DISTRICT 5J
District 2 is a grid. District 4 is the opposite — a collection of neighborhoods clustered in between, among and along the hills. Twin Peaks, Mt. Sutro and Mt. Davidson do the sorting here: they decide the views, the fog, the street pattern and, to a surprising degree, the price.
The schematic is deliberately loose — District 4 has no grid to draw, and blocks are sized for legibility rather than acreage. What it gets right is the relationship: everything organizes around the three peaks, Portola threads the district on a diagonal, and Monterey and Ocean carry the southern half.
District 4 has some of the most surprising homes in San Francisco. The styles, the potential views and the insular layout of some neighborhoods — or maybe it’s the fog? — are uniquely San Francisco in that they’re not San Francisco. Perspective and context here are simply different.
Familiar landmarks like Twin Peaks, the downtown skyline or the Bay may not be visible at all, because you’re standing among the very foothills that make up Twin Peaks. Or you’re sitting where the mounts block the view east and west both. That topography does block the eastern views — but it’s also what stops Karl from spilling over into Districts 5 and 9. The rest of the City owes this district a thank-you note it will never write.
The rhythm is quiet at night and busy during the day — people commuting to work, usually somewhere down the Peninsula, or moving children to and from school. Major thoroughfares can be genuinely congested at midday and then turn eerie, wind-swept and foggy after dark.
Roughly nine in ten District 4 sales are single-family homes — 89% of our dataset. Only Districts 2 and 3 compare. And speaking of views, there are two kinds here: the unfamiliar ones that look out over parts of the City you can’t quite name, and the spectacular ones, especially toward the ocean.
This is where the City goes when the focus shifts from going out to staying in.
That pipeline has been filling for years. What’s different in 2026 is that the eastern half of the City got expensive enough, and the supply out here loosened enough, that it emptied into these hills all at once.
| Year | Median | $/sqft | % of list |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | $1,435,000 | $838 | 110.1% |
| 2019 | $1,708,000 | $954 | 111.4% |
| 2021 | $1,950,000 | $1,051 | 115.9% |
| 2022 | $1,925,000 | $1,094 | 109.9% |
| 2023 | $1,705,000 | $945 | 103.7% |
| 2024 | $1,840,000 | $997 | 109.3% |
| 2025 | $1,940,000 | $1,033 | 110.8% |
| 2026 YTD | $2,400,000 | $1,195 | 123.7% |
The correction was real here. Two-thirds of sales over list, a 103.7% median ratio, prices off 11% from the 2022 peak. Anyone who tells you the middle of the City only goes up wasn't paying attention three years ago.
The recovery took two years and then overshot. We're now 40.8% above that trough and 24.7% above the 2022 peak — but on fewer sales: 206 through September 1, against 300 in the same window of 2021.
| Share of house sales | 2016 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Under $1.5M | 53.8% | 9.7% |
| At or above $2M | 15.6% | 68.4% |
| At or above $3M | 2.1% | 25.2% |
| Four or more bedrooms | 34.3% | 47.6% |
| Estate, trust or probate | 5.2% | 20.9% |
And it isn't a rate story. The 30-year fixed sat at 6.71% the week of September 3, 2026, against 6.50% a year earlier.
Median price has outrun median price per sqft
District 4 single-family homes, indexed to 2013 = 100. The gap between the two lines is the mix shift — buyers are purchasing bigger houses, not simply paying more for the same ones.
The 206 single-family homes that closed between January 2 and September 1, 2026. Boundaries are ours, drawn from street and address position — the MLS reports District 4 as a single area. Sales counts vary widely; read the thin ones with appropriate caution.
Miraloma Park and Sunnyside are the market. Between them they are 43% of every house sale in District 4 this year — 89 of 206. When someone quotes you a District 4 median, they are mostly quoting you those two, and neither one looks anything like St. Francis Wood.
Price per sqft ranks almost backwards. Midtown Terrace prints the highest figure in the district at $1,343/sqft while posting the second-lowest median price. Sunnyside prints $1,238. That does not make either the better buy — it means the houses are small. A modest house on a modest lot will always flatter the per-foot math, and out here lot size, grade and view vary far more than the buildings do.
