San Francisco luxury prices rose 4.6%. Starter homes fell 1.7%.

San Francisco's top third of home sales is up 4.6% from a year ago. The bottom third is down 1.7%. The Wall Street Journal reported those figures Monday from First American Data & Analytics, the property-data unit of First American Financial. Cash and vested stock are still bidding at the top. A household that needs a mortgage is shopping the third that got cheaper on paper and no easier to carry.

First American sorts each metro's sales into thirds of the local price range. Luxury is the top third. Starter is the bottom third. In San Francisco the bottom third is still a large loan. It is the slice that moved with the monthly payment.

The Journal found the same pattern in 33 of the 50 largest metros: luxury prices rising faster, or falling more slowly, than starter prices. In Tampa the luxury tier was up 0.4% and the starter tier was down 4.1%. Cleveland and Pittsburgh went the other way. San Francisco is the version a Bay Area group chat will forward.

Freddie Mac's latest weekly survey, published October 15, put the average 30-year fixed mortgage at 7.40%. That was unchanged from the week before and up from 6.27% a year earlier. The survey covers conventional purchase loans with about 20% down and strong credit. A Bay Area jumbo is a separate quote, and the next survey prints Thursday. If a lender matched 7.40% on $1 million borrowed for 30 years, principal and interest would be about $6,924 a month, before property tax, insurance, or HOA. A year ago, at 6.27%, that same loan was about $6,170. The gap is roughly $754 a month.

Toll Brothers, the luxury builder, said about a quarter of its buyers paid all cash in the quarter ended July, on homes that delivered for about $996,000 on average. Lennar, which sells much cheaper houses, reported an average price of $372,000 in the quarter ended August, down from $383,000 a year earlier, with incentives around 12% of the price. The cash buyer and the rate buyer are not in the same negotiation.

About 35% of San Francisco residents are Asian alone, in Census Bureau figures for the city. Across the nine-county Bay Area, about six in ten Asian or Pacific Islander households own, in Bay Area Equity Atlas tabulations of census data, and the rate swings by ancestry. Equity, or vested stock, can write the offer the Journal described. A couple still sending money home, holding a jumbo pre-approval, is the buyer watching the bottom third.

AI pay is in the bid at the top. Kara Ng, a senior economist at Zillow, has said the Bay Area's most expensive listings are scarce and sell faster, often to buyers using equity or stock. Zillow's luxury cut is tighter than First American's: the top 5% of local values, not the top third. On that cut, San Francisco luxury sales in May were up 21.6% from a year earlier, and starter sales were down 1.2%. Redfin's median sale in the city, over the three months through September, was about $1.58 million, up about 15%. That figure covers the whole market.

Builders who need a financed buyer had a rough October. The National Association of Home Builders and Wells Fargo put their confidence index at 29, the lowest reading since June 2012. Any number under 50 means more builders call conditions poor than good. Forty-three percent cut prices in the October survey. A cash fight on a Pacific Heights listing does not change the payment two neighborhoods over.

If you are writing an offer this month, price the house the loan will cover. Put principal and interest into the First Home Affordability Calculator with tax, insurance, and the remittance or parent-support line you still intend to keep. Keep the Family Support Budget Calculator open so the mortgage and the wire share a page.

Mortgage Readiness Benchmarks with a Family Support Line is the longer version of that ratio. First-Home Buying Roadmap for Diaspora Professionals walks the search. If parents are wiring a gift, finish the paper trail in Parent Down Payment Gift Playbook That Closes Clean before a softer print gets treated as a bargain.

Use the 1.7% drop as a reason to negotiate. Then put 7.40% into the payment, with the wire still in the budget, before the offer goes out.

This is educational reporting on Wall Street Journal coverage of First American price tiers, Freddie Mac's October 15 survey, builder and brokerage data, and census figures. It is not mortgage, tax, or investment advice. A Loan Estimate, and counsel on your own file, set the payment that counts.