Sean Mamola

09/02/2026

Every so often a home search closes a loop nobody saw coming.

My client had been living in a beautiful house with one problem that kept getting louder: the staircase. He was ready for one level, an elevator, and a front door he could walk straight into.

We were going through a walkthrough video of a residence at The Park Lane on Nob Hill when he stopped and said wait. He had lived in this exact building years ago, on the ground floor. Same lobby. Same corner of Sacramento and Taylor. Friends of his still live there and have been telling him for years that they love it.

So this was not really a purchase. It was a homecoming.

The Park Lane is a TIC, which means the work between "we love it" and "we are in contract" is real. TIC agreement, HOA disclosures, insurance, meeting minutes, his attorney reading every page alongside us. We asked for the documents early, read them carefully, and went in with a clean, serious offer.

Offer accepted. We are in escrow.

Congratulations to my client. The right home turned out to be a building he already knew by heart.

1100 Sacramento #404: https://rises.co/home-search/listings/8540252030417918245-1100-Sacramento-Street-404

09/01/2026

Last September a client of mine did the thing every buyer swears they will never do. They went way over asking. 😬

1579 46th Ave in the Outer Sunset was listed at $1,088,800. They paid $1,420,000. That is $331,200 over list, and it is exactly the kind of number that makes any buyer put the pen down and go home.

Eleven months later, Redfin puts that house at $1,839,472. 🎉

Here is the part I wish more buyers understood. The asking price was never the price. It was a marketing decision. $1,088,800 was chosen to gather a crowd on a Sunday, and it did exactly that.

This is not a west side quirk, either. The Real Deal reported a couple of weeks ago that San Francisco buyers are paying roughly 26% over asking on single family homes, a 21 year high. When a whole city clears list by a quarter, "over asking" has stopped measuring anything useful. The only spread that matters is the one between what you pay and what the house is actually worth, and those are two completely different questions.

(The other spread that matters is peanut butter to jelly on a good ole American PB&J. I have strong opinions there too. 🥪)

So did the gain come from this house or from a rising tide? Fair question, and no pun intended, since this one sits a few blocks off Ocean Beach. Zillow has the typical Outer Sunset home at $1,606,476 at the end of July, up 11.8% for the year. This house is up about 29.5% on what my client paid. It outran its own neighborhood by better than two to one.

The reasons were all sitting there in plain sight in June of last year:

🏡 A legally permitted one bedroom, one bath ADU with its own private entry

📐 A 3,001 square foot lot with real room behind the house

🌊 A few blocks of walking to Ocean Beach and to Sunset Dunes, the 77 acre, two mile oceanfront park that had opened that April

Most of the buyer pool priced a 1,181 square foot house from 1943. My client priced a house with a second income attached and a new park at the end of the street. 🌅

Now let me be careful with that $1,839,472, because I would rather be useful than impressive. It is an algorithm's opinion. It is not an appraisal, it is not an offer, and nobody has cashed it. The only number that is ever truly real is the one on a closing statement.

But everything underneath the estimate is real. The ADU is real. The park is real. And the $331,200 that looked reckless last September now looks like the price of admission.

That was the trade. Stop arguing with the list price, start underwriting the house. 🔑

Thinking about a purchase this fall and trying to figure out what a house is actually worth? That is the conversation I want to have with you.

https://rises.co/blog/paying-over-asking-is-not-overpaying

08/26/2026

A client forwarded me a national headline last week with three words attached: "should we worry?"

Here is the honest answer. Forty one percent of listings across the country have cut their price. In San Francisco it is eighteen. Half the national rate, in the market everyone keeps calling fragile.

The number that actually matters is what happens when you split it. Condos are doing the cutting at 21 percent. Houses are at 10. That is not one market softening. That is two markets moving in different directions inside the same city.

Single family homes closed this summer at about 124 percent of list, and fewer than 7 percent of them sold below asking. Condos settled back to roughly 100 percent of list, down from about 102 percent in April and May, with close to 30 percent now going below ask.

And when a San Francisco condo does cut, the median reduction is about 7 percent off the original price. That is a give back, not a downturn. Nine times out of ten it means the first price was aspirational and the market said so out loud.

