Underwater San Francisco Lots Sold for $250 in Speculative Deals

Several large lots recently sold in San Francisco for just $250 in deals that would be considered a steal - except the land is located completely underwater.

Some hopeful investors in San Francisco, a city known for its high cost of living and million-dollar homes, purchased 5,000-square-foot parcels near Candlestick Point during an auction on Tuesday, KGO-TV reported.

Despite the affordable price, the lots are completely submerged underwater, meaning owners will have to get creative in deciding what to do with them. There may also be legal challenges with either filling in the land or developing floating homes.

“I think part of it is just the supply and demand. We’re not building enough. And lots of people have lots of money to be able to afford these houses,” Linda, a Bay Area resident, told the TV station.

While some locals feel the underwater lots could be potentially good investments, others said they felt turning them into something worthwhile was far-fetched.

“That’s a really stupid idea. Sea levels are rising so I don’t know why you’d buy land underwater, but you never know. Someone will figure it out,” former San Francisco resident Sam Mitchell told the outlet.

The underwater parcels were advertised as “an intriguing speculative investment,” that could potentially be used for “future waterfront positioning, possible boat docking considerations, environmental or recreational applications, or strategic land banking,” according to SFGate.

Areas in San Francisco that were once water have been filed in, but that happened years ago, historian Chris Carlsson told KGO-TV. That process would be incredibly difficult to get approval for today due to legal and environmental factors.

“It’s just not going to happen,” Carlsson told the outlet.

However, other experts thought it might be possible for a floating home to be built on the plot — if it could get past any permitting and regulatory challenges.

“Most of these locations, as long as they’re not on open sea, but in this kind of, as in your place, Bay area, or in flood zones, or in rivers, or in canals, lakes, that’s absolutely possible to use that as building ground to place floating foundations there and place units on top of it,” Dr. Koen Olthuis, the CEO of Waterstudio, an architectural firm that makes floating homes, told the outlet.

Residents who purchased the plots may be taking a gamble on future San Francisco waterfront values. Similar opportunities, while rare, have come up in the past. A realtor in 2021 bought underwater plots, envisioning future developments there. In 2023, a man purchased a 10,000-square-foot lot in Alameda for $300,000, but was unaware that it was underwater.