06/15/2026
The next wave of tech IPOs may have already hit the housing market
In markets near AI startups, prices are up and development is booming
Tech workers in San Francisco have already started leveraging their startup stock to get a leg up in the competitive housing market, according to real estate agent Leah Johnson.
Tech workers in San Francisco have already started leveraging their startup stock to get a leg up in the competitive housing market, according to real estate agent
Key takeaways
A wave of major tech IPOs — including SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI — is poised to generate unprecedented wealth across U.S. housing markets.
Experts and economists say that wealth will mostly affect markets near tech headquarters.
In San Francisco, where Anthropic and OpenAI are based, that wealth is already pushing prices higher and breeding intense competition among buyers.
Leah Johnson, a fourth-generation San Franciscan with more than 15 years in real estate, has seen what initial public offerings from high-flying technology firms can mean for a local housing market.
She witnessed tech companies going public — from the dot-com boom to the rise of brands like Meta and Uber — and the ensuing wealth that transformed neighborhoods.
"In the 2010s, you would hear about an executive, like Mark Zuckerberg, who bought a mansion," Johnson, an agent with City Real Estate, told Homes.com News in an interview. "Or you would hear about 26-year-olds fresh out of school, working as engineers, making $250,000 and renting or buying high-end spaces, spending money on food, wine, experiences and entertainment."
Now, Johnson is watching what is shaping up to be one of the biggest cash infusions in the city, driven by the meteoric rise of the artificial intelligence industry.
SpaceX went public on Friday morning. Anthropic has quietly begun filing the paperwork necessary for an IPO. And rumors about OpenAI's eventual entrance to the public market have been swirling for years.
San Francisco is already feeling the impact of a looming wave of tech IPOs set to be the most expensive initial offerings ever to come to market, and it is not the only place.
"We're seeing the wealth in the market even prior to these IPOs," Johnson said, noting that there are already buyers who are leveraging their shares in companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI to gain purchasing power in the housing market.
SpaceX is set to IPO on Friday, triggering what's expected to be an influx of cash in Texas, where the company is headquartered.
SpaceX is set to IPO on Friday, triggering what's expected to be an influx of cash in Texas, where the company is headquartered.
In San Francisco, the backyard of Anthropic and OpenAI, home prices have grown astronomically as demand has surged. In parts of Texas, home to SpaceX, it's more of a supply effect, with residential development booming around the firm's headquarters on the state's southern tip. But these IPOs are unlikely to have the same effect on the overall housing market, economists tell.
"Generally speaking, the wealth is going to affect the place where the money was made," Brad Case, chief residential economist for Homes.com, said in an interview. "With an IPO, people are in the market, and they're going to stay in the market unless they have a reason to leave.'
An IPO is not like 'winning the lottery'
In anticipation of those IPOs, there's been no shortage of headlines about how the wealth from those IPOs is going to mint hundreds, if not thousands, of new millionaires.
"It's not like winning the lottery," he told Homes.com News in an interview. "Instead, it's minting liquidity for existing millionaires."
In other words, those employees and early investors who own shares in a private startup aren’t just suddenly coming into these new funds. They’ve already accounted for that wealth. The real change that comes with an IPO is that the public market assigns a price to those shares — and they become accessible.
Additionally, most companies have a lockout period after going public during which stockholders can't trade or sell their holdings. In the case of SpaceX, for example, that freeze ends on a staggered basis contingent on how the stock is performing, which could delay the cash-out process and have a staggered effect on the housing market.
Going public 'crystallizes' stockholders' wealth
What does happen on the day of the IPO, though, is a sort of "crystallization" confirming how much a stakeholder's wealth is actually worth, according to Case.
"It's a transparency," he said in an interview. "Cognitively and behaviorally, people respond to that."
More than that, according to Hartman-Glaser, just the knowledge that a company is preparing to go public can be enough to trigger a response from equity holders. He's identified those effects in prior research, such as a 2019 report studying the impacts of IPO wealth in California from 1993 to 2017.