And the competition is inverted. Sunnyside — the least expensive neighborhood in the district — is the most competitive, at 128.8% of list with 97.7% of sales going over. Westwood Park, at $2.76M, is the calmest at 109.1% and a median $200,990 over asking.
The entry-level end of District 4 is where the elbows are.
| Neighborhood | Change | |
|---|---|---|
| Westwood Highlands | +92.2% | |
| West Portal | +89.7% | |
| Westwood Park | +87.8% | |
| Midtown Terrace | +85.0% | |
| Ingleside Terraces | +74.8% | |
| Miraloma Park | +62.7% | |
| Sunnyside | +59.0% | |
| Diamond Heights | +56.5% | |
| Forest Hill & Ext. | +49.9% | |
| Balboa Terrace | +49.3% | |
| St. Francis Wood | +41.0% | |
| Forest Knolls | +36.0% |
The pattern is clean and worth sitting with: the neighborhoods that started cheapest gained the most, and the prestige addresses gained the least. St. Francis Wood is still the grandest housing stock in the district and it is the second-slowest riser on the board. That's not a knock — it's what happens when a market re-rates the middle.
The medians tell you what things cost. They don’t tell you what it’s like to stand on the block. This part does.
No neighborhood drag in the City is more dominated by the MUNI light rail than West Portal. A mix of 1950s-vibe local and national businesses and angled parking spaces — a gold store next to a title company next to the Korean BBQ across the street from the Mexican place that doesn't have an ounce of dust anywhere.
It's one of the rare neighborhoods where you'll see whole families out and about, Norman Rockwell-style. Americana, updated for the 21st century. The houses sit on windy, curvy streets that bound up toward the Inner Parkside — big houses in varying styles, stucco-clad Tudor and Spanish colonial anyone?, clutches of cute redone ones next to each other, and plenty of long-tenured, neglected houses ripe for renovation.
Proximity to Portola, the 280 and MUNI make it popular, as do good schools. $2,700,000 median in 2026 at 123.3% of list in 8 days — tied for the fastest in the district, and up 89.7% since 2013–2015.
The People Long-time owners who never left, families who came for the schools and the tunnel, students riding the M to SF State, Peninsula commuters — and the occasional very-lost-looking tourist.
You live here for room and for your children. That gets you over the isolation, the fog and the occasional bout of existential anxiety. Zero-lot-line houses, late art deco into mid-century, median year built 1956 — the newest stock in the district apart from Diamond Heights.
The redone ones can be very nice, with spectacular views. The ones that haven't been may suffer from dampness, moisture-related structural issues, and materials of questionable modern reputation, asbestos included.
Some homes are on stilts, on curvy streets cut into steep bluffs. Investigate the foundation and the soil — some parcels carry land subsidence risk, and subsidence is typically excluded from standard homeowners policies. Not a reason to walk away. A reason to read the geotechnical section before contingencies come off, not after.
A $1,902,500 median — but at $1,343/sqft, the highest per-foot figure in District 4. The small-house effect in its purest form.
The People Young families trading up out of a condo, UCSF and hospital staff, engineers who wanted a view and a garage, and original owners who've been on the hill since the tract went up.
These snake through the areas between Golden Gate Heights, Portola and Glen Canyon on the backside of Twin Peaks, bounded by steeper valleys. You'll find the traditional Sunset-style two-bedroom home-over-garage — and also big sweeping houses that look like they came straight off the side of a landscape lighting box.
Forest Hill is the top of the district's market: $3,355,000 median at $1,331/sqft, 126.3% of list, 8 days. It also holds the district record — 111 Edgehill Way, 10,121 sqft, $7,800,000 in May 2026.
