Short version: Everyone in this business talks about AI money hitting the housing market. Almost nobody checks the calendar it runs on. Equity does not become spendable when a company gets valuable. It becomes spendable on specific dates set by lockup agreements, tender offers and vesting schedules, most of which are published. We pulled those dates for the Bay Area companies that employ enough people here to matter. The next eighteen months hold one large IPO unlock, two private tender offers that happen on a reliable annual cycle, and two confidential IPO filings with no date attached. We are publishing the calendar. We are not going to tell you what it does to prices, because a year of sales data just taught us how easy that is to get wrong.
Why a calendar instead of a forecast
In August we argued that AI hiring in San Francisco would push housing demand out into the East Bay. We checked that against 100,076 closed sales and found the demand was real and the geography was wrong. It concentrated inside ten miles of downtown San Francisco instead of travelling out along BART.
That result changed how we work. The thing we can establish here is when equity converts to cash, because companies file it. The thing we cannot establish is where that cash goes, because nobody files that. So this piece does the first part properly and is honest about the second.
Three ways equity becomes money
They work differently and they matter on different dates.
A lockup follows an IPO. Employees and early investors agree not to sell for a set period, classically 180 days. That convention has been coming apart. Recent offerings use staged releases tied to earnings dates and share-price thresholds, so a single company now has four or five unlock dates. Cerebras let non-executive employees sell a slice on the first day of trading, and another slice on day two if the stock closed a third above the offer price (Evercore Wealth Management).
A tender offer is how private companies do it. The company, or an investor, buys shares back from employees at a set price. There is no public market involved and no lockup, and the terms are set by the company: who may sell, how much, and whether people who have left are included. OpenAI capped its October 2025 tender at $30 million per person, and about 75 employees hit that cap (Sherwood News). Rippling capped its 2024 offer at 25% of vested equity and barred former employees who had gone to eight named competitors (TechCrunch).
A double-trigger RSU is the instrument most private-company employees hold. It vests on two conditions: the normal four-year service schedule, and a liquidity event. Until both happen the employee owns nothing sellable and owes no tax. When both happen, several years of vesting land at once (Carta). That is the mechanism behind the idea of money arriving in a lump. It is real. It is also the reason the tax bill arrives in a lump.
The calendar
Bay Area headquartered companies only. A company whose staff live in Los Angeles does not move a house in Rockridge, whatever its market capitalisation.
The two that actually matter
Cerebras is the single largest unlock in the window. It listed on 14 May 2026 at $185 a share, priced $25 above its range, at a fully diluted valuation of $56.4 billion, and raised $5.55 billion (TechCrunch). It closed at $210.05 on 4 September, above the offer price, which matters: an unlock only produces sellers if the stock is worth selling. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, which points at the Peninsula and the South Bay.
The private tenders are the more reliable source. A lockup happens once. Stripe has run an employee tender in February two years running, at a $91.5 billion valuation in 2025 and $159 billion in 2026 (Stripe). Databricks has folded employee liquidity into a December funding round two years running (Databricks). Its chief executive has said publicly that he is using tender offers as a substitute for going public. OpenAI has now run four tenders in three years, the most recent in August 2026 at $7 billion, funded from its own cash, with no new investors involved.
For a listing agent that pattern is more useful than any IPO rumour. A recurring February and December cycle is something you can plan a spring launch around. An IPO with no date is not.
How much of it is spendable
Less than the headline, and the gap is bigger than most people expect.
Equity proceeds are supplemental wages. Employers withhold a flat 22% federally on the first million dollars in a calendar year and a mandatory 37% on everything above that (IRS Publication 15). California adds a flat 10.23% on bonuses and stock (EDD DE 231PS). For someone whose actual marginal rate lands above the blended withholding, and at these numbers it usually does, the shortfall shows up as a payment due the following April.
What that means in practice: a buyer who unlocked in October has a real number in November and a smaller one after they have set aside what they owe in April. We have watched more than one pre-approval get rebuilt in February when the tax picture came into focus. It is worth doing that arithmetic before writing an offer, not after.
What we do not know
Three things, and we would rather say so than write around them.
We do not know how many people are involved. Companies disclose global headcount, not how many employees live in Alameda County. Not one of the nine recent Bay Area IPOs breaks that out, and we are not going to substitute an estimate from a data vendor for a number that does not exist.
We do not know that unlocked equity gets sold. When Anthropic completed a tender offer in April 2026 at a $350 billion valuation, it came in short of roughly $6 billion of investor demand, because employees held their shares back rather than selling into it (Bloomberg). Employees at a company they think is going higher behave like investors. That single fact undercuts most of what gets written about tech wealth and housing, including some of what we wrote in August.
We do not know where it lands. We ran the correlation between a city's distance from downtown San Francisco and its price change across 102 cities. It came out at −0.10, which is close to nothing. The ring pattern is strong in aggregate and weak city by city. Knowing that money exists somewhere in San Francisco tells you very little about any particular house in Berkeley.
So what do we do with it
We treat it as a hypothesis with a test date attached. The unlock dates above are known. Our quarterly price map refreshes with every closed sale in nine counties. If the Cerebras unlock in late autumn moves anything, it will show up in Sunnyvale, Mountain View and the Peninsula cities in the January or April refresh, and we will report what we find whichever way it goes. That is the same standard we held our August forecast to.
If it does not show up, that is also worth publishing. A market story that survives contact with the sales record is worth something. One that does not survive should be retired.
What this means if you are selling
If you own on the Peninsula or in the South Bay, there is a plausible bid arriving in your market this autumn and winter, and it is concentrated among people who work at one company in Sunnyvale. That is a reason to be precise about who your buyer is, and to have your house ready in that window, which means booking the painter around it.
If you own in the East Bay, the honest answer is that the last twelve months gave the inner ring the gains and gave the outer ring nothing, and none of the dates above obviously changes that. Price to what your own city did. Look it up. The regional number will not tell you.
If you are a buyer holding equity that unlocks on one of these dates, talk to your accountant before you talk to a lender. The difference between the gross number and the number you can actually put down is the whole conversation.
Frequently asked questions
Does an IPO lockup expiring mean everyone sells? No. It means they may. Whether they do depends mostly on where the stock is trading against the price they expect, which is why a company trading below its offer price often produces a quiet unlock and a company trading above it produces a busy one.
Why do private companies run tender offers at all? To keep employees without going public. Staff with vested equity and no way to sell it eventually leave. A tender releases pressure and lets the company stay private, which is what Databricks has said it is doing deliberately.
Are these dates certain? The ones marked done are certain. The recurring tenders are patterns, not commitments, and no company has promised to repeat them. The Cerebras unlock is defined by a trigger in its filing, so it moves if its earnings date moves.
Is this financial advice? No. We are real estate agents, not advisers, and nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security. On the tax and equity questions above, talk to your own accountant.
Sources
Cerebras IPO terms: company release, TechCrunch, 424B4. Lockup conventions: Evercore Wealth Management. Figma extended lockup: SEC 8-K. Ethos early release: company release. OpenAI tenders: Fortune, CNBC, TechCrunch. Anthropic tender and IPO filing: Bloomberg, TechCrunch. Stripe: company release. Databricks: company release. Rippling: TechCrunch. Withholding: IRS Publication 15, California EDD. RSU mechanics: Carta.
Analysis by The Lederer Team at Red Oak Realty. Housing figures from Bay Area MLS closed sales, August 2025 through July 2026 against the twelve months prior. Company dates from the sources listed above. Not an appraisal and not investment advice. For a read on a specific home, ask us or call 510-774-4231.
