The latest technological revolution has upended the San Francisco Bay Area’s housing market, where AI pioneers flush with cash are offering massive down payments to lock down increasingly scarce premium properties.
To track this phenomenon, the Realtor.com® economic research team studied down payment trends from 2020 to 2025, comparing the Bay Area to other major economic and innovation hubs: Miami, New York City, and Austin, TX.
The analysis outlined in a new report reveals that while 2023’s high mortgage rates spurred luxury home buyers across all four markets to put more money down in a bid to reduce their loan size, the Bay Area was the only metro where down payments remained inflated even as borrowing costs began to ease…