When Java Beach Cafe owner Pat Maguire was growing up at 44th and Kirkham in what was then called the Lower Sunset, neighborhood loyalty was everything.
The Lower Sunset kids were the children of immigrants, working-class and feisty. Every Thanksgiving, they would play a football game against the Upper Sunset kids, divided by Sunset Boulevard. Maguire says he and his friends always won.
In the 1970s and ’80s, the whole neighborhood was an underdog. Dive bars near the beach were known for brawls and Harleys. A hippie surf culture brought rampant drug use. Drag racers gunned muscle cars down the Great Highway each weekend, drawing hordes of teenagers, and more fights.
“Even to come down here then, you had to be a little scrappy,” Maguire said.
No neighborhood changes because of one person. But try telling that to Maguire, who recalls the moment he claims the Outer Sunset renaissance began.
It was 1992, and he was in his early 20s, sitting on the stairs that lead from the beach to Judah Street and staring at a long-shuttered biker bar.
The budding entrepreneur was struck by a vision of the Outer Sunset as a safe place for families and the small businesses that catered to them to thrive. He opened Java Beach Cafe at the storefront one year later.
Java Beach Cafe has been an Outer Sunset gathering place for more than 30 years, on the corner of La Playa and Judah streets, amid a changing neighborhood.
“When we were little, your neighborhood was really important and you protected your street and your corner,” he said. “So I kind of took it on as a responsibility. I’m not going to let my neighborhood that I love, fall to pieces.”
Far from collapse, the Outer Sunset has slowly, then suddenly, become in.
Since 2019, the median price for a home in the Outer Sunset has risen about 10% to just over $1.5 million, according to Compass data, compared to around a 6% rise citywide. Still, the beachfront neighborhood is a bargain compared to average-priced homes in San Francisco.
Though most of the immigrant, blue-collar families Maguire grew up with are gone, so are the bikers, drug dealers and drag racers. Today, upscale boutiques and gourmet dining spots dot the outer avenues. Surfers bobbing in the waves are as likely to drive a Tesla as a Volkswagen bus.
Ocean Beach’s new bougieness — aided by a changing climate that breeds more sunny days, the rise of remote work and, yes, Sunset Dunes park — has driven up property values, especially along the Great Highway, which is finally seeing the premium pricing Maguire has long felt it deserves.
“I think this real estate is going to be the hottest in the city, and I’m sticking with that,” Maguire said. “I’ve said that for decades.”
Changing of the guard
Jeremy Rushton got his real estate license a month after he turned 18. In 2012, he started his fledgling career as an assistant to an Outer Sunset agent and advertised flipped homes door-to-door.
Neighbors remembered the spunky teenager, and today, as a Coldwell Banker agent, he specializes in helping longtime Sunset residents and their families sell their homes. About half of his listings are trust sales — homes sold after an owner’s death.
Many of his sellers represent the Outer Sunset’s “old guard”: machinists, grocery store managers, and World War II vets who were the first inhabitants of the tract homes that rose on the neighborhood’s sand dunes. When he first got into the business nearly 15 years ago, most houses still had original pink tile bathrooms and unpainted wood kitchen cabinets.
The closure of the Great Highway to cars has been controversial for drivers, but a boon for real estate values.
It’ll take another 15 years, he suspects, until this inventory is turned over with homes featuring third levels and rear additions. Think Noe Valley’s transition, but with more white-collar surf bros.
“It has a certain vibe that you can’t find anywhere else in the city, but it’s still an example of high-income, high-net-worth people colonizing a historically blue-collar neighborhood,” Rushton said.
According to Rushton, the coastal boom reflects a generational shift in taste.
Previous waves of wealth favored the north side of town, while tech-era affluence is opting for something humbler and closer to nature. Choosing an Outer Sunset beach bungalow over a Pac Heights mansion is a feature, not a bug.
Nowhere is that trend more evident than along Great Highway and La Playa, where Rushton said that the oceanfront location had long been undervalued but now sells at a premium.
“Enough people realized that if you want to have beachfront property in Northern California in an urban setting, the Great Highway is your only option,” he said.
