Why Waiting for the IPO Wave Could Cost You the Market You’re Already In
I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately — from buyers and sellers alike — about what the upcoming wave of AI IPOs means for the San Francisco real estate market.
It’s a fair question. We’re talking about what could be two of the three largest IPOs in American history. Anthropic, currently valued at nearly $1 trillion, has filed its S-1. OpenAI is targeting a September debut. Together, San Francisco’s chief economist projects these listings could generate more than $10 billion for the city in the coming months. Valueaddvc
So the real question everyone is asking is, Should sellers wait?
My answer: probably not. And here’s why.
The money is already in the market.
In economics, there’s something called the wealth effect, which kicks in the moment people expect to be wealthy. The anticipation of wealth changes behavior just as powerfully as wealth itself. People spend, upgrade, and invest based on what they expect to have, not just what they currently hold.
Software engineers with significant equity positions are already buying homes, already upgrading, already competing — based on anticipated liquidity, not realized gains. And thanks to secondary markets and stock-backed lending, many employees at AI companies have already converted paper wealth into purchasing power before the anticipated IPO wave.
The buyers you’re waiting for? Many of them are already active. Right now.
You can see it in the numbers. Sales of homes over $5 million in San Francisco have skyrocketed 69% when comparing Q1 2025 to Q1 2026. The median single-family home price has climbed to $2.1 million, with condos posting 15.5% annual appreciation. San Francisco led all major U.S. markets in April price growth by a wide margin. This isn’t post-IPO momentum; these are buyers who already expect to be wealthy, acting on it now — and it’s already led to historic sales in the San Francisco real estate market. MarketWiseHomes.com
Why an ipo wave moves markets less than you’d think.
History is instructive here. The Google IPO, the Facebook IPO, the Uber and Lyft and Airbnb wave — none of them produced the dramatic immediate housing spike that people anticipated. That’s because wealth rarely concentrates and deploys in one clean moment. It trickles in over time, through secondary sales, RSU vesting schedules, and stock-collateralized borrowing. The IPO is the headline. The demand was already happening.
What moves San Francisco real estate more than any single IPO is broad equity market wealth. Anthropic and OpenAI each have just a few thousand employees in San Francisco. That’s certainly meaningful, but not a mass market event on its own. The NASDAQ rally, the AI-driven run-up in tech compensation, the RSU vesting across tens of thousands of employees at companies you’ve never heard of — that’s what’s been driving prices. Acquinox Capital
Waiting introduces real risk.
The assumption behind waiting is that the market will continue to get hotter — especially with a big IPO wave around the corner. Maybe they will. But markets can turn without warning. This was evident as recently as 2022, when interest rates spiked towards the end of the year. The feeding frenzy of the previous two pandemic years left sellers who were waiting for the “perfect” moment suddenly fishing in an empty pond.
The same forces supporting today’s buyer confidence can reverse. For example, Mark Zuckerberg recently acknowledged that Meta “miscalculated on the timing” of its AI reorganization, and that the trajectory of its agentic development “hasn’t really accelerated in the way that we expected.” That’s a notable admission from a company betting $125–$145 billion on AI this year alone. Meanwhile, regulatory scrutiny is intensifying: 71% of Americans now believe AI is moving too fast, antitrust pressure on the major AI players is building, and the SEC has made AI-related disclosures a top examination priority for 2026. Any of these forces, whether a regulatory action, a sentiment shift, or a missed milestone, could cool the momentum quickly.
The bottom line for San Francisco sellers.
If you own a home in San Francisco right now, you are sitting at or near the peak of one of the strongest seller’s markets this city has seen in a generation. That’s before a couple of the largest and most anticipated IPOs in history have even occurred. Prices are at record levels. Inventory is historically tight. Buyers are competing hard. And rates have pulled back meaningfully from a year ago.
The forthcoming IPO wave may generate more headlines. But the window you’re in right now is already extraordinary.
If you’re thinking about selling in 2026 and want to talk through the timing, I’d love to have that conversation. You can reach out to me directly at: tony.knott@compass.com or 805-451-3262.
