Who Buys Fire Damaged Buildings in San Francisco

The Question: "What Rents Are You Assuming on the Restored Units?"

Ask it first. Not what they will pay, not how fast they can close — what rents their number is built on.

A buyer who works this city answers with your existing rents, or explains specifically why they think particular units will come back at market. They know that a rent-controlled tenant displaced by fire has a right to be offered the unit back within 30 days of repairs completing, at the prior rent adjusted only by allowable increases. They price the tenancies they are inheriting.

A buyer working from a general model answers with market rents, because everywhere else in the country that is the correct answer. Their number will be higher than the local buyers' and it will not survive their own diligence.

Why Does the Rent Assumption Matter More Than the Price?

The Follow-Up: "What Approvals Does Your Plan Need?"

Second question, and it goes to the planning side.

A buyer intending to reduce the unit count, merge units, or strip the building back far enough that the work amounts to demolition needs Conditional Use authorisation from the Planning Commission under section 317. That is a hearing with a timeline, not a permit counter transaction. And carrying out work amounting to unlawful demolition triggers a 5 year restriction on construction permits for the site.

Somebody who has done this here answers in those terms. Somebody who has not will describe a gut renovation as though it were a building permit question.

Is the Planning Risk Mine or the Buyer's?

Who Is Actually Calling

San Francisco multi-unit specialists. They buy tenanted buildings routinely, they underwrite on actual rents, and they know the planning constraints because they work inside them. This is the group most likely to give you a number that holds.

Cash acquirers. Capital held to buy in damaged condition, title in their own name, their own timetable. Usually fastest, rarely highest.

Peninsula and East Bay buyers. Competent in markets without rent control on this stock, and working from models that assume market rents on restoration. The commonest source of an offer that gets revised.

Owner-users on smaller buildings. Buying a two-unit or single-family property to restore and occupy. They frequently offer well and complete less often, because financing a fire-damaged building is difficult.

Contract assigners. They sign to buy and sell the contract on before closing. The question is whether the party will own your building or introduce somebody who will.

What You Should Document Before Any Offer

This is worth more here than anywhere else we work, because the information is worth money rather than merely useful.

The rent roll as it stood before the fire. Each unit, each tenancy, each rent. A buyer with a documented rent roll prices what is there. A buyer without one assumes the worst case for themselves, which means the worst case for you.

The tenancy status of each displaced household. Who has been offered a return, who has declined in writing, who has simply gone quiet. Silence is not a waiver.

Whether any unit is unauthorised. Common here, and disclosure on a development application is made under penalty of perjury. It is not something to leave for a buyer to discover.

The statutory position behind all of this is on our page covering units, tenants and demolition control.

The Records Worth Pulling

The Assessor-Recorder. Search the buyer's exact legal entity as grantee. A firm that buys multi-unit property here has recorded deeds here, and what they buy tells you as much as how often.

The City's property information map. Permit history, complaints and planning records for your own address, free. Every serious buyer has looked at it.

The licence lookup. A party marketing your property to others rather than buying it themselves is engaged in brokerage and needs a California licence. A principal buyer taking title does not.

Where We Fit, and Where We Do Not

We buy as principal, in our own entity, with our own funds, and we take title. We do not assign contracts. Ask us both questions and search our entity in the recorder's index.

We are frequently not the right answer, and in this city more often than most. On a rent-controlled building the tenancies come back whoever owns it, which means an owner who can fund the restoration captures a restored, tenanted building rather than selling at a price that already reflects those tenancies. That is the strongest argument against selling to us that exists in any market we work in, and it is true often enough here that we raise it before price. Our written figure says so when the numbers point there. What happens from there is on our page about how the process actually runs.

Questions About Buyers