Spring is here, bringing with it warm weather, northbound migratory birds and — at least in some Bay Area neighborhoods — a blisteringly competitive housing market.
Take San Francisco’s 94131 ZIP code, for example. The typical home in the area, which stretches from Mount Sutro to Glen Park, grew from a value of $1.45 million in August 2025 to $1.58 million in February 2026.
That 9% jump was the biggest of any Bay Area ZIP code with a population of 5,000 or more, but it was far from the only San Francisco area to see a big increase over just six months. The typical home value in the 94121 ZIP code, which includes the Outer Richmond and Sea Cliff, rose by about 8%, according to data from real estate listing company Zillow.
None of San Francisco’s ZIP codes have returned to the record prices seen in 2022, according to Zillow’s data. But the recent rise in home values — the estimated price a mid-tier home would fetch on the market — underscores how a resurgence in housing demand from tech workers, and the absence of supply, has turned its market hot again.
Zillow’s estimates are seasonally adjusted, meaning the company tries to adjust for the annual fluctuations in the housing market, which tends to heat up in the spring and fall and cool in the winter.
Home values have risen starkly in many of the Bay Area’s neighborhoods, especially in San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. The rise of AI companies brought a massive wave of demand last year, and with many sellers still holding off on listing their properties, competition for homes is squeezing prices up — and first-time buyers out.
But home values have dipped in much of the East Bay and part of the North Bay, which haven’t yet seen a major influx of tech professionals from across the Bay. Values in downtown Oakland’s 94612 ZIP code, which has become one of the country’s weakest for-sale housing markets, continued to tumble by more than 5% from August to February.
Even then, there are some exceptions to the East Bay’s cooling. Values in the Berkeley hills’ 94707 ZIP code rose by 5% over the six-month period.
While the influx of tech wealth is leading to bidding wars, especially in some of the Bay Area’s wealthiest neighborhoods, home values in San Francisco and some of its other cities remain below their pre-pandemic levels after adjusting for inflation (without adjusting, San Francisco’s prices have nearly returned to their February 2020 mark).
The pandemic and 2022 mortgage rate spike sent values in the region into a nosedive, one that San Francisco has only recently started to reverse and that Oakland appears to still be stuck in.