Sotelo Avenue in Forest Hill is probably the most prestigious avenue to personal a house in San Francisco. I do know. Somebody on Broadway simply spit out their $28 espresso.
Stick with me.
For 25 years I’ve watched San Franciscans argue about neighborhoods when neighborhoods are the unsuitable unit of measurement. As a resident and a number of property proprietor since 2001, I am right here to offer the definitive information.
The fact is, a avenue is a lived expertise. Two homes 400 ft aside in the identical zip code can differ by 30% in worth and 100% in high quality of life, and the distinction is nearly by no means the home. It is the road.
Great AI Liquidity Coming To The San Francisco Actual Property Market
The rationale this issues proper now could be cash. Lots of it, arriving over the subsequent decade as San Francisco experiences a boom loop.
The rationale this issues proper now could be cash. Lots of it, arriving quickly with the upcoming IPOs and liquidity occasions of varied AI firms similar to Anthropic, OpenAI, Databricks, and extra.
San Francisco’s chief economist thinks the IPOs generate over $10 billion for the town. Gross sales above $5 million already jumped 69% evaluating the primary quarter of 2025 to the primary quarter of 2026.
So hundreds of individuals of their early thirties are about to Google “greatest avenue to purchase a home in San Francisco” with $8 million of after-tax cash and no concept that the block issues greater than the model. This put up is for them. And for the remainder of us who wish to know what we’re competing in opposition to.
Full disclosure earlier than we begin. I personal property on the west side of San Francisco, so my bias is on the desk the place you possibly can see it. However I additionally personal properties on the North Aspect of San Francisco in Pacific Heights.
Learn accordingly, after which go stroll the streets your self on a Tuesday at 8am and once more on a Saturday at 2pm. That is the primary analysis that counts. However the actuality is, until you truly stay on the road, you will not actually know, so my information is right here that can assist you achieve the most effective perspective doable as a long-time San Francisco resident and a number of property proprietor.
How I Ranked The High SF Streets: The Six S’s Of Avenue Status
Status is just not the identical as worth. Value is what a avenue prices. Status is what a avenue retains.
Loads of costly streets are depressing to stay on. Loads of quiet streets are underpriced as a result of they by no means made {a magazine}. I scored every avenue on six elements, weighted by how a lot they really shield your cash over 20 years.
The six elements I rating each avenue on, and the way a lot each counts.
Shortage will get the highest weight as a result of it is the one issue no one can manufacture. You possibly can renovate a kitchen. You can’t print extra heaps on a 650-home hillside specified by 1912.
Serenity will get second as a result of it is the issue consumers underweight and house owners by no means cease noticing. A busy avenue is a everlasting tax in your life that exhibits up in your resale worth whether or not or not you admit it.
The ten most prestigious streets in San Francisco, highlighted in inexperienced. Six of the ten sit on the west facet.
The Rating At A Look
Value ranges are my estimates based mostly on latest gross sales and present asks. Confirm every part earlier than you wire cash.
1) Sotelo Avenue, Forest Hill
Forest Hill was master-planned in 1912 with roughly 650 houses complete, streets broad sufficient for a horse and buggy, and a tree cover that has now had a century to fill in. There isn’t any model of the longer term the place extra Forest Hill will get constructed. That’s the entire argument in a single sentence.
Sotelo is the most effective avenue in it. It curves alongside the higher hillside, it dead-ends in opposition to open house slightly than feeding a commuter route, and it will get the Golden Gate Bridge and bay sightlines that folks fly internationally to {photograph}. Tons run massive by San Francisco requirements. Homes sit again from the road with actual front yards, which sounds trivial till you have lived someplace your bed room window is six ft from a bus cease.
Here is the half no one quantifies. Sotelo has virtually zero via visitors. No one cuts throughout Sotelo to get wherever as a result of Pacheco is the road that handles many of the visitors. On a weekday morning you hear birds, and might simply maintain the home windows open whenever you sleep. In a metropolis of 830,000 folks that may be a genuinely scarce commodity, and scarce commodities get repriced when a wall of cash exhibits up.
Then there’s the Forest Hill Muni station, which is the quiet superpower of all the west facet. You might be downtown with out a automobile in quarter-hour. You might be on 280 south towards Palo Alto in ten minutes. Hybrid work made non-obligatory commuting probably the most helpful sort, and Forest Hill is likely one of the solely status pockets within the metropolis that does each instructions nicely.
