In this video, Austin Klar—lawyer and real‑estate agent—provides a comprehensive tour of St. Francis Wood, one of San Francisco’s eight historic residence parks. He explains the neighborhood’s origins (1912 master‑planned by the Mason McDuffie Company and landscaped by the Olmsted brothers) and its 2022 listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Klar highlights the unique physical characteristics that set the area apart: fully detached single‑family homes designed by architects such as Julia Morgan and William Merchant, true front‑yard setbacks, wide streets (up to 80 ft) with ample street parking, and large lot sizes (average > 6,200 sq ft, double the city average). He describes the architectural palette (Spanish, Colonial, Georgian, Tudor, modern) and the quiet, park‑like streetscapes with private resident parks. The video outlines lifestyle conveniences—walkable proximity to West Portal’s dining corridor, the nearby Stonestown Galleria redevelopment, easy Muni trolley access to downtown (≈ 30 min), and a 45‑minute commute to the South Bay tech corridor. Climate notes include cooler, foggier conditions and ocean views due to the neighborhood’s southern, coastal location. Demographically, St. Francis Wood houses just over 1,000 residents, reflecting its low density and single‑family‑only zoning. Real‑estate market data shows extreme scarcity (only 18 sales in the past year) with an average price of $3.8 M and $1,240 per square foot, offering better value per square foot compared with Pac Heights and Presidio Heights. Klar concludes by positioning the neighborhood as a suburban‑style retreat within the city and invites viewers to contact him for relocation assistance, linking to additional videos on other residence parks.
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This neighborhood is so beautiful that in 2022, it was put on the National Register of Historic Places. Some of the most beautiful architecture in all of San Francisco. Gorgeous tree-lined, wide open, quiet streets and ocean views. You would never guess that a neighborhood like this is smack in the middle of a major metropolitan area. This is Austin Klar, your lawyer and real estate agent in San Francisco and Marin County. And if you love the hustle and bustle of the city, but don't want to actually live right smack in the middle of an urban environment, then St. Francis Wood needs to be on your radar. And in this video, I'm going to give you a full tour and break right down in the neighborhood. I'm going to show you some of the incredible homes there, talk about what the lifestyle is like there, and of course, I'm going to talk about how much it costs to actually live there. So if you're thinking of relocating to the area, you've got all the information you need in one place. Let's get right to it. St. Francis Wood is on the south side of San Francisco, and it's one of a small subset of very unique neighborhoods in the city, one of 8 master-planned communities called Residence Parks. In 1912, the Mason McDuffie Company purchased 175 acres of land with the hopes of creating one of the best residence parks in the nation, and they hired the Olmsted brothers to design the landscape of this community a year later. These residence parks were specifically designed to give people who lived there a suburban feeling, a park-like feeling in an otherwise very urban environment. There are several of these throughout the city, Jordan Park, Seacliff, Presidio Terrace, and several others. If you want to learn more about all the different residence parks, I've got a completely separate video going over all of them.. I'll link that at the top of the description below. Definitely worth checking out if you're interested. And if you want more videos about different neighborhoods in San Francisco or what life is like in San Francisco, new developments, new events, definitely subscribe to my channel because I make new videos about that stuff every single week. And if you're thinking about relocating and want to learn more about these areas and what neighborhoods might be right for you or wrong for you, definitely reach out to me. I've lived in the Bay Area for over a decade and I've helped numerous clients relocate in the city. from all over the country, and I'd be happy to be a resource for you. I'll put my contact information in the description below as well. Now back to St. Francis Wood, and I'm gonna tell you about how residence parks have some unique characteristics that make real estate there among the most desirable in the entire city. First thing that sets residence parks apart from a lot of other neighborhoods in SF is that the homes are fully detached. It's kind of crazy to think that if you spend $10 million, $20 million, even more than that on a home in San Francisco,— in some of the most expensive places in the city, like Pac Heights or Presidio Heights, you might be sharing walls with your neighbors. Not in St. Francis Wood. The homes in St. Francis Wood are fully detached, so you have actual privacy from your neighbors, which obviously people