What You’ll Pay

According to data from the San Francisco Association of Realtors, the median sales price of homes in Dogpatch as of October was $1.2 million, a 7 percent decrease over a 12-month period.

Patrick Carlisle, the chief market analyst at Paragon Real Estate Group, in San Francisco, said the number and prices of properties available fluctuated with the ebb and flow of listings. As of Dec. 1, for example, only a handful of neighborhood properties, represented by various brokers, were advertised on his company’s website. These included a one-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bathroom condo at 875 Indiana Street, listed at $850,000, and a two-bedroom, two-bath condo at 1207 Indiana Street, listed at $1,199,000.

Even by San Francisco standards, Dogpatch is expensive. (In March, Zumper, a rental blog, reported that the area’s median rental price of $3,810 a month was the third highest in the city.) High land prices and city regulations drive up the costs of new construction, leading developers of buildings like those filling the neighborhood to aim for a luxury market. But that market is finite, Mr. Carlisle pointed out. Given both the cooling of the high-tech boom, whose young workers have gravitated to Dogpatch, and the surge of new housing in the area, he said there may be further price declines.

The Vibe

Dogpatch is a tightly knit community of passionate citizens. While residents are concerned about the sudden spike in density, they take refuge in organizations like the Dogpatch Neighborhood Association, which has a design and development review committee that seeks to ensure that new developments don’t get too big, bland and homogeneous. Dogpatch, along with a section of Potrero Hill, also recently established the first Green Benefit District in California, a community-supported initiative to improve and expand public green space.

The Schools

Within Dogpatch, the private La Scuola international school has its preschool campus at 728 20th Street and enrolls about 130 students. The program offers full immersion in the Italian language. The school’s campus for kindergarten through eighth grade is at 735 Fell Street, in the Hayes Valley neighborhood.