The catch: fog. Not Outer Sundown fog, however you’ll get gray July mornings that the east facet of the town, such because the Mission district, doesn’t. In case your total identification is sunbathing, you could wish to head extra east. However the noise and visitors is intense.
Why it is #1: most shortage, near-perfect serenity, actual views, transit each instructions, and house owners who maintain for 30 years. Nothing else within the metropolis scores throughout all six.
2) Broadway, Pacific Heights
Billionaire’s Row. Two to 3 blocks of north-facing heaps between Divisadero and Lyon that look straight over the bay to Marin, with the Presidio on one flank and a few of the most photographed mansions within the nation lined up in a row.
That is the trophy asset of San Francisco actual property. It is also probably the most liquid on the very prime, as a result of the customer pool is international slightly than native.
Laurene Powell Jobs paid roughly $71 million on the Row in 2024. In April 2026 a 15,000 sq. foot Pacific Heights dwelling on Vallejo traded off-market for $56 million, with a dropping bid reportedly at $52 million. Brokers describe the present drawback on the prime of the market as a mansion scarcity, which is a phrase I will probably be occupied with whereas I unclog my very own gutters.
Why it is not #1: Broadway is an actual avenue with actual visitors, and the very houses with the most effective views sit above a street folks truly drive on. Status is off the charts, serenity is common, and the entry worth is 4x to 8x the Forest Hill quantity for a home you’ll not take pleasure in 4x to 8x as a lot. You’re shopping for a standing asset, and there is nothing unsuitable with that so long as you already know that is the commerce.
3) Presidio Terrace, Presidio Heights
A personal gated oval of about three dozen houses ringed by palm bushes, beforehand dwelling to Dianne Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi. It’s the closest factor San Francisco has to a compound.
Shortage is ideal. Serenity is ideal. The Presidio is throughout the road, which suggests 1,500 acres of forest and trails operate as your entrance yard perpetually.
Why it is not greater: two causes. First, provide is so skinny that houses virtually by no means commerce, which is nice for status and horrible should you ever want liquidity. Second, that is the road whose HOA famously misplaced the pavement itself in a 2017 tax public sale over an unpaid invoice of about $14 a yr, and an investor picked up the road for $90,000. I discover that hysterical, and it is usually a real reminder that exclusivity and competence should not the identical factor.
4) San Anselmo Avenue, St. Francis Wooden
St. Francis Wooden is the grandest residence park in San Francisco. Larger common houses than Forest Hill, formal landscaping, a non-public residents-only park in a quiet valley, and roughly 15% greater common costs in consequence.
San Anselmo is the place you wish to be inside it. The heaps are deep, the houses are the massive classical piles the neighborhood was constructed round, and also you’re set again from the arterials.
The catch, and it is the explanation St. Francis Wooden ranks beneath Forest Hill: visitors. Portola, Junipero Serra, Monterey, and St. Francis Boulevard all funnel automobiles via and across the neighborhood on their approach south.
I’ve walked each neighborhoods with two younger youngsters many occasions. The distinction in ambient automobile quantity is roughly 3x to 5x, and you’re feeling it instantly. Which avenue and which block you purchase on issues extra in St. Francis Wooden than virtually wherever else within the metropolis.
5) Sea Cliff Avenue, Sea Cliff
Ocean, Golden Gate Bridge, Marin Headlands, and a non-public seaside on the backside of the steps. Properties by Willis Polk and Julia Morgan. Roughly 250 homes complete, wedged between the Presidio and Lands Finish, with nowhere to develop in any path.
Sea Cliff has at all times traded on the power of the view, and the view is the most effective within the metropolis.
Why it is not prime three: it’s remoted in a approach folks underestimate till they stay there. You’re a great distance from every part, the fog and wind come off the ocean laborious, and the bluff houses carry erosion and basis questions that generate costly conversations with structural engineers. Lovely. Not carefree.
6) Vallejo Avenue Crest, Russian Hill
The 2 blocks on the prime of the Vallejo Avenue ramp between Jones and Taylor, with the Willis Polk buildings and the balustrades and the steps. A number of the oldest cash and greatest structure in San Francisco, and a downtown skyline view you can’t get from the west facet at any worth.
