Welcome to the Wishlist, the Standard’s new column chronicling the roller-coaster ride that is buying a house in the Bay Area. In each edition, we will go deep into one buyer’s home hunt, capturing the hopes they have, the problems they are trying to solve, and the harsh realities they sometimes need to face.  

Have your own recent story to vent (or brag) about? Tell us all about it and you could be featured in a future column. 

Caitlin Yates, 38, real estate agent; Matt Seliga, 48, founder of event company CrawlSF. 

The married couple had their first child, Charlie, last year and immediately found themselves bursting at the seams of their two-bedroom, rent-controlled Marina apartment. Seliga was firm in his desire to stay in San Francisco, and had no interest in a condo that didn’t seem like much of an upgrade over their apartment. Yates was willing to go over the bridge to Marin if it meant getting more space for their young family. The couple was at an impasse until a “unicorn” listing unexpectedly turned things around.

Seliga and Yates didn’t exactly hit it off when they first met in 2012 at one of his organized bar crawls. At the time, Yates was a cheerleader for the Oakland Raiders and Seliga assumed she would be high maintenance. She felt similarly unsmitten. 

“I thought he was snotty and he thought I was snotty,” Yates recalled. 

But sparks flew when the pair met for a second time a few months later, and soon she was moving into his rent-controlled Marina apartment — his 11th, and final, roommate.

When the now-married couple welcomed son Charlie in 2024, they realized that they had swiftly outgrown the two-bedroom, 1,000-square-foot apartment Seliga had lived in for over two decades. 

Yates, a Compass agent, started looking at listings in Marin, where several of her clients were also on the hunt and some of their friends had already moved. She began fantasizing about having more square footage for their young family to spread out, and a big yard with a pool to entertain.

An expected inheritance from Yates’ father and grandfather, who both died in 2023, was still held up in probate, and the couple saved up in the meantime by continuing to live in their quickly shrinking apartment for under $3,000 a month. 

Seliga understood that they’d get more for their $2 million budget in the ‘burbs, and also loved the idea of a pool, but he was loath to leave the city behind. He was also against a condo, which didn’t seem like much of an upgrade for a higher monthly cost. The pattern repeated itself: Yates would bring her husband Marin listings and speak about the need for urgency. Seliga would remain reluctant. 

“I’d say, ‘There’s going to be more opportunities. There always are,’” he said. 

They agreed to put the home search on hold until the end of 2025.

Last spring, Yates saw a single-family listed in the Marina with a “2” as the first digit in the asking price and their plans changed again. 

It was old where she had wanted modern, and instead of a pool, it had a small yard with a “weird, dried-up fountain.” The asking price of $2.5 million, while a 30% discount over other fixer-uppers in the neighborhood, was well beyond what they had wanted to spend.

But the house was big, over 2,600 square feet, with four bedrooms, three full bathrooms, and two bonus rooms — a sunroom perfect for a playroom and one at the rear of the ground floor, leading out to the yard. It was also empty, unstaged, and had been subject to several price cuts. At that point, no buyer had appeared, so “$2.5 [million] is maybe not crazy,” Yates remembered thinking.

More than just being in their target neighborhood, it was on their dream street: Avila, known for its over-the-top Halloween decor. For a couple who consider themselves the king and queen of Halloween, it seemed like a sign.  

Plus, Yates had recently settled the estates of her father and grandfather and now had her inheritance in hand. Interest rates were still high, and the market was on pause given the tariff-related volatility in the stock market last spring, meaning less competition. 

“The timing was completely insane,” she said. “The stars aligned.” 

Seliga was a bit less eager. The weekend after St. Patrick’s Day, when he held his second-biggest crawl of the year (after Halloween), he was completely exhausted. But he agreed to go to the open house mainly because it was so close to their apartment. 

“I was like, ‘I don’t have time to go see houses.’ And then I walked in here and I’m, like, ‘I want this house,’” he said. “After that first walk-through, I just imagined us living here, I imagined Charlie playing in his back playroom. And now it’s here. It’s all happening.” 

After a bidding war sparked by the reduced price, the couple closed a deal at $2.65 million, with Yates acting as their broker (she helpfully waived her usual 2.5% buyer’s commission). The higher price meant stretching their budget and cutting back on some luxuries, but they agreed the space and location were well worth the sacrifice.

They’ve also spent about $100,000 making updates to the 1926 home since they closed in April. Seliga put in some sweat equity by doing demo with his friends and retiling one of the downstairs bathrooms himself in a black-and-white motif now seen throughout the home. Although inspired by HGTV and YouTube tutorials to do the bulk of the work themselves, they eventually brought in a contractor for help.

“I did get to do some stuff, and I got to use my tools,” Seliga said. “I’m on my computer all the time, so just taking some time and building something was really awesome.” 

One day they hope to have the money to do a full floor plan reconfiguration, or maybe add a third story. But they have time.

“This is more like a forever home for us,” Yates said. 

Putting on her agent’s hat, she said that if they did want to sell they could probably get about $1 million more than what they paid for it with just the work they’ve done so far — a tenfold return on their $100,000 reno investment. 

Seliga admits that Yates’ promise of a once-in-a-lifetime deal actually came true and joked that even his wife’s clients want to know their secret. 

“If it would have been a few months before, a few months after, I don’t know if it would have happened,” he said. “There might have been one other person in a similar situation with slightly deeper pockets. They could have outbid us by $25K and we’d still be living in a 1,000-square-foot apartment.” 

“There are unicorns out there,” Yates agreed. “You have to be ready to jump on it.”