"As soon as people know that there's a liquidity event coming in the future, there are alternative ways for them to tap into their illiquid wealth in order to make housing purchase decisions," he explained. "If you're an employee with significant stock allocation and you know your firm is going public in a few months, you can go ahead and find a way to buy the house that you want now."
That can ultimately lead to "housing markets in the vicinity of the IPO firm's headquarters to go up by an economically meaningful amount," Hartman-Glaser added.
So far, that pattern seems to be appearing in such markets across the country. But there haven't been any IPOs of this size yet, so the possible effects on the housing market remain, to an extent, unclear.
San Francisco home prices have soared as cash reigns
In San Francisco, the effects of IPO wealth have already started appearing, said Johnson, the real estate agent.
There's been an influx of cash buyers. At the same time, some buyers have leveraged their illiquid stock allocation to access cash — using their stock as collateral to take a loan for cash — to gain a competitive edge and access pricier homes.
That buying pool is a mix of venture capitalists, founders and tech employees. Of that mix, the main demographic seeking single-family homes in the $5 million range, according to Johnson, are 30-something couples willing to pay "really large premiums" to find a home in the city.
This tech boom is seeing more concentrated housing demand in San Francisco. In previous cycles, buyers were more open to shopping in nearby markets like Marin, according to Johnson. (Anthony Lindsey/CoStar)
This tech boom is seeing more concentrated housing demand in San Francisco. In previous cycles, buyers were more open to shopping in nearby markets like Marin, according to Johnson. (Anthony Lindsey/CoStar)
That shift has already driven San Francisco home prices to new highs: In May, the median home sales price was at $1.7 million, the priciest in the nation and a 7.6% increase from a year earlier, according to Homes.com data.
"For properties that are really ideal, people are writing offers to outer space," Johnson said.
To be sure, once these firms go public, that could infuse even more cash in San Francisco, but there's only so much demand the market can reasonably support.
In prior tech booms, that influx of IPO-generated wealth tended to spill over to nearby markets, like Marin. That's not happening this time around, though. Buyers are almost exclusively looking to buy in San Francisco proper, putting even greater stress on supply and likely leading home prices to continue rising until they, at some point, hit a ceiling.
"There's already a lot of money out there," Johnson said. "So, what happens when they IPO?"
In Texas, residential development is booming
On the flip side, some markets are seeing more supply growth than price changes.
Take Brownsville, Texas, for example. The town on the border with Mexico near SpaceX's headquarters is in a county that has historically been among the nation's poorest. Homes.com data shows that home prices have climbed 5% over the last year, driven by the housing boom as residential development rises to meet the growing demand from employees.
As of March, the city said it had already issued more than 1,600 residential building permits for multifamily, single-family and duplex developments, according to a press release. In 2025, it issued a total of about 1,600 residential permits — in what officials called "one of the busiest years for housing development in Brownsville’s history."
Brownsville, Texas, is working through one of its most active development pipelines on record. (Mauricio Atilano/CoStar)
Brownsville, Texas, is working through one of its most active development pipelines on record. (Mauricio Atilano/CoStar)
Given the speed of building, it's unlikely that Brownsville would see the kind of price increases a city like San Francisco would, even after a SpaceX IPO.
"For a big wealth increase to affect housing markets meaningfully, we need supply to be constrained," Hartman-Glaser explained. "In Texas, near SpaceX, land is essentially in infinite supply. So, there's not really going to be an effect on house prices there."
Put another way: the conditions need to be right for a market to experience a tangible change from a tech IPO, and how that change manifests varies depending on local conditions. It's why some markets stand to flourish from the pending cash infusion while others will see no effects at all.
"If you're in a big city like New York, companies are going to go IPO it's not going to affect the housing market because everything was already expensive," Michael Seiler, a professor of finance and real estate at the College of William and Mary, told Homes.com News in an interview. "If you're talking about a smaller town, in theory, it could allow more people to buy a house."
