We’re barely more than a few days into the new year and already, improbably, Richmond homes are selling like mad.

Typically, January is reckoned one of the slower months in the housing game, particularly when we’re just coming down off the holidays.

But since January 1, four Richmond homes sold on MLS, totaling over $10.59 million combined (counting both Lake Street and Sea Cliff–sans Sea Cliff, the total would be three homes at $9.13 million and still qualify as unusually busy).

Is that a lot? Well, looking back at the same period over the past eight years, the highest combined Richmond sales total was around $6.74 million in 2020, and the least was just $1.75 million in 2018.

We only went back as far as eight years because beyond that the nature of inflation starts to make just dollar figures less and less useful at face value; nevertheless, that’s a wide enough window to tell us that 2022 is already kind of a wild year in the neighborhood, despite having barely just gotten here.

So what’s the deal? Truth be known, that short-term record breaking total is almost entirely thanks to just one major sale, the house at 111 6th Avenue, which closed this week for a total of $4.41 million, after listing in December seeking just under $4 million even.

For comparison, that $4.41 million payday is more than the value of all the homes that sold in the Richmond the first week of 2021–and indeed, in almost every first week of the year, going back several decades.

So one gigantic sale is already boosting the neighborhood’s stats for the year, in a way that admittedly distorts the totals. If not for 111 6th Avenue, the first week’s numbers would still have been pretty high compared to past years, but not remarkably so.

Nevertheless, that sale did happen, and so the record (such as it is) remains valid. Does this mean the Richmond is in for a sky-high 2022? Well, not necessarily: People can be superstitious about such things, but truthfully, the first week of the year can’t tell us what’s to come any more than any other single week.

Is it fun though, and there are plenty of other reasons to be optimistic that the Richmond will remain a hot spot for SF real estate this year, not the least of which being that we just came off of quite a good 2021, all things considered.

So that’s one week down, and more than 50 great potential prospects to go.

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