Hitting new heights
At Great Highway and Pacheco, a three-bedroom, 3.5-bath, 3,000-square-foot new-construction home may be a bellwether for the Outer Sunset’s newfound popularity.
Originally listed in August for $6.3 million, the first ground-up new construction on the Great Highway in decades was dropped to $5.9 million in October. The property next door — which featured two homes connected via a suspended glass bridge — sold for $7.1 million in June.
Kitchen windows offer panoramic views at 2026 Great Highway, the most expensive property for sale in the neighborhood.
“As agents, we don’t know what someone’s willing to pay,” said Mark Vasquez, who sold the $7.1 million property and is co-listing 2026 Great Highway with Compass agent Hernando Quintero.
“We wanted to test the market and see what the limits of the Sunset are.”
The new-build home was designed specifically to take advantage of the water views, which are blocked by the high sand dunes for many smaller homes along the street.
Less car-dependent than prior generations, many new residents see Sunset Dunes park as an amenity rather than an inconvenience. Although the issue is still being debated, the long-term result is likely to be a major boost for home values.
“In general, residents resist big changes,” Quintero said. “But when they see in a five-, seven-year period that their equity has doubled or tripled, they might change their minds.”
Vasquez said he’s been surprised by the breadth of high-end buyers who have toured the home.
Many were drawn in by the water views, new construction, and sub $7-million price point. Changing weather patterns have also meant less fog. These high-end buyers likely never imagined the Sunset would have what they wanted.
“The Sunset was not on anyone’s radar five years ago,” said Vasquez. “You couldn’t even spend that much if you wanted to.”
From ‘dog shit’ to fine dining
Sara Comden has rented in the Outer Sunset for 15 years, ever since her now-husband told her he’d only be willing to live within a block of the ocean.
In that time, she’s seen many more young families like hers come to the neighborhood, lured by the proximity to the beach, good schools, the zoo and Golden Gate Park. But the dining options weren’t a selling point.
Owners Nick Osborne, left, and Monique Osborne pose for a portrait in front of their restaurant, Ruby’s.The three month-old restaurant serves, tacos, poke bowls, and a viral chicken caesar wrap.
“Honestly, you could sell dog shit here and it would sell because there’s not a lot of options,” said Comden, who runs Cigar Bar and Grill in Jackson Square.
So she eagerly welcomed Ruby’s, a new restaurant from Mission Rock Resort owners Monique Osborne and Nick Osborne on the corner of Judah and 48th Avenue that opened in December.
Upscale but relaxed, Ruby’s sells tacos, soups, salads and sandwiches, including a chicken caesar wrap that went viral on TikTok (opens in new tab).
With its outdoor seating and bright green facade, the business is just one of many new restaurants and shops taking advantage of the swath of young families enjoying the Sunset’s sunnier days.
The Osbornes lived right around the corner from Ruby’s until they decided to buy a home near Stern Grove for their family of five in late 2024. Monique said Ruby’s reflects the kind of food she wishes there were more of when her family lived in the neighborhood.
“Come in with your sandy feet for all we care,” she said. “Just enjoy it and be authentically Sunset in that way.”
It also gave the family an excuse to return to the place that they were still grieving about leaving behind. The couple put their new home on the line to self-fund the restaurant, their first expansion beyond Mission Rock Resort.
“We have that much faith in this neighborhood and the people here,” she said. “It was such a deep, full-body yes.”
Java Beach Cafe Owner Patrick Maguire grew up in what was then known as the Lower Sunset. Far from being a curmudgeon, he welcomes the neighborhood’s new era.
Ruby’s is just a block away from Java Beach Cafe, and Maguire said he’s “stoked” by young couples like the Osbornes coming in to help fulfill his decades-long vision.
And if the changes mean his childhood friends can no longer afford the neighborhood, they can’t say he didn’t warn them back when the homes were under $200,000, instead of closing in on $2 million.
“I used to tell everybody I know, ‘Hey, you should buy a house on the Great Highway.’ And they’d go, ‘That neighborhood’s shitty. Why would I buy that?’” he said. “That was back then.”