Episode 2 · Property Types & Supply Dynamics
Outer Richmond Houses: Size, Age, Ownership, Assessed Value
Outer Richmond is the stretch of San Francisco's west side between Park Presidio Boulevard and the ocean, filled with small older houses and a layer of two-unit buildings. This page covers what stands here, the size and age of the houses, and how long owners stay. It also covers why the county's assessed values follow the buy date more than the house.
💡 Key Insights & Takeaways
- The county lists 4,317 residential parcels in Outer Richmond, and 64.5% are houses. That share runs a little high, because the county files some condo units as houses.
- The median house has 1,600 square feet of living area and a lot of 2,996 square feet, and sale listings often show sizes that differ from those county measurements.
- The median house dates from 1924, and 93.3% of houses were built before 1950.
- Buildings with more than one unit are 24.6% of parcels, and 68.1% of those with a unit count are two-unit buildings.
- Houses with a transfer date have been held a median of 21.1 years, which runs about 20 months short because the county's latest transfer is dated 14 February 2025, and 38.0% of houses have no date.
Two same-size Outer Richmond houses are assessed 3.2 times apart: $1,591,811 at the median if the last transfer fell between 2020 and 14 February 2025, $499,440 if it fell between 1987 and 1999, as of 27 October 2026. The year of the last purchase explains the gap. Both are county assessed values rather than sale prices.
At a glance
Outer Richmond house facts, as of 27 October 2026. The county measured the sizes, the assessed values are county estimates and not market value, and the holds cover only houses with a transfer date and run about 20 months short.
| Fact | Figure | Counted (n) |
|---|---|---|
| Residential parcels | 4,317 | 4,317 parcels |
| Median living area, houses | 1,600 square feet | 2,745 houses |
| Median year built, houses | 1924 | 2,782 houses |
| Median recorded hold, houses | 21.1 years | 1,725 houses |
| Median assessed value, houses | $609,890 | 2,784 houses |
How many houses, condos and small buildings are in Outer Richmond?
Houses are the biggest group. As of 27 October 2026 the county lists 4,317 residential parcels in the area, and 2,784 of them, or 64.5%, are filed as houses. A parcel is one line on the county's property list, so each count here is a count of lines and not of homes or people.
The county lists 4,449 parcels in the same area. The other 132 are used for shops, offices, hotels and the like, and this page leaves them out. Counting from 4,449 would overstate the residential group by 3.1%.
Table 1. Outer Richmond residential parcels by type, as of 27 October 2026 (n = 4,317 parcels).
| Kind of parcel | Number of parcels | Share of all residential parcels |
|---|---|---|
| Houses (single family) | 2,784 | 64.5% |
| Buildings with more than one unit (filed by the county as multi-family) | 1,060 | 24.6% |
| Condominiums | 459 | 10.6% |
| Vacant class (directional, 14 parcels) | 14 | 0.3% |
Buildings with more than one unit are small ones. Among the 1,052 with a recorded unit count, 68.1% are two-unit buildings, and the median building has 2 units.
San Francisco's county list files condo units under single-family use and gives them no lot of their own. This page shifts 459 such parcels into the condo group, which makes the condo count a floor. The house count runs slightly high for the same reason, because 27 parcels filed as houses look like condo units that carry their building's lot, 21 of them on lots of 10,000 square feet or more.
Those 14 parcels in the vacant class list no year built and no living area, yet 13 of them carry a building value, so they are not empty lots.
How big are Outer Richmond houses and their lots?
The median Outer Richmond house has 1,600 square feet of living area (n = 2,745 houses) and a lot of 2,996 square feet (n = 2,784 houses), as of 27 October 2026. Lots vary little, since 95.8% of the lots under houses are smaller than 4,000 square feet. Of the houses with a recorded size, 41.5% have living area under 1,500 square feet.
The county measures these sizes itself. For 213 of 740 matched listings, or 28.8%, the listing size and the county size disagree by more than 20%. Keep the two apart when you compare homes.
The median floor-area ratio is 0.59, which is living area divided by lot area. A house at that ratio has living space about three-fifths the size of its lot.
Condos that have a size on file show a median of 1,491 square feet (n = 96). Only 96 of 459 condo parcels, or 20.9%, carry a size at all, so that median covers just those units, not the whole class.
Table 2. Outer Richmond house layout, as of 27 October 2026.
| Trait of the house | Figure | Houses counted (n) |
|---|---|---|
| Houses with one story | 73.4% | 2,777 houses |
| Houses with two or more stories | 26.6% | 2,777 houses |
| Houses with exactly one bathroom | 47.6% | 2,783 houses |
| Houses with three or more bathrooms | 18.7% | 2,783 houses |
| Median bathrooms per house | 2.0 bathrooms | 2,783 houses |
| Houses with the zoning code RH2 | 68.7% | 2,784 houses |
The city gives 68.7% of houses the zoning code RH2, more than any other code. If you want a house on one level, about three in four qualify.