Forest Knolls needs an asterisk. On the median it looks like the weakest neighborhood here. It isn't — it's two markets sharing a subdistrict: the attached late-1970s townhomes on Clarendon and Galewood Circle at a $1,155,000 median, and the detached mid-century view houses on Oak Park, Christopher, Crestmont and Warren at $1,925,000. 39 Christopher Drive closed at $3,650,000 — 182.7% of list in 7 days. Ask which Forest Knolls you're looking at.
The People Architects and design-minded owners who came for the mid-century stock, physicians near UCSF, multi-generational families in the bigger Forest Hill houses, and long-tenured owners sitting on decades of appreciation.
If this neighborhood had better weather it would rival Pacific Heights and Presidio Heights for value and luxury. As it is, the ‘gated’ neighborhood is the closest you'll get to Pasadena or San Marino in the City — key-access parks, a large fountain or two, single-family homes only, streets named for California cities with a “Saint,” “San” or “Santa” in front.
Many, many styles — essentially anything that looked expensive, or was ever perceived as such, in the 1940s and 1950s. Some renovated in that Peninsula/Orange County, terrazzo-heavy manner; many others awaiting updates after decades in one family. Expect porta-potties and contractor trucks among the Benzes and the leaf-blower crew. That's the sound of a neighborhood turning over.
On the National Register since June 30, 2022, laid out by the Olmsted Brothers as a City Beautiful residence park. Projects trigger CEQA review and new work must be architecturally compatible. It protects the streetscape you're paying for and it lengthens your remodel timeline.
And the dues are real. 86% of sales here since 2020 carry an association fee, at a median of $2,244 and running as high as $7,768 — no other neighborhood is close. Confirm current assessments with the St. Francis Homes Association before you write.
The People Established families on their third house, physicians and attorneys, second-generation owners inheriting the family home — and, increasingly, tech buyers who wanted a lawn and a driveway inside the county line.
Dreamt up in the 1950s and 60s by the people who brought us the Eichler homes, this was the first big project the San Francisco Planning and Urban Renewal Association directed — modern building techniques used to fit much-needed housing into hilly topography instead of simply bulldozing the area, as was done elsewhere in California.
Inside it's definitively mid-century: exposed ceiling joists as a pronounced design element, carpet underfoot, big-pane glass walls, sliding doors to a patio, low-slung stone fireplaces and faux wood panels. Central and removed at the same time — higher elevation, no light rail, and no commercial to speak of beyond the Safeway-anchored strip mall.
Two markets, one neighborhood. The big view houses over Glen Canyon and Noe Valley ran $3,000,000 in 2026 at 116.7% of list. The studios and one-bedrooms on Red Rock Way, Diamond Heights Boulevard and Ora Way ran $636,000 at 98.4% of list, sitting 58.5 days — down 13.6% from their 2018 median.
Eight years, and that segment is worth less than it was. It is also one of the few genuinely negotiable things left on the west side. Read the reserves and the special assessment history on any 1970s building.
The People Mid-century devotees in the houses; first-time buyers, downsizers and long-term renters-turned-owners in the condominiums. Two completely different buyer pools sharing one hilltop.
Heavily residential, branching off Portola and running down curvy lanes of densely packed homes with front-facing garages. Wood floors, assorted architectural details, single-pane windows, older systems. Mostly stucco-clad two-bedroom, one-bath homes in the marina, Spanish and art deco styles — and more of them remodeled every year, with a tell-tale darker, sleeker facade announcing which.
46 sales in 2026, more than any other neighborhood, at a $2,325,000 median, $1,177/sqft, 125.4% of list in 10.5 days.
It also produces the district's surprises at the top: 235 Lansdale at $5,500,000, 199 Brentwood at $4,800,000, 210 Lansdale at $4,625,000 — 140.4% of list in 8 days. Those are not two-bedroom stucco boxes. Miraloma Park has a hidden upper tier on the higher view-side streets, and most buyers don't know it's there until they're bidding against it.
The People Families trading up out of Glen Park and Noe, contractors and tradespeople who bought early and did the work themselves, teachers and City employees, and a steady stream of second-time buyers who wanted a garage and a yard.