love. And the design and architecture of these homes are gorgeous. They were designed by some of the most prolific architects in history. Julia Morgan and William Merchant have designed homes here. If you don't know who they are, Google them. You get a really good mix of different types of homes here. Spanish-style, colonial, Georgian, Tudor. There's even some moderns here. Most of the housing stock, well over a century old, and the insides have been more updated than the outsides. Walking around here is incredibly pleasant and peaceful. You see some truly beautiful one-of-a-kind properties in the area. Honestly, it reminds me a lot more of like old-school Los Angeles sometimes, like Pasadena or Hancock Park, more than it does San Francisco. Another unique feature of the homes here and in other residence parks is that they have true front yard setbacks. So In San Francisco, a lot of times when you're driving down the street or walking down the street, you see homes that are built like right up to the sidewalk. Maybe they don't even have driveways. They're literally entrances right on the sidewalk, or there aren't sidewalks at all, and they're built almost up to the street. Not in St. Francis Wood. They're set back from the street and the sidewalks so that you can get true front yards. Some of the houses are gated and their front yards are behind those gates. There's so much more space at homes in St. Francis Wood. It definitely gives a much more suburban and park-like feeling when you're walking around or living in that neighborhood compared to a lot of different neighborhoods in San Francisco. The third distinguishing factor of St. Francis Wood is that it's made up entirely of single-family homes. No multifamily there, no condos, no apartments, no big buildings, no businesses. So no restaurants, no bars, no shops, nothing. It is just single-family homes. So it's definitely one of the most quiet and peaceful neighborhoods in the entire city. You don't have a ton of car traffic and foot traffic going through that neighborhood because unless you live there, there's literally no other reason to be there unless you just want to walk around that neighborhood. And the last unique feature of St. Francis Wood and some of these other residence parks is that the streets are wider than typical streets in San Francisco, sometimes up to 80 feet wide. So parking on the street is really easy, either for you or if you're having a party and have a bunch of friends over. Very, very easy compared to a lot of other neighborhoods in San Francisco where it is really, really hard to find even one or two open street spots. It's also really easy to navigate the streets when you're driving as a result. You, even if you have cars parked on the side of the street, you can still have two-way traffic passing by very easily. It's not like you need to pull over to let oncoming traffic pass. So it's very convenient and very easy to get around. So you might be wondering if there aren't any like shops or restaurants or other things to do in St. Francis Wood, what do people do there? Where do they run errands? What do they do for fun? Where do they go? And there are a few great spots really close by. First, the area's really close to West Portal, which is the neighborhood immediately to the north northwest of St. Francis Wood, and there's a great commercial corridor in West Portal on West Portal Avenue that has some awesome food. There's a Little Original Joe's there, which is a great, you know, takeaway Italian spot. They also have a little market where you can get like fresh pasta and pre-made stuff to go. Little Original Joe's sister restaurant Elena's, which is a Mexican restaurant, is also there. Elena's just opened up within the past year or so, and it's still one of the hardest reservations to get in all of San Francisco. Definitely worth checking out. And there's a ton of other great options there along West Portal Avenue. It's not the biggest stretch of streets, but it is within walking distance of pretty much anywhere you're going to live in St. Francis Wood. So really easy to get to, super convenient. You're also a really short drive away from Stonestown Galleria, which is a mall to the west of St. Francis Wood. Stonestown is actually the site of the largest redevelopment on that side of San Francisco in about the last 50 years. It's going to bring thousands and thousands of new homes, acres and acres of new park spaces. But don't worry, the mall is going to stay and it's going to remain open during construction. So If you're living in St. Francis Wood, you still have access to the mall while all that is going on, and that construction is going to take probably the next 10 to 20 years to get fully done. You're also not that far from downtown San Francisco if you want to go shopping or eat, you know, in or around Union Square, or if you happen to work downtown and need to go to the office, you know, a couple times a week, you're only about 30 minutes by car or bus. You could take the Muni trolley from West Portal Avenue into downtown. Muni