It's beginning to be more of a buyer's market in San Francisco than it has been in over a decade as the number of homes for sale last week reached levels unseen since 2011. And this means that more and more sellers are having to cut their asking prices to garner interest and remain competitive.

Over the past week, as Socketsite reports, the number of homes for sale in the city rose 6 percent to 1,360, which is a 200-percent increase of inventory over the same time last year. Summer is of course high season for home sales, but San Francisco is clearly part of a larger nationwide trend as people working remotely — and living in cities that are half shut-down — are seeking new homes and more space in less dense places.

Not since 2010 and 2011 have so many homes in San Francisco been on the market at once, with almost 50 percent more single-family homes on the market than this time last year, and 130 percent more condominiums.

Sales of existing single-family homes in the Bay Area jumped 70 percent in June, as NBC Bay Area reports via the California Association of Realtors, following the quieter lockdown months of April and May.

All that inventory following a lengthy period of far less inventory means there is pent-up demand regardless of the pandemic — and as Socketsite reported last week, there were 150 percent more reduced-price listings on the MLS in San Francisco than the same time last year.

It helps that interest rates are historically low, and as one local realtor suggests to SFGate this week, San Francisco's unique housing stock of two-, three-, and four-unit buildings in old Victorians provides maximum safety in pandemic times, with little or no shared common spaces. (This also spells bad news for condo sellers in big, high-rise buildings.)

If seasonal trends hold true, inventory is expected to go down again this month and next, and rebound once more in August — but can such usually predictable trends really be counted on in 2020?

Related: San Franciscans Continue Leaving for More 'Comfortable Lives' Elsewhere as Rental Prices Plunge

Photo: Bernadette Gatsby