Beyond the Listing: John Wei Talks Bay Area Market Waves and Buyer Opportunity With Kenneth Pang of Serhant

The Attorney and Global Marketing Executive Who Became One of the Bay Area’s Top Realtors

John Wei welcomed Kenneth Pang of Serhant Realty to Beyond the Listing for a wide-ranging conversation about what the San Francisco Peninsula real estate market has done since the pandemic, why uncertainty is actually the moment buyers should be moving rather than waiting, and what fifteen years of global marketing and advertising brings to one of the most competitive real estate markets in the country.

Kenneth came to real estate six years ago after careers that spanned corporate law, fifteen to twenty years of global business and marketing across multiple countries, and a consumer technology startup period that followed. His wife suggested real estate during a career transition and he woke up the next morning having talked himself into at least looking into it. What he found was that the skills he had already spent decades building including managing multi-million dollar deals under pressure, negotiating across cultures, and building relationships quickly in new environments were more directly transferable to real estate than most career pivots allow. In six years he has achieved top one and a half percent ranking among California realtors and completed over one hundred million dollars in transaction volume.

Three Waves Since the Pandemic and What They Mean

Kenneth identifies three distinct market cycles on the San Francisco Peninsula since COVID rather than a single trend line. The immediate post-pandemic surge. The pricing correction and recovery period. And the more complex and volatile current environment of 2026 which has itself experienced three sub-cycles within a single year driven by the AI money influx, rate movements, and geopolitical uncertainty.

He makes a distinction that most market commentary misses. The peninsula and San Francisco proper behave differently and require separate analysis. San Francisco has perpetual inventory because of its concentration of distinct neighborhoods and the variety of housing types that serve different buyer profiles. The AI boom of recent years hit San Francisco more directly because many of the employees benefiting from it were younger, urban-oriented buyers interested in high-rise condos and premium two-bedrooms in neighborhoods like Mission Bay, Dog Patch, and SoMa.

The peninsula is different. City by city, neighborhood by neighborhood pricing creates much sharper stratification. Buyers at the one-point-five million and below level were most impacted by the summer’s rate environment both financially in terms of purchasing power and psychologically in terms of confidence. Kenneth estimates that buyers in that range lost between one hundred and two hundred fifty thousand dollars in purchasing power when rates moved from touching five percent toward six and then seven depending on the lender and the loan structure.

Why the Current Moment Is an Opportunity Buyers Are Missing

Kenneth’s view of the current market is direct and grounded in pattern recognition from watching what happened in 2009 and what happened during COVID. The buyers who moved when everyone else was uncertain ended up in neighborhoods and price points they could not access once certainty returned and everyone came back simultaneously.

He is not arguing that things are cheap. The cost of borrowing is higher than it was. But the absolute price of what buyers can access in specific peninsula cities is lower than he has seen in six years of active practice. A buyer who has been priced out of Burlingame while shopping in Redwood City or San Mateo may find the gap has closed enough in the current environment to get into the city, the school district, and the community they wanted.

His argument is temporal. When certainty returns and rates improve even modestly the buyers who have been sitting on the sidelines return all at once. Competition spikes. Prices respond to that competition. The cities that feel achievable today will not feel achievable in three years even if lending rates decline by a point or a point and a half. The property will have appreciated past what the rate reduction saves.

The buyers who stepped in during COVID uncertainty became the people who now have equity and options. The buyers who waited are still waiting. Commitment in the moment of uncertainty is what separates those two outcomes and it requires a lender and a realtor who can translate why the opportunity is real rather than just asserting that it exists.

What Sellers Should Think About Right Now

Kenneth’s seller advice is more case-by-case than his buyer perspective because the calculus depends heavily on how long the property has been owned, what condition it is in, and what the seller plans to do with the proceeds.

A key point he makes is that a poorly conditioned home will underperform the market in any environment but particularly in a depressed one. Sellers who bring a property to market without addressing what buyers are prioritizing right now will get even less than their adjusted expectations suggest. If the home cannot be presented in excellent condition the seller needs to have realistic expectations about where offers will come in.

For sellers who do not know what to do with the proceeds or who have a favorable rate and have owned the property long enough to have significant equity sitting tight is a reasonable choice. An alternative is leveraging existing equity to purchase a rental property or multifamily investment in California or elsewhere, using the stability of the primary residence equity to generate additional return. Sellers who have a genuine use for the capital and a reasonable property to bring to market have reason to act. Sellers speculating that now is somehow the right moment without a clear plan for what comes next may benefit from waiting.

What Makes Kenneth Different in a Market Full of Experienced Agents

Kenneth has lived in the Bay Area for sixteen years but is not from there and did not grow up in any single region. He has lived in multiple cities, traveled extensively for work across multiple continents, and built professional relationships across industries and cultures throughout his career. In a market where most buyers are not from the Bay Area either that shared experience of purposeful discovery of new places rather than knowledge by osmosis creates an unusually natural connection point.

He describes his differentiation in terms of relating to the person before relating to the home. Someone arriving from Toronto, Los Angeles, New York, or overseas has a specific set of life experiences, cultural context, family priorities, and lifestyle expectations. Kenneth’s ability to find a genuine common thread with that person in the first five seconds of a conversation whether by phone, text, or in person is something clients consistently describe as making them feel like they have known him longer than they actually have.

He also identifies three core elements of the real estate business where his background gives him unusual competence. Lead generation which he built through digital channels early because he recognized that being where buyers actually are matters more than traditional door knocking. Relationship building which his marketing and advertising career trained him for across twenty years of meeting people in brief high-stakes commercial contexts. And negotiation which he compares to his experience managing multi-million dollar deadlines with multiple stakeholders.

The paperwork side of real estate he learned through the brokerage system. The other two he already had. That sequencing matters because the paperwork can be learned but the relationship and negotiation instincts are harder to develop after the fact.

Why Serhant and the Own Square Foot Brand

Kenneth moved to Serhant from Compass as part of the brokerage’s West Coast expansion. He was among the first set of agents to join in the Bay Area as Serhant extended beyond its eastern seaboard base following Ryan Serhant’s growth of the brand through Million Dollar Listing and his Netflix series.

His reason for the move was about being one of few rather than many. At a large brokerage where hundreds of agents carry the same flag differentiating within the brand becomes difficult. At Serhant in its Bay Area early stage Kenneth has more access to the marketing and creative resources the brand provides and more visibility within a smaller peer group.

The brand identity he built independently is called Own Square Foot. The name came during a drive to Joshua Tree with his wife. His Instagram handle remains @sqftbyken from the earlier iteration Squarefoot by Ken. He chose not to brand under his own name from the beginning because his marketing background told him a brand identity would serve him better long-term than an eponymous practice.

How to Reach Kenneth Pang

Call or text 415-475-9159. Kenneth responds faster than most people expect and describes being immediately available as a core part of how he serves clients. Visit ownsqft.com. He works across the San Francisco Peninsula from the city south through Palo Alto and serves buyers and sellers at all stages including early-stage exploration of whether they are ready and what they need to do to prepare.

John Wei is available for Bay Area mortgage pre-approval and financing strategy across the Silicon Valley and San Francisco Peninsula market. Reach out to John Wei to connect on the lending side of any transaction Kenneth is working.

Sources

SanFranciscoAssociationofRealtors.com
NAR.realtor
MortgageNewsDaily.com
ConsumerFinancialProtectionBureau.gov
Investopedia.com