Episode 2 · Property Types & Supply Dynamics
Sea Cliff Houses: Age, Size, Tenure and Assessed Value
Sea Cliff is a San Francisco neighborhood where almost every home is a house of its own, and most of those houses are old and large for their lots. This page shows what the houses are made of, how big and how old they are, how long owners keep them, and why their assessed values differ so widely. It also says what the county's data cannot tell you.
💡 Key Insights & Takeaways
- Sea Cliff is mostly houses, because 479 of its 510 residential parcels, or 93.9%, carry a single-family label, and 21 are multi-family parcels.
- The median house has 3,000 square feet of living area and sits on a median lot of 4,072 square feet, and the median floor-area ratio is 0.73.
- Most houses are old, since the median year built is 1922 and 91.4% went up before 1950, yet the median house still has 3 bathrooms.
- The median time since the last transfer is 16.0 years among the 345 houses with a transfer date, but the county's data ends on 11 April 2025, so every hold time is understated.
- A screen flags only 8 houses, or 1.7%, as strong rebuild candidates, and 8 is a ceiling and not a forecast.
On 27 October 2026, the county's assessed value for a Sea Cliff house depends on when it last changed hands. Houses transferred from 1987 to 1999 carry a median of $530 per square foot, and houses transferred since 2020 carry $1,438, which is 2.7 times as much at the same size. Proposition 13 explains the gap.
At a glance
Table: the main measures for Sea Cliff houses, as of 27 October 2026.
| Measure | Value | Counted |
|---|---|---|
| Single-family parcels | 479 | 510 residential parcels |
| Median living area | 3,000 square feet | 468 parcels |
| Median year built | 1922 | 479 parcels |
| Median hold time, understated | 16.0 years | 345 parcels with a transfer date |
| Median assessed value, an assessment and not a price | $2,341,190 | 479 parcels |
What kinds of homes does Sea Cliff have?
Houses make up most of Sea Cliff. The county files 479 of the neighborhood's 510 residential parcels, or 93.9%, under a single-family label on 27 October 2026. A parcel is a lot of land that the county tracks as one unit, so the counts below describe parcels and not households or sales.
Table: Sea Cliff's 510 residential parcels sorted by kind, as of 27 October 2026.
| Kind of parcel | Parcels | Share of 510 residential parcels |
|---|---|---|
| Single-family parcels | 479 | 93.9% |
| Multi-family parcels | 21 | 4.1% |
| Condominium units (a floor) | 10 | 2.0% |
| Vacant land | 0 | 0.0% |
San Francisco's land-use text has no condominium class, so a rule picks them out: a parcel that carries a single-family label but records no lot of its own. The rule finds 10 parcels and moves them out of the single-family count. It misses some condominiums, and it cannot tell a tenancy-in-common from a house, so treat 10 as a floor and not a full count.
Nine of the 479 single-family parcels behave like units. They share one lot, they record no living area, and each has a unit number in its address. Take them out and 470 remain. The page keeps the county's label, so it says single-family parcels and not detached houses.
Another 13 parcels inside the boundary are commercial or mixed-use land. They sit outside the 510 and bring the boundary to 523 parcels.
How big are Sea Cliff houses and their lots?
A median Sea Cliff house offers 3,000 square feet of living area, based on the 468 single-family parcels that record one, on 27 October 2026. A quarter of those houses have 2,443 square feet or less, a quarter have 4,000 or more, and 72.4% reach at least 2,500.
The median lot is 4,072 square feet across all 479 parcels. A quarter of the lots are 3,000 square feet or smaller, a quarter are 5,886 or larger, and 48.2% are under 4,000. Divide living area by lot size and you get the floor-area ratio, which is 0.73 at the median. In plain terms, the houses are large and the lots are compact.
A story count is recorded for 476 parcels. Of those, 95.6% have 2 or more levels and 4.4% have 1.
Only two condominium parcels record a living area. One measures 1,296 square feet and the other 1,297, against 3,000 for the median house. Two parcels is anecdotal, so these are two data points and not the size of a typical Sea Cliff unit.
How old are Sea Cliff houses, and what is inside them?
The median year built is 1922, and 91.4% of Sea Cliff's 479 houses were built before 1950, on 27 October 2026. A quarter date from 1918 or earlier and a quarter from 1930 or later. Only one parcel, or 0.2%, was built in 2000 or later. The newest year built in the county's data is 2001, so this page cannot say that nothing newer stands in Sea Cliff.
Bathrooms are recorded on all 479 parcels. The median house has 3 bathrooms, 68.3% have 3 or more, and 9.2% have 1. Bedrooms are recorded on only 300 parcels, with a median of 4, so that figure describes those 300 and not every house. A recorded 0 means the county did not record a count, and it does not mean a studio.
The county's data gives the bathroom count a house has today. It has no date for remodeling or for adding a bathroom, so this page cannot say whether, when or how many houses were changed.
Why are similar Sea Cliff houses assessed so differently?
