Could the ‘Full House’ Family Afford San Francisco in 2025?

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The “Full House” Tanner family lived in a gorgeous Victorian house in San Francisco with three kids, three adults and somehow made it work on the salaries of a TV host, a struggling musician and a stand-up comedian. That setup worked great for a sitcom in the 1980s and ’90s, but the math gets brutal when you apply 2025 San Francisco economics to their situation.

The question isn’t whether they’d struggle. It’s whether they could afford to live there at all without someone secretly being a millionaire. (One of them might be — after all, they lived in San Francisco! Maybe Uncle Jesse wrote a jingle for Google?) Here’s a look at how their finances measure up to the cost of living.

San Francisco’s Cost of Living Hits Hard

A family of four needs roughly $127,000 yearly to cover basic expenses in San Francisco. That’s just baseline living, not comfortable existence with savings and extras.

For what researchers call a modest but adequate standard of living including housing, food, child care, transportation, healthcare and taxes, a two-parent two-child family needs approximately $181,277 yearly. The central “Full House” crew had six people, which pushes costs even higher.

Median rent tells part of the story. A one-bedroom apartment averages $3,019 monthly while a two-bedroom runs $3,579. The Tanners would need at minimum a three-bedroom, realistically a four-bedroom. That’s easily $5,000 to $7,000 monthly just for rent in a standard apartment, not a Victorian house.

What the Characters Actually Earned

Danny Tanner worked as a morning TV host on “Wake Up San Francisco.” Comparably says this job will bring in the average salary of about $60,202. Although the average in San Jose, California, which is near San Francisco is $118,862. (And it’s good to note that there is a range that goes up to $276,379, and we don’t know how popular Danny or the show are.)

As a working musician (band member/jingle-writer), the typical U.S. musician like Uncle Jesse earns about $43,790 a year. If he supplemented that with radio/announcing work, median pay for “broadcast announcers/radio DJs” is about US $21.96/hour, but the work tends to be irregular. Maybe he also supplements this writing jingles, which might bring in an extra $10,000 a year, with some years bringing in more, and some years bringing in less.

As a (non-celebrity) comedian, Uncle Joey would maybe make $57,392 a year. He might supplement that with sporadic voice acting gigs, so that could be an extra windfall of $5,000 a year, but sometimes maybe more or less. 

The Combined Household Math

Adding the three adult incomes together gives a household range of about $180,000 to $250,000 annually. That sounds like a lot of money until you remember they lived in San Francisco.

The actual “Full House” Victorian house sold in 2025 for over $6 million. A mortgage on a $6 million house with 20% down would run approximately $35,000 monthly before property taxes and insurance. Add those costs and you’re looking at $40,000 to $45,000 monthly or roughly $480,000 to $540,000 annually just for housing.

Zillow says if you wanted to rent that very same Victorian, it would cost $8,290 a month. At the low end that’s $100,000 yearly just for rent before any other expenses.

The Reality Check

The combined household income of $180,000 to $250,000 can’t support housing costs of $120,000 to $480,000 annually while also covering food, child care, transportation, healthcare and everything else for six people. The math doesn’t work unless someone inherited the house mortgage-free or bought it decades earlier when prices were drastically lower.

Analysis of TV characters’ housing affordability confirmed that the “Full House” family’s income couldn’t realistically support their housing costs. The show never addressed this gap, which is fine because it’s fiction and the house functioned as a character itself.

How They Could Make It Work

The Tanner family could afford San Francisco in 2025 only under specific conditions. Danny would need to be a top-tier TV personality earning $250,000 or more. Jesse would need consistent high-paying jingle contracts or a successful music career bringing in $120,000 plus. Joey would need major voice acting gigs generating $100,000 annually. Even then they’d need to rent a standard apartment, not a Victorian mansion.

The more realistic scenario involves downsizing dramatically to a three-bedroom apartment, running an extremely tight budget, sacrificing savings and extras and still feeling financially stretched. Hey, we’d still watch that show!

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