What that changes depends on which side you are on. Selling a house, the playbook has not moved. Selling a condo, day one pricing matters more than it has in over a year, because the cut you avoid is worth more than the offer you hope to negotiate up to. Buying a condo, you finally have room to ask questions you could not ask two years ago.

I put the full breakdown here, house versus condo, sale to list, and where the cuts are actually concentrated: https://rises.co/blog/41-of-us-listings-have-cut-their-price-in-san-francisco-its-18

If you want to know where your building sits inside that split, call me at 415-704-3640.

08/21/2026

Nineteen months ago I sat with these clients in a condo on the 33rd floor of Lumina that had been sitting on the market for 118 days. 🔑

Nobody wanted it. It had listed at $1.25M and it was just sitting there, which in this business is usually a signal and occasionally an opportunity. I thought it was an opportunity. The unit had a southwest view over Twin Peaks that most buyers never bothered to go see, and a separate office alongside the bedroom that made 963 square feet live like a lot more. We bought it in January 2025 at $1.18M. Seventy thousand under list, and $270k below what the same residence traded for back in 2019.

This month I listed it for lease at $7,200 a month. Six applications came in. It leased at $8,000.

That is $96,000 a year against what they paid, and I will let you do the rest of that math yourself.

I am not posting this to take a victory lap on a rental. I am posting it because this is what the job actually is when it works. Not one transaction. You help someone buy well in a quiet moment, you stay in their corner, and eighteen months later you are the person they call when they want the asset to start working for them. The buy and the lease are the same piece of advice, separated by a year and a half.

Congratulations to my clients, who trusted the read when the place had been sitting for four months and nobody else was interested. 🎉

Own a San Francisco condo and cannot decide whether to sell or lease? That math is worth running before you do anything else: https://rises.co/properties/338-main-street-33d-san-francisco-ca-us-94105-426150157

08/17/2026

A buyer I have been working with since spring asked me a fair question last week. Why does it feel like there is nothing to look at?

So I pulled the July numbers instead of answering with a feeling.

417 active condo listings citywide. Down 42.5% from a year ago.

276 condos closed in July, up 24.9%. Another 221 went pending, up 15.7%.

More buyers, far fewer choices. That is the whole story in three numbers, and it explains why the good units are gone before some people finish scheduling a second showing. Condos are averaging about 43 days on market now, roughly 38% faster than last year.

Here is the part that surprises people. Mortgage rates ended July near 6.77%, the highest they have been all year. This market is not running on cheap money. It is running on wealth. The AI boom and a stock market up roughly 20% year over year have put real cash in a lot of hands, and a good share of it is landing in San Francisco condos.

The median condo sale price is now $1.25M, up 13.6% year over year. For a segment everyone wrote off two years ago, that is not a recovery anymore. That is appreciation.

One thing I would not do with these numbers is treat them as one market. Yerba Buena and the Western Addition are both running near 28% appreciation. South Beach led the city in transaction volume with barely any price movement. Same city, completely different conversations.

Full July breakdown, neighborhood by neighborhood: https://rises.co/blog/the-san-francisco-condo-market-is-quietly-catching-up

08/14/2026

Every time I show a high-rise along Van Ness, a resident tells me the block comes alive on concert night. Tuesday or Thursday, live music and a food truck on Fulton Plaza. I heard it enough times that I finally sat down and pulled the full calendar for that block between the Main Library and the Asian Art Museum.

Concert night is real. It is also only half the week.

The Heart of the City Farmers Market has run on that same plaza every Wednesday and Sunday, 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., rain or shine, since 1981. It is the only independent, farmer-operated nonprofit market in San Francisco. The concerts run Tuesday and Thursday. The two never land on the same day, so if you only track the music, you are seeing roughly half of what the plaza actually does.

Then there is the piece almost nobody mentions. On Wednesday, twenty feet from the produce stalls, the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library run a used-book Step Sale on the Larkin Street steps, roughly 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. It gets almost no promotion of its own. Plenty of locals walk right past it with a bag of vegetables in hand.

So Wednesday carries the market and the book sale. That makes it the busiest day on the plaza, and it has been the anchor for more than forty years, long before the concert series showed up in 2024.

