Tehama Lofts, 245 Fifth, the 1932 envelope factory converted in 1996: one closing this year, a 1,566-square-foot loft at $910,000 after 42 days, $581 a foot, in a building where raw shells sold for $269,000 in 1996

Tehama Lofts sold one unit this year at $581 a foot, in a building whose record runs to the $269,000 shells of 1996. One condominium closed at 245 Fifth Street between January 1 and October 15, 2026, against one in the same window of 2025; $910,000 of volume against $1,100,000. The price per square foot is $581, against $638 on last year's sale, $554 in 2023, $844 across two sales in 2021 and $728 across the two of 2017, when a $3,250,000 sale set the building's high; no year in the record holds more than two closings.

#105, a 1,566-square-foot one-bedroom loft with a two-story window wall, a mezzanine and a private street entrance on Tehama, went contingent on July 26, pending on August 31 and closed at $910,000 on September 4, 42 days from listing to contract; its dues run $939 a month; the listing record shows it sold at $760,000 in May 2005 and new in December 1996 at $269,000 against a $289,000 ask, pairings the site's record does not hold (Redfin). #103, the same 1,566 square feet as a two-bedroom, is listed at $998,000 with dues of $804 (Neighborhoods.com).

The building is the 1932 Field-Ernst Envelope Factory, converted into loft condominiums in 1996 on three residential floors with a roof deck, under the Tehama Lofts Condominium Owners Association; SocketSite's 2009 readers recalled the raw shells selling in the $200,000s in the early 1990s; the listing records count 19 to 27 units, and the building record on this site lists 16 (Redfin; SocketSite, Apr 2009; Redfin street index).

2026 so far, against the same window in 2025

Closings at 245 5th St between January 1 and October 15, 2026, set against January 1 to October 15, 2025. Days on market is median days from listing to contract on MLS-listed sales; "under 15 days" counts how many of those went into contract inside two weeks.

Year by year

Every recorded closing at 245 5th St since August 1999, by calendar year. 2026 runs through October 15, 2026. Days on market is available for MLS-listed sales from 2020 onward.

No year in the building's record holds five or more closings. 2026 year to date stands at $581 a square foot.

By bedroom count, 2025 against 2026

Every closing in 2026

All 1 closings through October 15, 2026, highest price first. Square footage and days on market are as recorded on the MLS; county-recorded transfers that never listed show no days.

Fifth and Tehama

A block north at Fifth and Howard, TNDC's 921 Howard opened 203 affordable homes in 2023 with a second 30-story, 240-unit building planned on the subdivided site, and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation moved its headquarters into 940 Howard in December 2023 (SF Chronicle; SF AIDS Foundation). Down the block at 896 Folsom, FORMA proposed a 26-story, 132-unit tower on its own offices in April 2025, and a block south at 162 Clara, between Fourth and Fifth, JS Sullivan filed a pre-application in October 2025 for a four-story building (SF YIMBY, Apr 2025; SF YIMBY, Oct 2025). Yerba Buena Lane, two blocks north, became an Entertainment Zone on May 16, 2025 (CBS Bay Area).

The nearest AI offices are Harvey's roughly 150,000 square feet at 201 Third and Anthropic's Howard Street buildings, four blocks east (SF Standard).

The timetable that every South of Market building now sits inside is the public-offering calendar. Anthropic filed a confidential draft registration with the SEC on June 1, 2026, a week after a funding round that set its valuation at $965 billion (TechCrunch). As of this week the Standard reports the Anthropic listing has been pushed to November, after the midterms, that OpenAI's has moved to 2027, and that Anthropic is weighing a lockup longer than the usual six months (SF Standard). The same piece carries a Redfin estimate that current and former OpenAI and Anthropic employees could in theory buy close to a third of the metro area's homes with their proceeds, and the counter-argument from UC Berkeley's Enrico Moretti and the Bay Area Council's Jeff Bellisario that the money is concentrated in fewer hands than past booms and that these firms create fewer jobs per dollar because so much goes to data centers rather than headcount. The record in this report ends on October 15. None of it reflects a single share that has been sold.

Two citywide facts frame every building figure here. First, the office recovery is lopsided: CBRE put Q3 2026 vacancy at 27.7 percent citywide, down 6.6 points in a year, but Avison Young splits that into roughly 12 percent for Class A and north of 31 percent for Class B, and a Presidio Bay executive told Bisnow the headline number is misleading for that reason (Bisnow). Second, the condo market is still digging out: the Chronicle's May analysis found that only eight Bay Area ZIP codes showed inflation-adjusted condo gains over the year, all of them in San Francisco, and that Noe Valley's typical condo remained close to $400,000 below its 2019 level in real terms (SF Chronicle).

How this was counted

Two records feed this review. The MLS layer is one row per listing and carries days on market and square footage. The county layer reaches back further and catches transfers that never listed, but records the same closing once per data source, so the two were merged on unit, date and price and each closing kept once. Below-market-rate units and transfers under $300,000 are listed but excluded from every median. "Same window" means January 1 to October 15 of each year. Nothing here is a valuation of any unit, and nothing here is advice.

Tim McMullen · CA DRE #02016832
tim@mcmullen.properties · (415) 691-9272