Marina-, craftsman- and art deco-style homes built from the 1920s through the 1940s, with the errant Victorian here and there. Going through the same demographic turnover Glen Park and Bernal Heights went through, and some blocks are further along than others. Most common configuration: 2–3 bedrooms, 1–2 baths, garage, roughly 1,200–1,400 sqft.
It feels like an extension of Glen Park — same southern slope of Twin Peaks running down to the 280. Good schools, Sunnyside Playground, and access to the 280, 101 and Glen Park BART. One thing genuinely differentiates houses here: whether you can hear the freeway. Walk the block. Twice.
Sunnyside remains the most affordable neighborhood in District 4 at $1,715,000. It is also the most competitive: 128.8% of list, with 97.7% of sales closing above asking — the highest share anywhere in the district. 201 Gennessee closed at 181.4% of list; 259 Staples at 174.9%.
At $1,238/sqft it prints a higher per-foot figure than St. Francis Wood, on houses with a median 1,556 sqft on the classic 2,500 sqft lot.
The People First-time buyers who ran the numbers on Noe and Bernal and came here instead, young families, long-time Irish and Filipino owners handing houses down, and the occasional flipper who spotted the block before everyone else did.
Westwood Park is a giant racetrack-shaped swath running from Monterey down toward Ocean. Bigger parcels, often detached, usually stucco-clad — though you get the arts-and-crafts California bungalow look too, with big columns and blockier ornamentation.
Most homes have that sprawling feel when you walk in, living areas confined to one larger main level, 2–3 bedrooms and at least two bathrooms. Spanish Mediterranean, art deco and mid-century exteriors, with lots of gumwood and eucalyptus millwork and rich fireplaces. A nice detail: the power lines come in at the back, so the front façade and streetscape stay clean. A Californian vibe rather than a San Francisco one — more of a Six Feet Under, 2000s Los Angeles feel, if that makes sense.
If a remodel is done right the house will be a good one. If it's done poorly it costs far more to undo than you'd expect, because the damage is that much worse.
Westwood Highlands and Sherwood Forest climb the slope above Monterey toward Mt. Davidson — larger parcels, detached, 3–4 bedrooms, often more than one parking space, and a more obvious pride of ownership than most of the City. More removed, though: you'll need a car and you'll use it.
The split is striking. Westwood Highlands: $2,920,000, 121.9% of list, 100% of sales over asking, and the biggest gain in District 4 at +92.2%. Westwood Park: $2,757,809 but at 109.1% and just $200,990 over — the calmest neighborhood here by a wide margin. If you want a big District 4 house without the pile-on, that's the most underrated answer in this Survey.
The People Established families who wanted square footage over walkability, Peninsula commuters, a strong contingent of long-tenured owners, and buyers who lost three times in Miraloma and widened the search.
Did you know there was a big speedway loop that dominated this neighborhood back in the day? It's true — the Ingleside Race Track ran from 1895 to 1905, and Urbano Drive still traces the oval. In the middle, on Entrada Court, sits the 1913 sundial that most San Franciscans have never seen.
Just south of a revitalizing Ocean Avenue. The streets are winding and curvy, anchored by detached, stylized houses mixing craftsman and Mediterranean, feeling more like Orange County than the City — save for the fog. Manicured lawns with cypresses, driveways, pastel-colored homes considerably larger than most of the City.
The neighborhood was socked in a lot of the time, but between climate change and the housing crunch it's getting far more attention, and you're seeing bigger and bolder fixers and flips. The same vibe carries across Ocean and south of St. Francis Wood into Balboa Terrace and Mount Davidson Manor.
A $2,393,114 median at 124.1% of list, on the largest lots in District 4 by a distance — a 5,723 sqft median. It also posted the district's highest ratio this year: 885 Head Street at $2,305,000, 200.4% of list.
The People Multi-generational households, families drawn by lot size, SF State faculty and staff, long-tenured owners, and a growing share of buyers who commute south on the 280 and never go downtown at all.
The bones are usually better than the finishes.
