First: The Rent Roll
Before the fire, what was each unit letting for. That is the question, and on a rent-controlled building it does more to set the value than anything about the damage.
The reason is the right to return. A displaced tenant in a covered building must be offered their unit back within 30 days of repairs completing, at their prior rent adjusted only by allowable Rent Board increases. So a buyer restoring the building acquires the existing rents rather than the market rents the restored units could theoretically achieve.
Why Not Just Value It on the Restored Market Rents?
If you have the rent roll, send it. If you do not, we work from what you can tell us and the figure comes back as a range rather than a number.
Second: Where Each Tenancy Stands
Unit by unit. Who was there, who has been offered a return, who has declined in writing, and who has simply gone quiet.
That last category matters more than owners expect. The obligation is to offer the unit back after repairs, so a household nobody has offered anything to has not declined anything. Silence is not a waiver, and a buyer will not treat it as one.
Where any unit is unauthorised, that goes in the same list. It is common across the city, it does not prevent a sale, and it needs disclosing rather than discovering. The statutory position is on our page covering units, tenants and demolition control.
What If I Have Not Documented Any of This?
Third: The Building
Now the ordinary questions. What survived structurally, whether the property is attached and on how many sides, what access exists for any work, and what the restoration costs.
Plus one that is not ordinary: what approvals a plan would need. Reducing the unit count, merging units or stripping the building back far enough to amount to demolition all require Conditional Use authorisation from the Planning Commission, and doing it without that authorisation triggers a 5 year restriction on construction permits for the site.
What Comes Back
A written figure with every line showing: the income the restored building would actually produce given the tenancies, the cost of restoring it, carrying cost across a realistic timeline, the transfer tax at the tier that applies to your price, and margin.
What If the Figure Says Keep the Building?
That is an uncomfortable thing for a buyer to write on their own website and we write it because it is true often enough here to matter. We would rather send a two-line email saying so than spend three weeks negotiating toward a number that never made sense for you.
Then It Is Your Call
No deadline from us. California closes through escrow rather than attorneys on both sides, so a clean file moves quickly. What slows a San Francisco file is the tenancy position, an unauthorised unit nobody has addressed, and occasionally a planning question that should have been asked earlier.
Compare figures if you want to. The rent roll question on our page about how to tell local cash buyers apart sorts a list quickly, and it works on us.
Things That Never Happen
No fee at any stage. No request that you clear the building, restore it or resolve the tenancies first — those are costs and complications we price in. No requirement that your claim be settled. No assignment of the contract to a third party. And nothing asked of you that involves leaving an unauthorised unit off a disclosure, which in this city is a declaration made under penalty of perjury.
Common Questions About the Process
How Long Does It Take?
Address to written figure is usually a few days where you have the rent roll, longer where the tenancy position needs establishing. Escrow to closing is quick once the file is clean.
Do I Need to Be in San Francisco?
No. Out-of-state and overseas owners are common here and remote signing through escrow is routine.
I Do Not Know If My Building Is Rent-Controlled.
Then that is the first thing to establish, with the Rent Board. It changes the arithmetic more than any other single fact about the property.