About Paulo Serna

Paulo Serna is a San Francisco real estate agent with Compass and Level Up Group, a REALTOR, and a First Time Buyer Specialist (FTBS, a California Association of REALTORS certification). He works with first-time buyers, move-up sellers, repeat clients, and small investors across San Francisco, and into Marin, the East Bay, and the Peninsula when that is where a client's search leads. His home turf is the city's west side, from Central Richmond and the broader Richmond District through the Sunset, where he lives and knows the blocks street by street.

Paulo has lived in San Francisco since 1995, first in the Sunset near West Portal and now in Central Richmond. He holds a B.S. in General Engineering from Santa Clara University and spent his years before real estate in property management, construction project management, and solar engineering. That background shapes how he tours a property: he is reading the building, not just the finishes. Foundations, drainage, roofs, electrical, and work done with or without permits get the same attention as the kitchen, because a home can show beautifully and still be a long-term money pit.

He was born in Colombia and is fluent in English and Spanish. Arriving in a new country teaches you to listen closely, to what people say and what they actually mean, and that habit is the foundation of how he works with clients today: understand what someone is really trying to solve before recommending anything.

Paulo's approach is simple to describe and harder to find. He treats every transaction as a long-term decision, not a closing. Sometimes the right advice is to wait, to rent the property out instead of selling, or to walk away from a house that does not hold up under inspection. He says so plainly, even when it means no transaction for him, because clients who are told the truth early come back and send their friends.

His work spans single-family homes, condominiums, TICs, duplexes, and two-to-four unit buildings. He publishes Paulo's Pulse, a bi-weekly read on the San Francisco market built from governed MLS closing data, so that pricing conversations start from what actually closed last month rather than from headlines. Clients get that same data applied to their block, their property type, and their timeline.

Paulo joined Level Up Group because few people reach the highest level of client service without a team behind them. The team's systems and depth let him spend his time where it counts: reading disclosures, structuring offers, negotiating, and being available when a decision has to be made quickly.

When he is not with clients, Paulo is on a bike. Cycling is his way of thinking, and he rides across the city and over the Golden Gate Bridge several times a week. He is also a serious student of San Francisco bakeries, with more than twenty years of research behind his recommendations, and will happily point you to the pastry worth the detour.

Read more, including the neighborhood guides and the latest Pulse issue, at https://www.pauloserna.com.