The listing, from around 1986, shows asking prices that read like typos by today's standards. We're talking about move-in-ready homes in desirable neighborhoods for prices that wouldn't cover a down payment now.

But before you spiral into full nostalgia-fueled despair, some context matters. One local who crunched the numbers pointed out the inflation-adjusted reality: "A 3-bed in the Sunset at $229,000 in '86 is about $700,000 in today's dollars. A Noe Valley Victorian at $318,500 adjusts to roughly $974,000. An 8-bedroom in Bernal Heights at $145,000 comes out to around $443,000."

Those adjusted numbers are still dramatically below current market prices — a Noe Valley Victorian today would easily clear $2 million — but they're not quite the fantasy they appear at first glance.

Here's the thing defenders of the status quo don't want you to think about: even adjusted for inflation, housing costs have roughly doubled or tripled in real terms. That's not some inevitable law of physics. That's the result of decades of policy choices — restrictive zoning, byzantine permitting processes, environmental review weaponized against new construction, and a political class that talks endlessly about affordability while doing everything possible to constrain supply.

As one SF resident put it with weary clarity: "They used to be more attainable. Looking at income-to-house-price ratios and square-foot prices adjusted for inflation versus current prices — it's not even close."

Another local noted something worth remembering: "Those prices were considered a bubble that actually popped a few years later. Prices didn't start climbing sharply again until 1997 or so." In other words, even the '86 prices people are romanticizing were considered outrageous at the time.

The lesson isn't that San Francisco was once a paradise of cheap housing. It's that we've spent 40 years making a bad situation catastrophically worse through government-imposed scarcity. Every blocked housing project, every two-year permitting delay, every neighborhood group that fights a four-story building — they all compound.

Potrero Hill's vintage listing isn't just a fun throwback. It's an indictment.