{"id":323483,"date":"2026-05-19T21:48:41","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T21:48:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/323483\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T21:48:41","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T21:48:41","slug":"buyers-are-scooping-up-underwater-san-francisco-real-estate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/323483\/","title":{"rendered":"Buyers are scooping up underwater San Francisco real estate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several rare San Francisco lots sold at auction Tuesday for eyebrow-raising sums, even in a city known for shocking prices. Located near the shoreline close to Candlestick Park<\/a>, the lots were billed as \u201ca unique opportunity,\u201d with each offering 5,000 square feet, or about 1\/10 of an acre of land. The lots sold for less than $1,000 a piece, but there was a catch, of course.<\/p>\n

All of them are submerged in the bay.<\/p>\n

The underwater parcels \u2014 151 Fitzgerald Ave.<\/a>, 0 Bancroft Ave.<\/a> and 215 Tevis St.<\/a> \u2014 were advertised as \u201can intriguing speculative investment\u201d with a world of promise, including \u201cpotential alternative uses such as future waterfront positioning, possible boat docking considerations, environmental or recreational applications, or strategic land banking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marie Bradley, an executive administrator for Vantage Auctions \u2014 the company selling the lots \u2014 noted even more options, including \u201coil drilling\u201d and \u201cexpanding the land mass out into the bay\u201d when the property isn\u2019t covered with the chilly waters.<\/p>\n

This is all part of the gamble, explained Don Cruz Datanagan, the managing director for Serhant\u2019s Northern California office. Founded by Ryan Serhant<\/a> of \u201cMillion Dollar Listing New York\u201d and \u201cOwning Manhattan\u201d fame, the brokerage is among the newest in California, establishing offices in the state just last month.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome buyers may view parcels like this as inexpensive long term bets on future San Francisco waterfront value,\u201d Datanagan wrote in an email to SFGATE. But scoring this kind of deal comes with many caveats.<\/p>\n

According to Datanagan, these types of parcels offer \u201cvery limited practical use today\u201d and can still be subject to regulatory constraints and annual property taxes. There\u2019s more. \u201cFrom the mapping, the lot appears well offshore with additional submerged parcels between it and the shoreline, raising significant questions around access, use rights, and long term viability,\u201d he said of the Bancroft lot. The two other parcels are similarly positioned.<\/p>\n

\u201cOwnership alone would not automatically create meaningful development rights or usable waterfront access,\u201d\u00a0Datanagan said.<\/p>\n

While such opportunities are considered rare, they do pop up in the Bay Area periodically. In 2023, a man purchased a 10,000-square-foot lot<\/a> in Alameda for $300,000, unaware that it was submerged. He attempted to offload the property the following year for $400,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Several rare San Francisco lots sold at auction Tuesday for eyebrow-raising sums, even in a city known for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105,1693,2787],"class_list":["post-323483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-sfglocal","tag-sfgrealestate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}