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The home at\u00a0116 Elsie St. in\u00a0San Francisco\u2019s Bernal Heights neighborhood recently sold for $4.7 million\u00a0\u2014 $705,000 above the original asking price. The city\u2019s artificial intelligence boom has transformed old neighborhoods that previously housed working-class San Franciscans.<\/p>\n
Carl Nolte\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
We were 7 or 8 years old, right at an age when everything is possible. We all lived on\u00a0Potrero Hill, and on sunny afternoons we\u2019d hang out just up the street where some other kid had rigged up a rope on a telephone pole near a little bluff where we could swing out, like Tarzan did in the movies.<\/p>\n
We got tired of that soon enough, so we sat around, drinking Cokes and telling stories. It was serious stuff, sometimes.<\/p>\n
The main topic was simple: \u201cWhat do you want to be when you grow up?\u201d \u201cA fireman,\u201d one kid said, and the talk went around: \u201ca policeman,\u201d \u201ca baseball player,\u201d \u201ca nurse, like my mom,\u201d \u201ca truck driver\u201d and so on. We saved the smallest kid for last.<\/p>\n
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\u201cA millionaire,\u201d he said. \u201cI want to be a millionaire when I grow up.\u201d\u00a0 Of course we all laughed. That kid must have been crazy.<\/p>\n
But, you know, if he\u2019d worked hard, played his cards right, bought a small house and stuck with San Francisco, that kid would be a millionaire today. At least on paper. Almost any house almost anywhere in the city is worth a million dollars now. It\u2019s crazy.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n It was crazy when I told that story about the millionaire kids on Potrero Hill 10 or 15 years ago. It\u2019s crazier now.<\/p>\n The rebuilt home at\u00a0630\u00a0Precita Ave. in Bernal Heights, originally constructed in 1905, recently sold for $4.3 million.<\/p>\n Carl Nolte\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n It all hit home about a couple of weeks ago when the afternoon mail had an oversize postcard from Jessica\u00a0Branson at Compass real estate brokers. It announced that a big house at 116 Elsie St. on the western slope of Bernal Heights with several stories and an amazing view had just sold for $4.7 million, the price of a mansion. The card said the house was sold in only three days for $705,000 above the original asking price.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n What was more amazing, at least to me, was that the $4.7 million house is on the next street. I can see it from my window.<\/p>\n A couple of days later, another card came, this one from Isabelle Grotte, another Compass agent, announcing the sale of a \u201cnewly rebuilt residence\u201d at 630 Precita Ave., a few blocks away, for $4.3 million. The Precita Avenue house does not seem to have much of a view, but has four bedrooms and a three-bedroom in-law apartment.<\/p>\n Neither of these $4 million-plus houses is much to look at from the outside. Both have a clean, white, spare look, understated. But inside both have all the best the 21st century has to offer, what \u201cthe premium buyers are willing to pay for: exceptional location, design integrity and turnkey quality,\u201d as Grotte describes 630 Precita.<\/p>\n Both come with neighborhood histories. The Precita property is near where Precita Avenue runs into Cesar Chavez Street at the foot of Bernal Hill. The original house was built in 1905, almost on the banks of the now-vanished Precita Creek.<\/p>\n The back side of the multistory home at 116 Elsie St. in\u00a0Bernal Heights offers amazing views of Noe Valley and Twin Peaks to\u00a0the south, and the\u00a0Marin Headlands and Mount Tamalpais to\u00a0the north.\u00a0<\/p>\n Carl Nolte\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n The neighborhood was full of working people over the years when I was a kid and for years later: longshoremen, bus drivers, teachers, people who worked for the phone company. There was music and street art. The first\u00a0Carnaval San Francisco<\/a> celebration was held in Precita Park. It was off the beaten track: Some of the houses just up from Precita were converted chicken shacks, wrote Peter Booth Wiley in an essay published on the FoundSF website<\/a>.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The Elsie Street property on the other side of Bernal Hill is different: It is one of the houses built not long after the street was finally paved. Old-timers remember a dirt road there.<\/p>\n Elsie is still so narrow, two cars can\u2019t safely pass. There is still one vacant lot on Elsie, thick with wild fennel. The back side of the big houses on Elsie is what makes them special\u00a0\u2014 and valuable. The downslope opens up so the view extends over Noe Valley to Twin Peaks and, to the north, the Marin Headlands and Mount Tamalpais.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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