Median District 4 lot: 3,402 sqft across 2025–2026 — meaningfully bigger than District 2’s 2,996, and the whole reason people come here. Sunnyside is the exception at 2,500 sqft flat. Ingleside Terraces and Mount Davidson Manor run 5,723.
89% of 2026 sales reported off-street parking. In this City that’s close to universal, and it’s a District 4 hallmark.
One in five houses now comes out of an estate — 20.9% of 2026 sales, against roughly 4% through most of 2013–2018. That’s the generational handoff arriving in real time, and it’s the main reason supply exists at all in neighborhoods where nothing used to trade.
Unlike District 2, estate sales here do not command a premium — $1,888,500 at 114.9% of list, against $2,200,000 and 115.4% for everything else. Same intensity, lower price point, because the estate inventory skews toward the smaller, older Sunnyside and Miraloma Park houses.
Cash is 21.4% of purchases, up from 8.1% in 2020. And buyers are buying bedrooms — the four-plus-bedroom share went from 32.8% in 2015 to 47.6% in 2026.
A median sale at 123.7% of list does not mean District 4 appreciated 24% off a fair starting point. It means list prices out here are a marketing device, not an opinion of value.
So the correct question is never “is that a good price?” It’s what did the last four comparable houses actually close at, and how many offers were on the table? We build that answer before we write, every time.
It’s the fastest read you’ll get from the photos. A vacant house is much more likely to be a trust or probate sale, and it’s roughly a coin flip that it’s a genuine project. Staged usually means a flip — and then the question becomes which tier.
| Neighborhood | Over asking |
|---|---|
| Forest Hill & Extension | $754,911 |
| St. Francis Wood | $623,451 |
| West Portal | $604,914 |
| Westwood Highlands | $524,987 |
| Diamond Heights | $501,114 |
| Miraloma Park | $485,972 |
| Ingleside Terraces | $447,616 |
| Midtown Terrace | $371,455 |
| Sunnyside | $364,975 |
| Westwood Park | $200,990 |
| District 4, all sales | $443,462 |
Read these in order of certainty. In this City, the gap between filed and built is often a decade.
Balboa Reservoir broke ground. 1,100 units beside City College, 550 of them affordable, led by AvalonBay and BRIDGE Housing. Site work alone runs about 20 months. It lands at Ocean and Phelan — Sunnyside's and Ingleside's shared front doorstep — and more rooftops on Ocean has historically meant more retail on Ocean. This one is real and it's happening.
The Family Zoning Plan passed 7–4, ahead of the January 31, 2026 state deadline, rezoning roughly 96,000 parcels citywide. On the west side the general pattern is two to four additional stories near transit lines and commercial corridors — not the 12-to-65-story allowances reserved for Van Ness, Market and Geary. A Melgar provision exempts buildings with three or more rent-controlled units from demolition.
The Empire Theater, 85 West Portal. Dark since early 2021. First proposal: 64 units, 9 stories.
The Empire filing tripled. DM Development filed for 172 units in 12 stories, combining the Family Zoning upzoning with the state density bonus — 26 below-market-rate units, half reserved for very-low-income households — and is pursuing streamlined approval that may not require public hearings. Supervisor Melgar supports it and has publicly predicted a fight comparable to the Marina Safeway.
A 12-story building at the mouth of the tunnel would be by far the tallest thing in District 4 and would change that block permanently. It would also put 172 households within walking distance of a MUNI station in a neighborhood that has added essentially no housing in fifty years.
Reasonable neighbors are going to land in very different places on that, and both will have a point. Don't buy or not buy on it — but if you're shopping within a few blocks of the station, ask us where it stood the week you wrote.
The exact corridor-by-corridor heights assigned to Ocean, Monterey, West Portal, Taraval and Portola, and whether the single-family residence parks — St. Francis Wood, Westwood Park, Ingleside Terraces — were formally carved out. St. Francis Wood's National Register status likely engages the plan's historic-district provisions, but we have not confirmed that in writing and we're not going to tell you it's settled when it isn't. If your purchase turns on it, we'll pull the parcel-level zoning before you write.