None of this is a reason to move anywhere. It is just a better read on a block a lot of people already live on. I wrote out the full week, including what is happening to the Sky Rink at 10 South Van Ness: https://rises.co/blog/in-civic-center-wednesday-is-the-day-that-actually-matters

08/13/2026

Russian Hill and Nob Hill sit a few blocks apart, and I spend half my week walking clients between them explaining why two neighbors can feel like different cities. This year handed me the perfect illustration, so I put a field guide together for each hill.

Russian Hill's story this year is Polk Street. Bi-Rite opened its biggest store yet at 2140 Polk, and with Bageletto around the corner and the old favorites still going strong, Swan Oyster Depot, Swensen's since 1948, Saint Frank, you can genuinely do your whole week on foot without coming down the hill. That is the kind of thing that makes people fall in love with a block.

Nob Hill went the other way. The Huntington Hotel reopened in March after six years dark, and with it The Big Four, the Arabella's bar, and the spa are all back at the top of the hill. Grace Cathedral even has a light-and-music show running inside it right now. The whole neighborhood feels like it is turning back toward its summit.

If you have ever wondered which of these hills fits you, these two are a fun read. And if you want the real local version, the stuff that never makes it into a listing, reach out anytime. That part is my favorite.

https://rises.co/blog/whats-new-on-polk-street-a-russian-hill-field-guide-for-summer-2026

https://rises.co/blog/whats-new-on-nob-hill-a-2026-field-guide-for-locals

From the Huntington Hotel's return with The Big Four and Arabella's to Aura at Grace Cathedral and new Polk Street openings, here's what actually changed on Nob Hill in 2026.

08/10/2026

Today my client picked up the keys to 317 Harriet St #18, his first home in San Francisco. The keys are the easy part to celebrate. The story behind them is the good one. 🔑

We started this search months ago. He got pre-approved, and we toured place after place. We wrote on more than one home, and watched a deal slip away before this one. He kept going anyway. That is what it actually takes to buy in San Francisco right now, and he never lost heart.

When the right one finally showed up, a top-floor, tri-level live-work loft in SOMA with double-height ceilings, skylights, and a shared roof deck, he was ready. We moved fast, powered through a tight financing window, and closed it $110k under list.

This is his win. I just had the best seat in the house for it. Congratulations, and welcome home!

https://rises.co/properties/317-harriet-street-18-san-francisco-ca-us-94103-426141381

08/06/2026

Just rented, fully furnished: 719 Larkin St #504.

Leasing isn't our headline business, but it's part of the full-service experience we give our investment clients. If we help you buy an asset, we should be there to make it perform too. So when our investor client needed this furnished corner residence leased, we ran it start to finish.

It's an easy home to love. A fifth-floor corner unit in a boutique 42-unit building, north and south windows with city, downtown, and hill views, open living and kitchen with hardwood floors, stainless appliances, in-unit washer/dryer, and a walk-in closet, all turnkey furnished. Rooftop deck with panoramic views and a barbecue upstairs, steps from Civic Center, Union Square, BART, and Muni.

The response told the whole story of where SF rents are right now. Strong interest, quick showings, and a signed 12-month lease at $3,300/month to a well-qualified tenant.

Own an investment property and want it handled from purchase through performance? That's exactly what we do. Let's talk.

07/28/2026

Two of my favorite conversations lately both start on the same few blocks of San Francisco's waterfront, and they end in completely different places.

The first is with first-time buyers deciding between Mission Bay and SOMA. They are a short walk apart, but they are not the same buy. Mission Bay has been closing right at asking, around a $1.3M median, in about 17 days, so you move fast and you compete. SOMA is the value play next door, roughly a third cheaper near $850k, with more to choose from and a little more room to negotiate. Newer and tighter, or cheaper and roomier, that is really the choice.

The second is with people who already own in Mission Bay and are weighing whether to sell or lease. Selling into a market that clears at asking in a couple of weeks is a clean exit. Leasing can win if you can hold, with rents around $5,500 a month, but the building's HOA rules and the city's rental regulations decide what is even on the table, so that is where we start.

If you are anywhere in either conversation, here are the two guides:

https://rises.co/blog/mission-bay-or-soma-condos-for-first-time-urban-buyers
https://rises.co/blog/sell-or-lease-your-mission-bay-condo-in-todays-market

Deciding whether to sell or lease your Mission Bay condo? Compare market demand, HOA rules, taxes and local costs to choose wisely in 2026.