San Francisco, 1995: the down payment that became generational
Before the first boom, the argument was already “it’s too expensive.”
In 1995 a $250,000 San Francisco house already felt like a stretch, which is the eternal San Francisco condition. The index puts it at $1.26M today, 5.0× the price.
The generational part is the leverage: $50,000 down at that year’s average 7.93% rate leaves about $1.26M of equity, 25× the down payment. The thirty-year loan is paid off by now, so a family that “just bought a house” here in the mid-90s would own it outright.
It is also survivorship in city form: the same logic bought houses in metros that went nowhere. The rankings page prints both ends.
The 1995 San Francisco numbers
House figures are estimates for the whole metro market, from the FHFA index. Not financial advice.