Laguna Honda Hospital, the 62-acre institution in the middle of this district, lost its federal certification in 2022 and regained it in June 2024. In July 2025 regulators denied its request to expand from 649 to 769 beds — the decertification reset its certification date, which bars the triple-occupancy rooms the expansion required. It was operating around 550 patients. The campus is stable, which after 2022 is the headline.
MUNI is the spine and the sorting mechanism. The K Ingleside and M Ocean View run through the Twin Peaks Tunnel into West Portal station; Forest Hill is the oldest subway station west of the Mississippi. Proximity to a station is worth real money; being too close to the surface tracks is worth a discount. SFMTA is working through a roughly $322 million deficit and approved a balanced two-year budget in April 2026 — we’ve seen no line-level detail on the K, M or L, and we won’t repeat rumors.
After the March 16, 2024 collision at West Portal and Ulloa that killed a family of four, SFMTA rebuilt the street: red transit lanes and turn restrictions in October 2024, a pedestrian beacon at Ulloa and Wawona in March 2025, and the final physical work completed that September. The October 15, 2025 announcement added street and station murals, decorative crosswalks, drought-tolerant planters and West Portal’s first Bay Wheels station.
An early proposal for a fuller transit-only conversion was scaled back after the West Portal Merchants Association pushed back.
SFMTA’s July 2026 outcomes report: collisions in a half-mile radius down 60%; serious-injury collisions down from 6.7 a year to 2.7; illegal U-turns at the station down 75%; residents’ sense of safety up from 50% to 70%.
The redesign worked, the merchants got heard, and the street is better than it was. That's a rarer outcome in this City than it should be.
District 4 is the part of San Francisco that most San Franciscans drive over and never into. You give up walkable nightlife and easy downtown access. You get a real house, a garage, a yard, good schools, a straight shot to the Peninsula, and views nobody else has bothered to name.
In 2016 we wrote that this was where people came when the focus went from going out to staying in. That’s still exactly right. What we didn’t fully anticipate was how many people would make that turn at once, or how hard they’d compete for it.
And the most interesting thing in this year’s data is the least glamorous one: the neighborhoods that gained the most are Westwood Highlands, West Portal, Westwood Park and Midtown Terrace — the practical ones, with the space and the garage and the school. Not the mansions. The middle of the City got re-rated as the middle, and that’s the market telling you what it actually values.
There are still hidden gems here. Pockets where nothing has traded in years, houses that have been in one family since they were built, and views every bit as good as neighborhoods charging twice as much.
It just costs more to be right now than it did.
Every number on this page is one. The Sunnyside estate original on its 2,500 sqft lot and the Forest Hill house with the Olmsted-era garden are both “District 4” and have almost nothing to do with each other. What we do is figure out which house you’re actually standing in front of, what it will cost to make it yours, and what it will genuinely take to win it.
Kevin Ho
Team K.Ho · Vanguard Properties
team-kho.com · 415.297.7462 · DRE #01875957
Serving West Portal, Miraloma Park, Sunnyside, St. Francis Wood and all of San Francisco
Sources: San Francisco MLS — 4,946 District 4 sales closed May 2013 through September 1, 2026, comprising 4,403 single-family houses and 543 condominiums, analyzed by Team K.Ho. Houses, condominiums and TICs are three different buyer pools and are never blended; unless a figure is explicitly labeled as condominium data, everything cited is single-family. 2026 figures run January 2 through September 1, 2026. Neighborhood boundaries assigned by Team K.Ho from street and address position and cover 99.4% of sales; several adjacent neighborhoods sharing streets are reported as pairs. Ingleside Terraces straddles the 3/4 line and is also covered in the District 3 chapter. Over-list amounts are median dollars above asking. Rate data: Freddie Mac PMMS, week of September 3, 2026. Policy, development and neighborhood items current as of September 3, 2026; items we could not independently confirm are flagged as such in the text. All photographs © Team K.Ho. Every property, every seller and every buyer is different — nothing here is a substitute for advice on your specific situation.