Proposition 13 ties a house's assessed value to the year it last changed owners. At a change of ownership or new construction, the county sets a new base value, and after that the value may grow by 2% a year at most. Two houses of one size can therefore carry very different assessments if their owners bought in different years.
Houses that last changed hands from 1987 to 1999 have a median assessed value of $530 per square foot of living area, while houses that changed hands from 2020 to 2025 have $1,438, which is 2.7 times as much, on 27 October 2026. Size does not explain it. The median living area stays between 3,064 and 3,204 square feet across the four groups, and the median lot stays between 3,950 and 4,500. Because these figures are assessments and not prices, the pattern shows when owners bought and says nothing about what any house would sell for.
Table: median assessed value per living square foot, grouped by year of last transfer, Sea Cliff houses, as of 27 October 2026.
| Last transferred | Median assessed value per square foot | Houses |
|---|---|---|
| 1987 to 1999 | $530 | 59 |
| 2000 to 2009 | $1,070 | Within the 336 |
| 2010 to 2019 | $1,276 | Within the 336 |
| 2020 to 2025 | $1,438 | 77 |
| Ratio, 2020 to 2025 against 1987 to 1999 | 2.7 times | 59 and 77 |
| No recorded transfer | $129 | 132 |
The four dated groups hold 336 houses together. The county's data ends on 11 April 2025. A house that sold after that date keeps its previous owner's date, so it falls into an older group than it should.
The 132 undated houses that record a living area are assessed at a median of $129 per square foot, far below every dated group. That fits an early base year, and this page does not say those houses have been held a long time.
The median assessed value of a Sea Cliff house is $2,341,190. A quarter are assessed below $890,184 and a quarter above $4,496,294. The median assessed value per square foot is $862, which measures an assessment and is not a price per square foot.
Land accounts for 58.0% of the median house's assessed value. For 63.7% of houses, or 305 of 479, the county puts more of the assessed total on the land than on the building, and for 17.3% land is more than 70% of the total. The county divides one assessed total between land and building. That division is a tax allocation and not a market price for land, and it does not measure how scarce land is.
How long do owners keep Sea Cliff houses?
Among the 345 Sea Cliff houses with a transfer date, the median time since the last transfer is 16.0 years on 27 October 2026. Call this the hold time, which counts how many years have passed since the house was last transferred. The county's data ends on 11 April 2025, which is 18.5 months earlier, so each hold time is understated by about that much. The silence after that date reflects where the data ends and not a pause in sales.
Of those 345 houses, 131 (38.0%) last changed hands 20 or more years ago, and 59 (17.1%) did so 30 or more years ago. Another 40 (11.6%) were transferred during the 5 years before 27 October 2026, a share that reads low because later sales are missing. The data shows 1 house with a transfer since 27 October 2024 and none since 27 July 2026, which reflects the end of the data and not a lack of sales.
The other 134 houses, or 28.0% of the 479, have no transfer date at all, and the earliest date the data holds is 20 May 1987. This page leaves them out of every hold figure. With their history unknown, the share held 20 or more years could be anywhere from 27.4% to 55.3% across all 479 houses.
The homeowners exemption cuts the property tax on a primary home, and the owner has to claim it. A total of 244 of the 479 houses, or 50.9%, carry it. That is the nearest thing to an occupancy count in the data, but no exemption does not mean a house is rented.
Table: hold times run about 18.5 months short in this split of Sea Cliff houses by exemption, as of 27 October 2026.
| Exemption status | Houses | Median hold time | Median assessed value |
|---|---|---|---|
| With the exemption | 244 | 22.3 years (151 houses) | $1,414,759 |
| Without the exemption | 235 | 12.9 years (194 houses) | $3,675,263 |
Houses that carry the exemption were last transferred longer ago, and houses without it have a median assessed value 2.6 times as high. Proposition 13 explains most of that, because assessed value follows the year of purchase and not the exemption. Owners' names are not in the county's data, so nothing here counts houses held by companies, trusts or people living elsewhere.
How many Sea Cliff houses could be rebuilt?
No one can say from the county's data, but a screen flags 8 Sea Cliff houses (1.7%) as strong rebuild candidates and 80 more as moderate, on 27 October 2026. Together that is 18.4% of the 479 houses. Both counts are ceilings and not forecasts, and 8 is a small enough count to be directional only.
The screen tests the 468 houses with a recorded living area on three conditions: a floor-area ratio of 0.60 or less, an assessed value of $327 or less per square foot, and a year built before 1920. Meeting all three makes a house strong, and meeting two makes it moderate.
Both counts are upper bounds. The data has no effective year built (the year of major remodeling), which means the screen cannot exclude a house that was already rebuilt or remodeled. The assessed value condition also partly measures a long hold, because a low assessed value goes with an early purchase.
A quarter of Sea Cliff houses have a floor-area ratio of 0.60 or less, so even the least built-up lots hold a lot of floor area. The most common zoning code is RH1D, on 75.8% of houses, but a code is only a label and is silent on what a project could build. The county files 0 vacant parcels.
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