John Woodruff

With over 37 years of experience in San Francisco real estate, John is an expert negotiator with a deep knowledge of the marketplace, neighborhoods, and homes. This knowledge, along with his connections and the respect of his colleagues in the business allows him to easily navigate every kind of market, successfully serving his clients, which include first-time home buyers to venture capital executives and even the occasional rock star.

Originally from the East Coast, John moved out to California to attend Claremont McKenna College. He quickly fell in love with Northern California and San Francisco and has lived here since 1980. Coming from a family that for over six generations had either been selling or building real estate, starting in the business came naturally to him. In 1993, after working for five years with his father at Merrill Lynch Real Estate, John migrated to Hill & Co., a prestigious luxury real estate brokerage, where he spent the next 25 years of his career as one of the firm’s top producing agents.

In 2018, John decided he wanted to optimize his ability to help his clients, thus his firm Aethos Real Estate was created in partnership with the powerful real estate technology firm, Reside. By leveraging Reside’s pioneering and innovative approach to the real estate industry and their exceptional technology-driven marketing, John is able to focus directly on his clients and their needs, as well as foster relationships within the community and across the country. This allows Aethos’ clients the advantage of an experienced, boutique brokerage providing unrivaled technology-driven services and marketing sophistication.

John chose the name Aethos, because throughout his career as a realtor he has been guided by his ethics: Respect, Integrity, Accountability, and Empathy. He is known for making the process of buying or selling a property as pleasant and stress-free as possible. He does this with humor, enthusiasm and his dedication to his client’s wellbeing.

Prioritizing a work/life balance, John is able to carve out plenty of time to spend with his lovely wife and three children. Additionally, he volunteers at their schools, travels, performs in local theater, and teaches theatrical and historical fencing.

On of John's advantage's as an agent is his Aethos Revive program. Through it the Aethos team brings a variety of options for their sellers to improve their property, prior to sale, without paying for it until close of escrow. Recently we have helped over a dozen of our sellers to spruce or extensively renovate their homes and stage them with amazing additions to the seller's profit. One home in the St. Francis Woods neighborhood, we did a $500k renovation. Prerenovation value was estimated at $2.2M. It sold for $4.2M! Another condo in Buena Vista Heights had been pretty thoroughly trashed, so much so it could not have even gotten a loan and our estimate was about $750-800k for a 3 bedroom/2 bath. We put about $200K in and sold it with 15 offers for over $1.6M. And if a seller needs cash quick, we have a couple of different options where we can potentially buy it on the spot and do renovations later, with a possible profit share with the sellers after. Just reach out to find out more or check out our website for more info. We are here to help, one smart move at a time.