Labor Day weekend is the traditional kickoff for the fall homebuying season, but this year, some agents say, the tailgate party has already begun. 

“We had one of the busiest summers we’ve ever had,” said Michelle Balog, an agent with Christie’s International Sereno, who has continued to list Bay Area properties throughout the usually dead summer months. “The really serious buyers are still out there.” 

The early start is a response to a spring muted by fears over President Donald Trump’s tariffs and a way to get ahead of the newly wealthy AI workers flooding the market. A skyrocketing rental market and soft condo prices are also making some renters wonder if homebuying makes more financial sense. 

If the Federal Reserve lowers interest rates in September, more buyers will likely return to the market, agents say, spiking competition and inducing sellers to finally make a move.

“The fall market is going to have some wind in its sails,” said Kevin Wakelin, an agent at Compass who has six Bay Area listings coming on after Labor Day. 

The fall market is always more frantic than the spring’s, which typically starts after the Super Bowl in early February and lasts through May. 

In fall, agents have just two months to catch the eyes of buyers and get homes onto the market, since people often put house hunting on hold from early November until after the holidays. That’s why, year after year, September is the biggest month for new listings, and October is the biggest month for price reductions, according to Compass data. 

“You have six months of inventory that are condensed into two,” said Compass agent Ruth Krishnan, who advises buyers to prepare preapproval letters and have underwriting in place so they can move quickly. “The sooner they can get started, the better. So if they find something that they like, they will buy it.” 

Without this level of preparation and all the data at their fingertips, buyers can become “paralyzed by choice” in the fall, she said, not sure if they should make a move quickly on a home or wait for what may be coming soon on the multiple listing service. 

Krishnan recently had buyers who saw a property they liked but wondered if they should wait until after Labor Day to see their options. She showed them data on what had sold in the last six months so they could see that the listing was “way better” than what had been on the market at their price point in terms of floor plans and finishes. With that information in hand, they moved forward with an offer.

“A lot of our buyers are in tech. They’re very data-driven, and so seeing that data and knowing those data points, they feel very confident in making a decision,” she said. 

Tech buyers have long been the backbone of the market in a city where it takes a $250,000 salary to afford a median-priced home. But this year, the impact of tech — AI in particular — has been magnified. 

First, those heavily invested in tech stocks sat out the spring buying season because of the jittery stock market brought on by the Trump tariffs. That spring slump followed the depressed pre-election fall season in 2024, meaning there was a year of deferred demand built up, according to real estate agents.

“When the tariffs came into effect and all of the financial uncertainty dropped into our laps, people froze,” said Balog. “The spring was very disappointing.” 

But once the markets calmed, so did buyers, and they started making moves. Balog had a single-family home listing in Lakeshore that could have waited until after Labor Day, but she decided to list early to beat the September rush of new inventory. It was listed at $1.05 million, received multiple offers, and closed 50% over asking, at $1.58 million. 

“If you follow what people have done, historically, they would have waited,” she said of her sellers. “But why wait? You’re just going to have more competition.”

The threat of competition from flush AI workers has made buyers feel like jumping in — sometimes before it’s really necessary. Krishnan has one buyer who’s considering investing in a property in the city for his kids in case that’s where they go to college four years from now. He is worried about missing the market, “because of all the AI money going on.”

People relocating to San Francisco for AI jobs are also driving up the rental market. That is making some people consider whether they should just put their money into owning instead. 

Balog sometimes lists rentals for clients and said she has seen a huge increase in demand, especially in tech-centered neighborhoods like South Beach, where she just had a junior one-bedroom listing that got 90 inquiries in one week. Given the depressed pricing in the condo market, especially around downtown, buying might just make more sense. 

“There will be a tipping point,” she said. “It’s just a matter of when will that be.” 

Even with the early excitement this year, there’s not been a discernible uptick in summer inventory or activity, according to Patrick Carlisle, chief market analyst at Compass. 

He doesn’t have data for August yet, but it is typically one of the slowest months, similar to the winter holidays.

“I’ve only seen a significant alteration of this seasonal trend if interest rates suddenly come way down — and while rates have declined, I don’t believe the drop has been big enough to spur a substantial increase in demand in August,” he said. 

Many agents are hoping the indications from Fed Chair Jerome Powell that a rate drop is coming in September will be just what the market needs to turn from a late-summer pre-party into a full-on autumn rager. 

The last three falls have been “really soft for our markets,” said Wakelin, because of high interest rates and 2024’s election anxiety. Buyers decided to “hit the pause button,” he said, but now that “latent demand that sat on the sidelines” is ready to jump into the action. 

His fall properties that are “coming soon” but not technically on the market until after Labor Day are bringing in calls from agents who say they have buyers ready to move immediately.

Wakelin, who mostly represents sellers, said if rates come down, it might encourage more of them to get off the fence as well.

“They recognize that, ‘You know what, if I’m still sitting on my 3% rate, I’ve been sitting on it for three years now, and I put my life on pause. When do I get on with my life?’” he said.

More inventory, combined with lower rates, would only fuel the market. 

“My sense is that we’re going to have a really good, positive, robust fall, which we haven’t had in three years,” Wakelin said.