The list also includes 36-unit property at 345 Macarthur Boulevard, which fetched $6.7M; a 31-unit apartment complex at 100 Monte Cresta Avenue, for $6M; an 11-unit building portfolio at 226 and 230 Orange Street for $3.6M; and 355 Staten Avenue, a 16-unit property that was bought for $3.3M.

Multifamily valuations have been sagging in Oakland during the past year after a five-year building boom that saw nearly 10,000 apartment units delivered in the East Bay city. The steep drop in values has impacted newly built luxury apartment towers as well as older and smaller apartment buildings.

In December, a 34-story, 254-unit luxury tower that opened in 2019 at 447 17th Street in downtown Oakland sold for $99M, a 53% discount from a January 2024 assessment of nearly $210M. Three Steps Properties, an Oakland-based private investment company, bought the tower, known as 17th and Broadway, from Quarterra Multifamily, an affiliate of Lennar Homes.

In the last decade, a tech boom in San Francisco spilled over into Oakland as a wave of employers leased large office spaces in the city, drawn by lower rents, shorter commute times for East Bay residents and what was then a thriving nightlife and restaurant scene.

The office boom before the pandemic spawned a multifamily construction “supercycle” between 2018 and 2022 that saw nearly 10,000 units built in Oakland, with dozens of apartment towers rising across the downtown and a neighborhood known as Uptown. City officials turbocharged the supercycle with pro-housing policies that encouraged production with speedy entitlements.

Apartment deliveries, which averaged 163 units per year between 2010 and 2014, surged to 1,733 units per year between 2019 and 2023. The downtown area absorbed more than 7,900 apartments, or about 1,600 units per year, during the 20 quarters between 2019 and 2023, compared to an average of 230 annually between 2010 and 2018, according to JLL data.

Multifamily deliveries peaked in 2019 with 2,617 units, but new supply did not slow down as the boom for Oakland’s office market collapsed into the bust of the pandemic. Another 1,898 units were delivered in 2020, followed by 2,229 in 2021.

The multifamily supply boom finally subsided in 2023, when only 533 units were delivered in Oakland. At the end of 2024, there were fewer than 400 units in the pipeline.

In 2025, developers who delivered apartments during the pandemic have been confronted with a highly concessionary market that forces landlords to offer lower rents and other enticements to keep their units filled. Multifamily rents in Oakland fell more than 9% from 2019 to 2024, dropping from an average of $2,750 per unit to less than $2,500.