The highlights:
- 3 bed, 1.5 bath in the Sunset, move-in ready — $229,000
- Superb condition Noe Valley Victorian — $318,500
- 8-bedroom in Bernal Heights — $145,000
- Newly remodeled Pacific Heights condo — $159,000
Now, before you throw your laptop across the room, let's be fair. Adjust for inflation and those numbers look less insane: that Sunset home comes out to about $700,000 in today's dollars, and the Noe Valley Victorian hits roughly $974,000. One local did the math and pointed out that even the Pac Heights condo would be around $486,000 adjusted.
But here's the thing — a comparable 3-bed in the Sunset today doesn't list at $700K. It lists north of $1.2 million. That Noe Valley Victorian? You'd be lucky to touch one under $2 million. The gap between inflation-adjusted 1986 prices and actual 2025 prices is the gap created by decades of City Hall choking the housing supply.
As one SF resident noted, "You have to remember that salaries were much lower, interest rates were higher, and even then people thought the cost of housing here was ridiculous." Fair point — mortgage rates in 1986 hovered around 10%. But another local put it more bluntly: the income-to-house-price ratios and price-per-square-foot were simply more attainable, even accounting for all of that.
Another resident recalled that in 1986, "condos at Opera Plaza were $99,000 and they could not get anyone to buy them." Let that marinate.
So what happened between then and now? The usual suspects: restrictive zoning, endless permitting delays, neighborhood groups weaponizing environmental review to block new construction, and a Board of Supervisors that has spent decades treating housing development like a threat rather than a necessity. Inflation didn't do this. Policy did.
The lesson from a crumpled 1986 newspaper is simple: San Francisco was once a city where a middle-class family could actually buy a home. It didn't have to become this unaffordable. We chose this — or rather, our politicians chose it for us.
