist uh where it's so elaborate. You have to know like every detail about the market. Um

and so for me personally like I feel very strongly that I can really help people in San Francisco. That makes sense. But then if you put me in Mil Valley, it's like, oh, I mean, I don't I mean, maybe it's good for me to help serve Mil Valley customers, but it's not good for them. So,

I think like, you know, if you're going to use a real estate agent, you should use one that like really knows a particular market really well. So, for me, I want that to be San Francisco.

Yeah. How much of the San Francisco boom is attributable to the labs being based in San Francisco like specifically as opposed to the previous generation of of tech? uh boom times happening in Menllo Park, Certino, sort of on the peninsula.

Yeah, I'd say it's about like 5050 like explaining what's going on. Like on one hand, like what's really driving it is like the perception that the city is on the right track with like the mayor and like walking around and it just feels better and it feels fun and people are moving there and sort of like it sort of regained the zeitgeist of like a place you move to to invent the future. Mhm.

So, I think that's like half of it. And then the other half of it is it like yeah, like we've had very successful companies in San Francisco, tech companies, but we never had the big one like Meta or Google or Apple. And now like we have two, you know, that like just started that are uh within that range and like

um it's somewhat unprecedented I think even though we've had like hundred billion dollar companies before and like massively successful but this is at a different level an order of magnitude and so that's just going to drive up uh attention and excitement and all sorts of things. Uh what are the most underrated neighborhoods? What's on the come up right now? Um, you know, everyone sort of really wants like Noi Valley, Pack Heights, like I think if like if you're sort of like looking in the Noi area like Bernal, like the the m kind of the hills right next to it, Glenn Park,

like you know, Sunnyside is like dramatically less expensive. Um, like Pack Heights is now like getting to be like back to its sort of premier level pricing, but Russian Hill is like right next to it and like a little bit less like walkable and in this, you know, but like, you know, just as great, but now the prices are up there. And then like Knob Hill is next to that and the prices are still a little bit down there. So maybe I'd say Knob Hill and uh, you know, Bernal Heights.

Well, uh, where can people get in touch with you? How do people reach out if they're looking to San Francisco?

You know, Google me, Rohandar, and then find my email or just reach out to me on Twitter and I'm pretty active there and you know, generally I just share what's going on in the market over there. So,

fantastic. Well, we appreciate you taking the time to come chat. Thanks so much.

Awesome. Yeah.

Have a great rest of your day. We'll talk to you soon.

Thank you. You too.

Goodbye. Let me tell you about Cognition. They're the makers of Devon, the AI software engineer. Crush your backlog with your personal AI engineering team. And let me also tell you about graphite code review for the age of AI. Graphite helps teams on GitHub ship higher quality software