San Francisco Real Estate Listings, San Francisco Homes for Sale, San Francisco Condos, California, CA

San Francisco Real Estate Overview

The City and County of San Francisco (2004 estimated population 744,230) is the fourth-largest city in the U.S. state of California and the fourteenth largest in the United States.

A consolidated city-county, mainland San Francisco is located on the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula. Insular San Francisco includes several islands in the San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Strait, notably Alcatraz, Treasure Island, and the Farallon Islands 27 miles offshore in the Pacific Ocean and also most of the privately owned Red Rock Island near the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.

The city of San Francisco is a focal point of the San Francisco Bay Area, and forms part of the greater San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland Combined Statistical Area (CSA), whose population is over 7 million. U.S. census data show that San Francisco has the second highest population density of any major U.S. city, behind New York City.

San Francisco has unique characteristics when compared to other major cities in the U.S., including its steep rolling hills, an eclectic mix of architecture including both Victorian style houses and modern skyscrapers, and natural beauty, surrounded by the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay. San Francisco's famous hallmarks include its cable cars and the Golden Gate Bridge, which are recognized worldwide.

San Francisco is famous for its hills. A "hill" in San Francisco is an elevation that is over 100 ft (30 m). There are a total of 42 hills within city limits. Some of these hills are neighborhoods such as Nob Hill, Pacific Heights, Russian Hill, and Telegraph Hill, while some of these hills are public parks and open space such as Twin Peaks, Mount Sutro, Mount Davidson, and Buena Vista Park.

Entire neighborhoods of the city such as the Marina and Hunters Point were created and sit on man made landfill (made up of mud, sand, and rubble from past earthquakes) and other reclamation projects over the San Francisco Bay when flatland became scarce. Such land is extremely unstable during earthquakes; the resultant liquefaction during earthquakes causes extensive damage to property built upon it, as was evidenced in the Marina district during the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake.

The most impressive example of an "infill neighborhood" is Treasure Island. It was constructed from material dredged from the bay as well as material resulting from tunnelling through Yerba Buena Island in the construction of the Bay Bridge. It was a site for the 1939 San Francisco World's Fair, and it was originally envisioned that Treasure Island would serve as the site for San Francisco's municipal airport, but it became a Navy base at the start of World War II. In 1997 Treasure Island was returned to the city and it provides a unique vantage point to view the San Francisco skyline.

Neighborhoods in San Francisco

San Francisco has a Japantown and Chinatown; both are among the largest and oldest in the US. It also boasts a budding Vietnamese community in the Tenderloin neighborhood, Filipinos in Crocker-Amazon and South of Market, an Italian community in North Beach, a French Quarter, and Irish, Chinese, and Russian communities in the Richmond District.

The predominantly Hispanic Mission District is the oldest neighborhood in the city, being the site of Mission Dolores, established in 1776. Russian Hill is a residential neighborhood most famous for Lombard Street "the crookedest street in the world". Haight-Ashbury gained prominence during the "Summer of Love" 1960s for its counter-culture and concentration of hippies. The Castro neighborhood has the world's highest concentration of homosexuals. In addition to the predominantly gay Castro, there are significant concentrations of gays in Noe Valley, Diamond Heights, Bernal Heights, Potrero Hill, Haight-Ashbury, Hayes Valley, and SOMA.

Not to be missed are the beautiful homes and area of the city known as Pacific Heights as well as victorians in the Haight-Ashbury and the "painted ladies" of Alamo Square and the Castro. San Francisco is also famous for its Cable cars (narrow gauge, 3'6" (1067 mm)), which were designed to carry residents up those steep hills. It is still possible to take a cable car ride up and down Nob and Russian Hills. Along with New Orleans' streetcars, San Francisco's cable cars are one of only two mobile United States National Monuments. Coit Tower, a notable landmark dedicated to San Francisco's firefighters, is located at the top of Telegraph Hill.

Current demographic and land use expansion is concentrated in the east and south. The South of Market neighborhood was an epicenter of the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. A new neighborhood, Mission Bay, is being redeveloped from an industrial area at the far eastern end of South of Market. The cornerstones of this development are the SBC Park baseball stadium and an extension of the University of California, San Francisco medical school.

Full list of San Francisco Neighborhoods: Bayview-Hunters Point, Bernal Heights, Chinatown, Cow Hollow, Excelsior, Fisherman’s Wharf, Golden Gate Park, Ingleside, Ingleside Terrace, Inner Sunset, Laurel Heights, Monster Park, Nob Hill, Noe Valley, Northbeach, Outer Richmond, Pacific Heights, Parkside, Potrero Hill, Russian Hill, Sea Cliff, SoMa, South Beach, St. Francis Woods, Stonestown, The Haight, The Marina, The Mission, Union Square, Visitacion Valley, West Portal.

San Francisco Nightlife

San Francisco also has varied nightlife ranging from bars to lounges to clubs. Major areas of nightlife in San Francisco are North Beach, the Mission District, the Marina, the Castro, and South of Market. San Francisco boasts legendary pop music venues such as The Fillmore and The Warfield.

The San Francisco real estate links at the top of the page will help you find San Francisco homes for sale, San Francisco real estate agents and San Francisco home values. Get access to San Francisco real estate listings and San Francisco home listings, including the San Francisco MLS, San Francisco REALTORS, San Francisco new homes, San Francisco condos, San Francisco condominiums, San Francisco property, San Francisco land, San Francisco acreage and San Francisco foreclosures. These free real estate services feature all San Francisco cities, San Francisco towns, San Francisco suburbs and San Francisco neighborhoods. The websites linked above also contain information on San Francisco home selling, San Francisco home buying, San Francisco mortgages, San Francisco insurance, San Francisco movers and other San Francisco realty services for anyone looking to sell a home or buy a home in San Francisco, California, CA.

Also: City of San Francisco, California Official Website