trolley. Be there in less than 30 minutes. Super convenient. St. Francis Wood is also great if you work in tech in the South Bay because St. Francis Wood is on the southern side of the city. You can skip a lot of the city traffic to get to work. You know, no traffic, 45-ish minutes to get to Palo Alto, for example. Gonna be more than that, maybe substantially more if there is traffic, but if you're only going down to the South Bay once or twice a week, not bad at all. And living in St. Francis Wood will give you a better balance than if you were just living out in the suburbs in the South Bay. You're not sacrificing any of the great amenities that San Francisco has to offer when you're living in St. Francis Wood, but you still get that suburban environment because it's a residence park. The St. Francis Wood community itself is area-wise pretty large, but from a population perspective, it is really small. A little over 1,000 people live there, and that's largely because it isn't very dense. Remember, there's no multi-unit housing there, and lot sizes there are well above the average lot sizes in San Francisco. Over the past year, the average lot size of homes sold in SF is just shy of 3,000 square feet, but in St. Francis Wood, it's more than double that, over 6,200 square feet. And that's where those big front yards, detached lots come in. Now, unfortunately, one of the downsides of St. Francis Wood is that it does tend to be on the cooler side because of the specific geographic location it's in on that southern side of the city, a little bit closer to the ocean. So you you get that cold and fog front, not quite as intense as like living in the Outer Sunset, for example, but you do have colder weather there on average. It tends to be more windy and a little bit more foggy, but it's not like that all the time. It is gorgeous there a lot of the year. And a plus side of living so close to the ocean is that you get ocean views from a lot of the houses there. So you not only have that beautiful architecture, the super walkable wide open streets, and the amenities nearby, you have ocean views. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] And even though it can be a little bit cooler, it is still a great neighborhood for walkability because those streets are wide open and they're very quiet, not a ton of car traffic. They all have sidewalks. It's really easy to walk around, great area to jog. You see people, you know, walking kids or walking pets pretty much anytime that you visit the area. There are also private parks throughout St. Francis Wood for residents there. So it is really family-friendly, really pet-friendly. Everything about the area truly feels like a retreat away from the city., but you're not actually far from the city at all. You are directly in it. So as I'm sure you could probably guess, with amenities like that and architecture like that and views and all these special unique characteristics that are unique to places like St. Francis Wood, homes are expensive there. And on top of those characteristics, not a lot of homes actually come up for sale every year. Inventory is very limited, and that contributes to that super expensive housing stock as well. In the past year, only 18 homes have sold in St. Francis Wood for an average of about $3.8 million, are about $1,240 a foot. That's a lot of money for sure. But when you think about that price relative to what you get in other even more expensive neighborhoods like Pac Heights and Presidio Heights, where you're paying on average $1,400, $1,500, $1,600 a foot for houses that are probably smaller than what you can get in St. Francis Wood and lots that are probably half the size of what you can get in St. Francis Wood, you start to see the value proposition there. Yeah. You know, the average house in St. Francis Wood, around 3,000 square feet, might cost around $4 million. That same house in Pac Heights or Presidio Heights, probably getting close to $5 million, if not more. So there's definitely good value for your money here, especially when you consider the lifestyle that living in St. Francis Wood offers. Well, there you have it. That's the scoop on the St. Francis Wood neighborhood. It is one of the coolest neighborhoods in San Francisco, and if you're ever in the area or you've never been before, you absolutely have to check it out. And if you're thinking about relocating and want to learn more about St. Francis Wood or other neighborhoods in San Francisco, which ones are right or wrong for you, definitely reach out to me. I've lived in the Bay Area for over a decade and I've helped numerous clients relocate in the city from all over the country. I'd be happy to be a resource for you. I'll put my contact information in the description below. There's also a link you can click to directly book a Zoom with me. And if you're curious about other residence parks, I've got a whole separate video going over all of them in the city. I'll link that up top in the description below as well. Go check it out. I hope you like the video and I'll see you in the next one.