That is the one avenue on the listing I would decide if I had been single, childless, and wished to stroll to dinner each evening of my life.
Why it is not greater: parking is a working joke, the hill is punishing, heaps are small, and in case you have babies you’ll spend a decade questioning why you selected a 40-degree slope as your main atmosphere.
7) Castenada Avenue, Forest Hill
Sure, two Forest Hill streets.
Castenada runs alongside the ridge and delivers a few of the greatest bridge and bay panoramas in Forest Hill with the identical big-lot, low-traffic, master-planned character. If Sotelo is unavailable, and it normally is, Castenada is the subsequent name. It is also the place you discover the older architecturally vital houses, a few of them by Bernard Maybeck.
The catch: a couple of sections get extra pass-through than Sotelo and the view high quality drops off quick as you descend the hill. On this avenue, elevation is cash.
8) Jackson Avenue, Presidio Heights
The blocks between Arguello and Spruce. Extensive, tree-lined, formal, and quietly one of many strongest hold-forever streets within the metropolis. Presidio entry on one facet, Clement and Sacramento Avenue procuring on the opposite, and the best focus of enormous intact single-family houses on the north facet exterior Broadway.
Lake Avenue a couple of blocks over posted a $4.75 million median throughout a small handful of 2026 gross sales, together with an $11 million commerce on Lake itself, which tells you all the Presidio-adjacent hall is repricing.
The catch: Jackson is an extended avenue than most on this listing, and high quality swings laborious by block. West of Presidio Avenue, wonderful. Maintain going east and also you’re paying Presidio Heights costs for a Decrease Pac Heights expertise.
9) Liberty Avenue, Noe Valley
The stretch between Castro and Noe. Victorians, a hill that provides you a downtown view, and the sunniest microclimate of something on this listing. Noe Valley took six of the highest fifteen spots in a 2026 rating of San Francisco streets by median sale worth, which isn’t a fluke. It is the family-formation avenue of alternative for precisely the demographic about to get liquid.
If a 34-year-old at an AI firm buys a $6 million home this yr, statistically it’ll look quite a bit like Liberty Avenue.
The catch: you are shopping for a Victorian on a modest lot with shared partitions close by and a severe parking drawback. Fantastic life-style. Much less shortage, much less permanence, extra competitors from each different newly rich 34-year-old with the identical Zillow saved search.
10) fifteenth Avenue (West Aspect Of The Avenue), Golden Gate Heights
The worth play, and the one I would inform a good friend to really purchase.
One avenue, and one facet of it. Purchase on the west facet of fifteenth Avenue because it climbs via Golden Gate Heights and your again home windows face the Pacific with nothing between you and Japan. Purchase on the east facet of the identical avenue and you’re looking in the back of the homes throughout from you, paying a Golden Gate Heights worth for a Sundown view. Similar deal with prefix, wildly completely different asset.
That is the one clearest instance in San Francisco of why the road, and right here the facet of the road, issues greater than the neighborhood.
Golden Gate Heights sits excessive sufficient to punch above the marine layer extra typically than the Sundown beneath it. In each different main metropolis on earth, panoramic ocean views commerce at monumental premiums. In San Francisco you possibly can nonetheless get a full panoramic ocean view right here for a fraction of what a bay view prices on the north facet. I’ve watched 3/2 houses on this hill with actual ocean views ask beneath $3 million whereas a viewless Pacific Heights condominium asks the identical.
Grand View Park is a brief stroll away and has, for my part, the most effective views in all the metropolis. The neighborhood is quiet, crime is low, and the rebuilt Golden Gate Heights Park offers youngsters someplace to run.
The catch: hillside heaps imply much less usable land, and fifteenth Avenue carries extra visitors than the tucked-away lanes above it. Prioritize an actual driveway and a big deck, or you’ll personal a view and nowhere to take a seat and take a look at it. And make sure the sightline in individual on the precise flooring stage you’d stay on, as a result of one badly positioned neighbor’s roofline erases the entire premium.
Honorable Mentions
El Camino Del Mar (Sea Cliff), Normandie Terrace (Pacific Heights), Santa Ana Avenue (St. Francis Wooden), Lake Avenue (Presidio Heights), Montgomery Avenue on Telegraph Hill, Ortega Means and Rockridge Drive (Golden Gate Heights), Scenic Means (Sea Cliff), and Yerba Buena Avenue for individuals who need the St. Francis Wooden deal with and are prepared to just accept the visitors.
