Episode 2 · Property Types & Supply Dynamics
West Portal Housing Stock: Age, Size, Assessments
West Portal is known as a neighborhood of houses, and this page shows how alike they are, close in size, on small parcels of similar ground, and built in one burst early in the last century. What sets one house apart from another is the work done on it since, and what sets one assessed value apart is mostly the year the owner bought.
💡 Key Insights & Takeaways
- Of 941 residential parcels, 831 are single-family houses, which is 88.3%, and none is vacant land.
- The median house was built in 1925, and 69.3% of the houses went up in the 1920s alone.
- The median house has 1,889 square feet of living area and sits on a 3,300-square-foot parcel.
- The median house has 2 bathrooms, but 40.0% are recorded with one, and so are 29.3% of houses of 1,500 square feet or more.
- Among houses with a recorded transfer, the median owner has held for 18.2 years. That figure runs short, because the record stops in November 2024.
If you are working out what a West Portal house will cost to hold, start here: as of 20 September 2026, houses with the homeowners' exemption are assessed at a median $687,380 and houses without it at $1,223,663. The median house in each group is the same size. The purchase year makes the gap.
At a glance
Caption: the headline figures for West Portal's residential parcels, as of 20 September 2026.
| Measure | Value | As of |
|---|---|---|
| Residential parcels | 941 | 2026-09-20 |
| Single-family houses | 831 (88.3%) | 2026-09-20 |
| Median year built, houses | 1925 | 2026-09-20 |
| Median living area, houses | 1,889 sq ft | 2026-09-20 |
| Houses carrying the homeowners' exemption | 60.3% | 2026-09-20 |
What kind of homes are in West Portal?
West Portal is almost entirely houses. Of 941 residential parcels, 831 are single-family houses, which is 88.3%. There are 86 condominium units at 9.1% and 24 multi-family buildings at 2.6%, and there is no vacant residential land at all. The 104 shop, office and mixed-use parcels sit outside these counts, so they cover homes only.
If the house search runs thin, there is very little else here to fall back on. A buyer who wants West Portal and not a house has 86 condominium units to choose from, and the median one was built in 1979, about half a century after the houses around it.
One note on the count. San Francisco's assessment data has no condominium class, so it records condominium units as single-family homes. We moved 86 of them into their own group, which is why the recorded single-family count is higher than the one here.
How big are West Portal houses and lots?
The median house has 1,889 square feet of living area, and 60.5% of houses fall between 1,500 and 2,499 square feet. The median house sits on a 3,300-square-foot parcel, and 78.3% of the parcels are smaller than 4,000 square feet. The parcels are small and alike, so you are choosing between houses rather than between very different pieces of ground.
The median house already covers 0.56 of its parcel in living area. That ratio, called the floor-area ratio, is the house's floor space divided by the parcel's area, and at 0.56 most houses already use a good share of what they sit on.
Caption: how West Portal's single-family houses are laid out, as of 20 September 2026.
| Layout measure | Share of houses | Houses counted |
|---|---|---|
| Recorded with one bathroom | 40.0% | 829 |
| One bathroom, among houses of 1,500 sq ft or more | 29.3% | 634 |
| Three or more bathrooms | 25.1% | 829 |
| One storey | 51.9% | 825 |
| Two or more storeys | 48.1% | 825 |
The median house has 2 bathrooms, but four in ten are recorded with one, and so are 29.3% of houses of 1,500 square feet or more. Size is a weak guide to the bathroom count here, so check the count on every house you shortlist rather than filtering on square footage. The assessment data counts bathrooms its own way and often disagrees with a listing's count, so treat these shares as a record figure and not a specification.
The zoning is just as uniform. 82.6% of house parcels carry the RH-1(D) designation, San Francisco's code for detached single-family houses. The code is reported as recorded, and it is not a statement of what you would be allowed to build.
How old are West Portal houses?
The median house was built in 1925. 69.3% of the houses went up in the 1920s alone, 94.8% were built before 1950, and only 1.0% were built in 2000 or later.
That makes West Portal a set of century-old houses of almost the same age. What separates one from the next is what has been done to it since, and the data does not carry that history: no renovation date is recorded for any house. Ask for the permit history and put the foundation, the wiring and the plumbing on the inspection, because the build year will not tell you.
Why do two matched West Portal houses carry such different assessments?
Proposition 13 sets a house's assessed value when it is bought, then lets it rise by no more than two percent a year. So the assessment mostly records when a house last changed hands, not what it is.
Caption: West Portal single-family houses with and without the homeowners' exemption, as of 20 September 2026.
| With the exemption | Without it | |
|---|---|---|
| Median assessed value | $687,380 (n 501) | $1,223,663 (n 330) |
| Median living area | 1,892 sq ft | 1,886 sq ft |
| Median parcel area | 3,301 sq ft | 3,300 sq ft |
| Median years since last recorded transfer | 23.1 (n 323 dated) | 12.8 (n 227 dated) |
The two groups are the same house on the same size of parcel, yet the exempt group is assessed at 0.56 of the other. The only thing that differs is how long the owner has held it. The exempt owners have held a median 23.1 years and the others 12.8.
The same pattern shows up by purchase date. Houses with no recorded transfer since 1987 carry a median assessment of $188,698, and houses last bought from 2020 to 2024 carry $2,122,415, more than eleven times as much. Across all 831 houses the median assessed value is $816,428, and the median assessment per square foot of living area is $434.
None of these numbers is a market value. An assessed value is what the tax is based on, not what a house would sell for. For a buyer the lesson is simple: your assessment will reset to your own purchase, so neither the seller's figure nor the neighbour's tells you what your bill will be. Tax amounts are not recorded in the assessment data, so this page gives no tax figure.
Is it the land or the house you are paying for in West Portal?
Mostly the land, but not by a wide margin. Land makes up a median 58.8% of a house's assessed value, and it outweighs the building on 66.2% of houses. Because assessments are set at purchase, that share tracks the year a house was bought about as closely as the parcel itself, so read it as a record of timing more than as a verdict on the building.
How long do West Portal owners hold, and do they live in their homes?
Owners here hold for a long time. Among houses with a recorded transfer, the median owner has held for 18.2 years, 46.0% have held 20 years or more and 21.8% have held 30 years or more. Another 33.8% of houses show no recorded transfer since 1987 at all, which is as far back as the record goes. Only 8.4% of the dated houses changed hands in the record's last five years.
Every one of those hold figures runs short. The most recent recorded transfer is dated November 2024, 22 months before this page's reference date, so each hold is understated by about that gap and no sale after that date appears. The undated third is left out of the hold math, so the median hold and the 20- and 30-year shares are floors, not full counts.
60.3% of houses carry California's homeowners' exemption, which marks an owner's main home and is the closest thing to an occupancy count the record gives. Among condominium units the share is 47.7%, so the houses are the more owner-lived part of the stock. A house without the exemption may be rented, empty, newly bought or simply not filed, so no investor share can be read from it.
Is there room to rebuild in West Portal?
Very little. On the four teardown markers the data can actually measure, only 1.9% of houses show three or more. A wider screen that also counts every house as never renovated flags 18.1%, but that 18.1% is an upper bound driven by missing data, because no house carries a renovation date. Most of the low building values that drive the wider screen are old purchase dates under Proposition 13, not tired buildings. There is no vacant residential land, so new building here means replacing something.
Common questions
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