If you’ve been considering buying or selling a home, you’ve probably heard about MLS (Multiple Listing Service). MLS is the central database of all property listings in a particular city or county. The MLS for Wine Country and Marin is BAREIS. The San Francisco MLS is SFARMLS. The listings that you see on sites like Zillow or Compass all originate on the local MLS.

Compass does have some additional listings that are not broadcast to the public, those are called Private Exclusives and are at the request of the seller usually due to privacy reasons or other unique situations. Private Exclusives are only viewable to Compass agents and clients.

San Francisco is a small densely-packed city with lots of houses, condos, multi-unit buildings, and TICs spread over a small 7 mile x 7 mile area. To organize all of those properties geographically, the local MLS has 10 districts and 89 sub-districts. Here’s a link to the official SFAR MLS district map.  You may want to refer to the map while you search for homes.

I recommend searching MLS through Compass.com which allows you to see every listing available with every real estate company in the city. In addition, if you are not already working with an agent, my team and I will create a Collection for you which is a dynamic online board of all properties that meet your specific criteria. It allows you to message us in real time about properties, no need for extra text messages or emails. We often have some off-market properties as well. Call me to check if we have anything that may fit what you’re looking for. We are ready to help you with your home purchase or sale in San Francisco, Marin, and Wine Country.
(Updated August 2023)