How old are the houses in Outer Richmond?
The median Outer Richmond house dates from 1924, and 93.3% were built before 1950 (n = 2,782 houses), as of 27 October 2026. Only 0.5% date from 2000 or later. Buildings with more than one unit are somewhat newer, with a median year built of 1947 (n = 1,052), and condos are newer still, at 1983 (n = 452).
The 27 look-alike parcels noted above do not change the year-built, living-area or bathroom medians on this page.
Why are two similar Outer Richmond houses assessed 3.2 times apart?
Under Proposition 13 a house's assessed value can rise by only 2% a year until the house changes owners or is newly built, and then it resets. So the year of the last purchase matters more than the house. An assessed value is the county's estimate, not market value and not a sale price.
Take houses with 1,000 to 1,499 square feet of living area and a lot under 4,000 square feet. Houses whose last transfer came in 1987 to 1999 have a median assessed value of $499,440 (n = 235 houses). Houses whose last transfer came in 2020 to 2025 have $1,591,811 (n = 109 houses). That is 3.2 times as much (n = 344 houses).
The later group stops at the newest transfer in the county's list, dated 14 February 2025.
Table 3. Median assessed value of Outer Richmond houses by year of last transfer, as of 27 October 2026. The values are county estimates under Proposition 13, not market value.
| Houses compared | Last transfer 1987 to 1999 | Last transfer 2020 to 2025 | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|
| Same size: 1,000 to 1,499 square feet of living area, lot under 4,000 square feet | $499,440 (n = 235) | $1,591,811 (n = 109) | 3.2 times (n = 344) |
| All houses | $549,614 (n = 594) | $1,750,496 (n = 272) | 3.2 times (n = 866) |
| All houses, per square foot of living area | $344 (n = 587) | $1,066 (n = 266) | 3.1 times (n = 853) |
The per-square-foot row uses the county's living area, which is not the same measure as a listing's.
Most of the assessed value sits in the land. For the median house, land makes up 60.0% of the assessed value (n = 2,784 houses). On 73.5% of houses the land is assessed above the building, and on 11.1% the county's building value is under $50,000. The median house is assessed at $609,890 (n = 2,784) and $368 per square foot of the county's living area (n = 2,745).
Who owns Outer Richmond houses, and for how long?
56.5% of Outer Richmond houses carry the homeowners' exemption (n = 2,784 houses), as of 27 October 2026. The exemption takes $7,000 off the assessed value of a home its owner lives in, and the owner has to file for it, so owner occupancy is at least this high, and the true share may be larger.
Exempt houses have a median assessed value of $536,104 (n = 1,574), against $783,196 (n = 1,210) for houses without the exemption, so exempt houses are assessed 31.5% lower. The gap comes from when each owner bought, not from the exemption. In three of the four transfer periods (1987 to 1999, 2000 to 2009 and 2020 to 2025), exempt and non-exempt houses sit within a few percent of each other. The exception is 2010 to 2019, when exempt houses are assessed 15.5% lower. The assessed values here are county estimates, not market value.
A hold is the number of years from the last recorded transfer to 27 October 2026. Houses that have a transfer date show a median hold of 21.1 years (n = 1,725 houses). Of those houses, 76.5% have been held more than 10 years, 52.2% more than 20 years and 24.6% more than 30 years. Among houses with the exemption the median hold is 24.1 years (n = 943), and among those without it, 15.1 years (n = 782).
Every hold runs about 20 months short. The county's list ends with a transfer dated 14 February 2025, so it shows no transfer in the 12 months before 27 October 2026. The list starts on 8 January 1987, and 38.0% of houses have no transfer date at all, so these holds describe only the houses with a date.
What does a rebuild screen of the county's data show for Outer Richmond?
A rebuild screen scores each house on traits that sometimes go with a rebuild. It rates 550 of 2,784 houses, or 19.8%, as strong matches, as of 27 October 2026. Treat that as a ceiling. Do not read it as a count of houses that will be rebuilt. No parcel in the county's list shows a renovation year, so the screen counts every house as never renovated, and a house that was fully renovated can still score strong.
The screen checks four things on each house: a large land share, a small building value, an early build year and a small footprint on the lot. If you set aside the never-renovated assumption, 3.5% of houses still meet three of those four.
Common questions
Interested in Off-Market Listings in Outer Richmond?
Connect with our advisory desk for private parcel alerts and valuation reports.
Explore Nearby California Communities
Compare market trends, home pricing, and neighborhood analytics across adjacent areas: