Cheapest Houses in San Francisco: Where Under $1M Still Buys

A fire-gutted house with squatters inside and a hole in the roof just drew multiple offers at $450,000. That is what the cheapest house in San Francisco looks like in 2026. For anything you could actually move into, the cheapest houses in San Francisco sit in a short list of southeast and southwest neighborhoods, and only 9 of the 88 neighborhoods we price have a typical home price under $1 million.

Below is the full list, with safety and school scores next to each price, because the cheapest block and the best deal are rarely the same thing.

The $450,000 house that started this

The San Francisco Standard's Emily Landes reported on September 29 that a house on Farallones Street in the Ingleside area, badly damaged in a 2023 fire and still occupied by squatters, went into contract after drawing multiple offers at a $450,000 asking price. The listing agent told buyers not to go inside. They bid anyway.

That price is about 60 percent below the $1.13 million typical home price in neighboring Oceanview, and it is not a real benchmark for anyone who needs a place to live. Whoever closes has to get the occupants out legally, then rebuild most of a house. Bidders were buying a lot, a shell and a headache, and pricing all three. So what does a habitable house cost in the cheapest parts of the city?

San Francisco's 16 cheapest neighborhoods, ranked

The chart below ranks the 16 lowest-priced neighborhoods we track, with each one's safety score. Red bars are the ones that clear 4.0 out of 5 on safety.

Read the top of that chart carefully. The Tenderloin, Van Ness/Civic Center, South of Market and Downtown are cheap because almost everything that sells there is a condo, often a small one. If you are searching for a house with a yard, those four are not your list.

The house list starts in the southeast. Bayview, the neighborhood along Third Street and the T line south of Islais Creek, has a typical price of $915,567. Bayview Heights, the slope above it toward Candlestick, sits at $974,881. And Little Hollywood, the small pocket of older single-family homes tucked between Bayshore Boulevard and the 101 near the Brisbane line, comes in at $986,974.

Price, safety and schools side by side

Here is the same group with the other scores that matter when you are choosing a block. All figures are from our neighborhood pages in September 2026.

Two patterns stand out. First, the southwest corner near the Daly City line (Ingleside Heights, Oceanview, Crocker Amazon and Outer Mission) is where the price gets you the most safety. Four neighborhoods score 4.3 or better on safety for less than $1.3 million. In Bayview and Bayview Heights you save roughly $100,000 to $200,000 against that pocket, but safety scores drop into the 2s.

Second, school scores are low almost everywhere on this list. Ingleside Heights leads at 3.0 out of 5. That is the real trade-off of buying cheap in San Francisco, and it is worth pulling up the specific assigned school before you fall for a house.

Where prices are softening

This is the part most "cheap neighborhoods" lists skip. Our citywide price is up about 9 percent over the past 12 months, but three of the cheap house neighborhoods went the other way. Little Hollywood is down 8.3 percent, Oceanview is down 3.4 percent and Bayview Heights is down 2.3 percent.

Falling prices are not automatically a bargain. Small neighborhoods like Little Hollywood have few sales, so a handful of fixer sales can pull the number around. But a flat or falling market is where buyers get to ask for repairs, credits and time, which is exactly what you want when the house needs work.

What $1 million does and does not buy here

For about $1 million in these neighborhoods you are usually looking at an older detached or row house, often with a garage at street level and living space above, and often needing updates. What it does not buy is a short walk to a busy commercial strip. Every neighborhood in the table scores below 3 out of 5 on amenities except Crocker Amazon, at 3.3.

The upside is that these are real houses on real lots in a city where the middle neighborhood costs about $1.69 million. And the cheapest house in San Francisco, the Farallones Street wreck included, keeps attracting investors for a reason. The land is worth something even when the building is not.

Cheapest houses in San Francisco: common questions

What is the cheapest neighborhood to buy a house in San Francisco? Among neighborhoods made up mostly of houses, Bayview has the lowest typical price, about $915,600 as of September 2026. The Tenderloin is cheaper overall at $499,159, but nearly everything sold there is a condo.

Can you still buy a house in San Francisco for under $1 million? Yes, mainly in Bayview, Bayview Heights, Little Hollywood and parts of Visitacion Valley and Silver Terrace, where typical prices sit near or just under $1 million. Expect older homes that need some work.

What is the cheapest safe neighborhood in San Francisco? Little Hollywood is the only neighborhood under $1 million that scores 4.0 or better on safety. Just above $1 million, Ingleside Heights ($1,076,500) scores 4.4. Safety scores are relative context, not a guarantee.

Why did a fire-damaged San Francisco house get multiple offers? Because even a gutted house sits on buildable city land. At $450,000, buyers were paying well under half of what nearby homes sell for and planning to rebuild.

How we built this list

Houseberry's typical home price is built from recent sales inside each neighborhood's boundary, across all property types, and is designed so that one mansion or one teardown cannot swing it. We ranked all 88 San Francisco neighborhoods with their own price figure and left out four that borrow the citywide number (Presidio, Golden Gate Park, Sherwood Forest and Lincoln Park). Safety, school and amenity scores are our 0 to 5 neighborhood scores, and the 12-month change comes from each neighborhood page.

If you want to run the list yourself, sort every neighborhood on our most affordable San Francisco neighborhoods ranking, or compare them block by block on the San Francisco neighborhood map. Looking at the neighborhood before the house is the whole idea behind what we built.

Sources

• Emily Landes, The San Francisco Standard, Squatters, a burned roof, and multiple offers: A $450K SF house that's literally a steal, September 29, 2026
• Houseberry, Best neighborhoods in San Francisco and neighborhood pages, prices and scores as of September 2026
• Houseberry, Most affordable neighborhoods in San Francisco