The Actual Recommendation For Anybody About To Get Liquid
Status addresses are an exquisite comfort prize for a life spent working laborious. They’re a horrible main monetary plan.
Three guardrails I would apply earlier than shopping for on any avenue on this put up.
Observe the 30/30/3 dwelling shopping for rule. Maintain the mortgage cost to not more than 30% of gross revenue, have 30% of the house worth in money before you purchase (20% down and 10% as a buffer), and cap the acquisition worth at roughly 3x your gross annual revenue. Concentrated fairness that hasn’t been offered doesn’t depend as revenue. It counts as a rumor.
Maintain the house to not more than 30% of your internet value. If a $6 million home makes up 80% of every part you personal and the remainder is in the identical inventory that pays your wage, you do not personal a home. You personal a leveraged wager on one firm with a roof on it.
Promote some inventory. Really promote it. The costliest lesson of each earlier tech cycle is the one that held every part via the lockup as a result of promoting felt disloyal. Diversify into one thing boring the second you legally can, then purchase the home with money you have already got slightly than money you hope to have.
Often Requested Questions
What’s the most prestigious avenue in San Francisco?
By pure worth and public recognition, Broadway in Pacific Heights, referred to as Billionaire’s Row. By the mix of shortage, quiet, views, entry, and long-term possession that truly protects worth, I rank Sotelo Avenue in Forest Hill first for houses folks can truly purchase.
Why is the west facet of San Francisco booming?
Larger single-family houses on greater heaps, a demographic shift towards house that began with the pandemic and by no means reversed, the Chinese American International School campus close to Stonestown, the enlargement of St. Ignatius, the multi-billion greenback UCSF Parnassus rebuild including over 1,300 jobs by 2030, and quick access each downtown and south towards Palo Alto.
Is Forest Hill higher than St. Francis Wooden?
St. Francis Wooden has bigger houses and averages round 15% costlier. Forest Hill is quieter, with dramatically much less via visitors, and has its personal Muni station. For elevating a household, I take Forest Hill.
How a lot does a house on Sotelo Avenue value?
Roughly $3.5 million to $8 million relying on dimension, situation, and look at, with the broader Forest Hill vary working from about $2.5 million to $6 million-plus. Trades are rare, so a single sale can transfer the common.
The place will AI IPO millionaires purchase houses in San Francisco?
My expectation is Noe Valley, Cole Valley, the Inside Sundown, Forest Hill, St. Francis Wooden, and Golden Gate Heights for household consumers, and Pacific Heights, Presidio Heights, Sea Cliff, and Russian Hill for the smaller variety of trophy consumers.
Diversify Your Actual Property Past One Costly Avenue
Proudly owning a $5 million dwelling on a prestigious San Francisco avenue is a concentrated, illiquid, undiversified wager on one metropolis and one business. I really like San Francisco actual property, and I nonetheless suppose you need publicity elsewhere.
Check out Fundrise, which manages over $3 billion for greater than 350,000 traders throughout personal actual property within the Sunbelt, the place valuations and yields look extra engaging than coastal metropolis costs. The funding minimal is low, so you possibly can dollar-cost common slightly than write one monumental examine.
Fundrise is a long-time sponsor of Monetary Samurai, and Monetary Samurai is an investor in Fundrise funds.
Associated Posts
Purchase The Proper Residence, Not The Spectacular One
For the longer sport of constructing the online value that makes an costly avenue inexpensive slightly than terrifying, learn Millionaire Milestones: Simple Steps To Seven Figures, a USA At the moment bestseller, additionally with Portfolio Penguin.
And for anybody shopping for a house primarily due to the college district, my subsequent e-book, Your Kids Will Be OK: Serving to Them Navigate An Unsure Future, argues that what occurs inside the home issues excess of the deal with on the entrance of it.
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Every little thing I write is predicated on firsthand expertise, as a result of cash is just too essential to be left as much as pontification. I’ve lived in San Francisco since 2001 and have owned property right here since 2003. Monetary Samurai began in 2009 and is likely one of the largest independently-owned private finance websites at the moment. You possibly can learn extra about my About page here.
