A rare Pacific Heights property that housed ballet dancers at 3016 Jackson St. is now for sale, offering flexible use in one of San Francisco’s most exclusive areas.
Courtesy of Steph Dewey / Reflex Imaging
With Edwardian details preserved for over a century, this historic Pacific Heights building has been home to visiting ballet dancers since 2007. The building’s owner — the San Francisco Ballet — has grown in the past 20 years, meaning 3016 Jackson St. is no longer big enough to house the many dancers who travel from all over the world to dance here. This growth, however, presents the rare chance for a new buyer to own a multi-unit structure in one of the city’s most rarified neighborhoods.
The building stands in harmony with other centenarian structures along Jackson Street. It’s a historic street where several homes escaped the 1906 earthquake’s destruction. In the case of 3016 Jackson St., the building broke ground three years after the quake, and was originally configured as a triplex. The original three units would have been generously proportioned, given that the entire building offers 6,840 square feet on a 4,162 square-foot lot.
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A rare Pacific Heights property that housed ballet dancers at 3016 Jackson St. is now for sale, offering flexible use in one of San Francisco’s most exclusive areas.
Courtesy of Steph Dewey / Reflex Imaging
According to Compass listing agent Scott Whelan, this property was granted a very rare permit to operate as group housing in the 1980s. “To find a building with this scale, flexibility, and existing group housing use in such a prime location is extraordinarily rare,” Whelan said in an email.
Delivered vacant, 3016 Jackson St.’s current configuration offers 15 bedrooms and 12 bathrooms spread over three floors. Residents share a kitchen, formal dining room, living room and den, as well as meeting rooms, an office, laundry and storage. Outside, there is a backyard and patio.
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A rare Pacific Heights property that housed ballet dancers at 3016 Jackson St. is now for sale, offering flexible use in one of San Francisco’s most exclusive areas.
Courtesy of Steph Dewey / Reflex Imaging
A rare Pacific Heights property that housed ballet dancers at 3016 Jackson St. is now for sale, offering flexible use in one of San Francisco’s most exclusive areas.
Elite Studios llc/Courtesy of Steph Dewey / Reflex Imaging
New buyers can keep the building as it is: a communal living home that can accommodate up to 30 people or, Whelan suggested, transform it into “a hotel or boarding house.” It could also revert to a triplex or even a grand single-family abode.
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“This is a street where homes sell up to $20M,” Whelan said in an email to SFGATE. “I doubt many people on the block know this property is not a residential dwelling.”
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The building’s current owner is the San Francisco Ballet Company. “The property was purchased by the SF Ballet for the purposes of housing dancers that come in from all parts of the world,” Whelan said. Eventually, however, the ballet needed a larger space, according to Whelan, at which point the building was leased to Westmont College to use for student housing. But now, “the college no longer needs the space and the Ballet has found a larger residence for visiting dancers, so the building was listed for sale on March 26,” Whelan explained.
A rare Pacific Heights property that housed ballet dancers at 3016 Jackson St. is now for sale, offering flexible use in one of San Francisco’s most exclusive areas.
Courtesy of Steph Dewey / Reflex Imaging
A rare Pacific Heights property that housed ballet dancers at 3016 Jackson St. is now for sale, offering flexible use in one of San Francisco’s most exclusive areas.
Elite Studios llc/Courtesy of Steph Dewey / Reflex Imaging
The building’s history as a communal home for ballet dancers and students is compelling, but a new buyer could choose to convert the building into a single-family mansion. Nationally, luxury properties are in high demand, with investors purchases up 5% over the previous year in the final quarter of 2025, SFGATE previously reported. Here in San Francisco, Compass’ chief market analyst Patrick Carlisle said, “22 luxury house sales of $5 million+ were reported in March 2026, up 83% year-over-year, surpassing the previous peak of 21 sales in June 2021,” and that number might be even higher with late-reported sales not yet factored in.
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A rare Pacific Heights property that housed ballet dancers at 3016 Jackson St. is now for sale, offering flexible use in one of San Francisco’s most exclusive areas.
Courtesy of Steph Dewey / Reflex Imaging
A rare Pacific Heights property that housed ballet dancers at 3016 Jackson St. is now for sale, offering flexible use in one of San Francisco’s most exclusive areas.
Courtesy of Steph Dewey / Reflex Imaging
Meanwhile, demand can’t be met by available inventory: Carlisle also said that though the total sales volume in March increased year over year, the number of homes listed for sale fell nearly 30%. “The inadequate supply of listings, especially houses, has been severely constraining sales volume,” Carlisle said. In other words, competition is fierce among homebuyers, especially among those buyers flush with cash generated by what Carlisle described as the “AI startup boom.”
Whelan agreed that the current state of San Francisco’s real estate market adds allure to 3016 Jackson St.
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“Given the continued shortage of luxury inventory, it presents a compelling opportunity for a developer or end user to reimagine it,” he said, “whether as a world-class single-family residence, condos or to capitalize on the growing demand for high-end co-living environments.”