Bay Area housing: San Francisco still runs hot, San Jose has the supply cushion, and rates tick back up — July 2026

The Bay Area read this week is not one market. San Francisco is still acting like a scarce, high-bid city; San Jose has more visible supply and a softer repeat-value trend; Oakland is competitive on sale prices but weaker on Zillow's home-value measure.

The simplest Bay Area split is this: San Francisco is accelerating while San Jose is digesting.

Redfin's San Francisco page shows a three-month median of just under $1.70 million, up 16.1% year over year, and a sale-to-list ratio of 114.9%. 1 That sale-to-list figure means the average closed sale was far above asking. It does not mean every listing is underpriced; it means the homes that do clear the market are still pulling bids.

San Jose looks different. Its Redfin median was $1.47 million, down 1.4% year over year, and its sale-to-list ratio was 103.6%. 2 Zillow's repeat-value measure points the same way: San Jose's average home value was $1,413,804 as of June 30, down 1.8% over the past year. 9

That is not a weak market in normal terms. Homes still went pending in roughly 17 days on Zillow's measure. But compared with San Francisco's bidding spread, San Jose gives buyers more room to sort inventory before they commit.

Oakland is the messy middle. Redfin says the three-month median was $884,471, up 2.8% year over year, and homes sold after 17 days on average. 3 Zillow, using a repeat-value index rather than a sale-month median, put Oakland's average home value at $721,966 on June 30, down 4.6% over the past year. 10

Those are not necessarily contradictions. Redfin's median can move when the mix of homes selling changes. Zillow's ZHVI tries to track the value of the same housing stock over time. Read together, they say Oakland still has competitive transactions, but the broader value trend is not as strong as the bidding numbers alone suggest.

For sellers, that argues against using a single hot comp as the whole pricing story. For buyers, it argues for separating well-located, move-in-ready homes from stale or condition-heavy listings.

At San Francisco's $1,698,983 Redfin median, an 80% loan at Freddie Mac's 6.49% 30-year rate works out to roughly $8,582 a month in principal and interest. At last week's 6.43%, the same loan would be about $8,529. At last year's 6.72%, it would be about $8,789. 17

That estimate excludes property tax, insurance, HOA dues, mortgage insurance, and closing costs. The point is scale: a six-basis-point weekly rate increase is not dramatic in national headlines, but it is still about $50 a month on a typical San Francisco 80% loan. Buyers close to their ceiling will feel that faster than sellers will see it in list prices.

The most concrete San Francisco policy item in this week's scan is a proposed transfer-tax change. The Board of Supervisors agenda describes an ordinance that would, for transfers on or after July 1, 2026, cut the real property transfer-tax rate from 5.5% to 2.75% for transactions of at least $10 million and under $25 million, and from 6% to 3% for transactions of at least $25 million. The same agenda says single-family residences would be exempt from those reductions. 8

For readers buying a normal home, this is not a direct affordability lever. The cleaner interpretation is liquidity: if enacted, it could change the math for high-value commercial, mixed-use, and multifamily deals. That matters indirectly because San Francisco's budget is sensitive to property activity. A June 30 S&P document posted through the city's media system said real property transfer taxes were projected to beat budget by $108.7 million, or 41%, driven by robust commercial real estate activity. 11

For this week's buyer-seller decision, the market signal is simpler than the policy signal: price against the submarket you are actually in. San Francisco sellers can still be firm when the home is clean and priced to draw bids. San Jose sellers have to respect a broader inventory set. Oakland sellers should not confuse one competitive closed sale with a guaranteed citywide trend.