While condo sales, especially in downtown San Francisco high-rises, were sluggish at best through the pandemic, things appear to be turning around. And one notable tower only has a handful of units left to sell.
Mira, the 40-story tower at 280 Spear Street completed in 2019, was designed by Studio Gang — the firm of Chicago-based architect Jeanne Gang, which now has an office in San Francisco. It features a twisting pattern of bay windows that are meant to echo the bays of the city's many Victorian and Edwardian buildings, and it is now one of the most notable buildings in the city's skyline.
The 392-unit tower includes 147 designated affordable units, all of which went into the city's lottery five years ago. And as the Business Times reports this week, the remaining market-rate units have taken a while to sell out, but the pace of sales has picked up since the start of the year.
"I think we're seeing the beginning of the shift," says Matt Felt, managing director at Polaris Pacific, speaking to the Business Times.
The rise in interest rates in the last two years, combined with the ongoing "doom loop" narrative about downtown, served to depress sales of high-rise condos, but prices are stabilizing, Felt says.
There are just 12 units remaining to be sold at Mira, putting the building at 90% sold out, and 15 condos have sold in the tower in the last 60 days alone. One of those was a two-bedroom unit on the 34th floor that sold for $1.75 million last month. A two-bedroom corner unit on the 19th floor is currently pending sale at $1.45 million.
Some of the remaining units are in the upper-floor "Panorama Collection," which feature more open floor plans on the 36th through 40th floors. One of those, a three-bedroom on the 39th floor, is listed at $3.75 million.
The Chronicle has a story today about condos starting sell at a faster clip over on Yerba Buena Island. The first upscale development completed on Yerba Buena and Treasure islands, The Bristol, has sold about 50 units so far, out of 124 in the building and 266 that will be on Yerba Buena Island once development is complete.
As the Chronicle notes, units in The Bristol are priced between $550,000 to $4.4 million, and six are currently under contract.
The Cove Residences are the development's next phase, which are 12 luxury townhouse units that hit the market this week. Prices for these start just under $3 million, but go up to $12 million for a 4,000-square-foot townhome with a private elevator.
Once development is complete on Treasure Island, sometime in the next decade or so, the area is set to have 8,000 new homes. But amenities are slim for now, and residents of The Bristol currently still need to ferry (or drive) over to San Francisco to do their grocery shopping.
Home prices have ticked slightly downward in San Francisco in recent weeks, with inventory levels on the rise. As Socketsite reports, the city just hit a 13-year seasonal high for the number of single-family homes and condos on the market. "As such there are nearly 50 percent more homes on the market in San Francisco than average for this time of the year, over 50 percent more homes on the market than there were prior to the pandemic, and nearly 150 percent more homes on the market than there were in March of 2015," Socketsite writes.
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