Golden Gate Heights is second-hottest neighborhood in the U.S., says real estate site

Earlier this year the real estate site Redfin predicted that Oakland’s Bushrod neighborhood would soon be the hottest neighborhood in America. Now it’s giving similar laurels to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Heights.

The site is taking a victory lap on its earlier prediction, pointing out that almost 78 percent of Bushrod listings on Redfin sold over asking in the first half of 2017, by an average of more than 120 percent.

Redfin’s projections on these rankings are subjective, because the site calculates a “hot” neighborhood based on results from its own home value estimate calculator tool—which, as the name implies, provides only an estimate, and some realtors call those calculations dodgy at best.

         By Mariusz S. Jurgielewicz

“On the house I was selling, some of the sites had my house at almost $60,000 to $70,000 more than I was selling it for and some of them had it for almost $100,000 less,” one agent complained to NerdWallet in 2015.

So the company feels some vindication that Bushrod sales are indeed up (on Redfin at least) more than in the surrounding Oakland area.

Although it’s worth noting that a couple of other areas cited as “hot” earlier this year—San Jose’s Serra neighborhood and the Seattle suburb of Woodridge, for example—are up less than the community average, or even down altogether.

With that in mind, Redfin now predicts that San Francisco’s Golden Gate Heights will be the second hottest neighborhood in the country in the last half of 2017.

Golden Gate Heights is the relatively small area north of Forest Hill west of Forest Knoll, largely defined by Larsen Peak at the south and Grandview Park at the north. As the San Francisco Chronicle notes, it’s usually just considered part of the Inner Sunset, but is a fairly distinct sub-neighborhood in and of itself.

The site cites its own SF realtor Miriam Westberg saying it “may be a slightly longer walk” from the Heights to retail and dining destinations but that “homes are often more affordable and can boast great views of the Marin Headlands and the Golden Gate Bridge.”

Time will tell if Redfin’s prognostications pay off or go the way of Serra, but in the meantime it’s nice to at least appreciate putting a little attention on an overlooked enclave.

• Hottest Neighborhoods [Redfin]
• Hot or Not? [Redfin]
• Three Neighborhoods Predicted To Be Hot [Chronicle]
• Don’t Rely On Home Value Estimates [NerdWallet]