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San Francisco has 637 homes on the market. Only one floats.

That would be 300 Channel St., Berth 55. The nearly 2,200-square-foot floating home has hit the market at $1.8 million and is one of only 20 that line Mission Creek — a waterway that runs from McCovey Cove near the Giants’ ballpark to Interstate 280 in Mission Bay, where it goes underground.

The listing is significant because it marks the first time one of the 20 bobbing abodes along Mission Creek has been been put on the open market, rather than being passed between family members or sold off-market to a friend, according to Philip De Andrade, president of the Mission Creek Harbor Association.

While the listing is creating buzz in the city’s real estate circles, it has raised concerns among current houseboat dwellers, who fear that selling to the highest bidder could change the character of a community that in 1960 moved to Mission Creek from Islais Creek, 2 miles south, De Andrade added.

For anyone who has looked longingly at the ragtag parade of vessels west of Oracle Park, the sale of the home at Berth 55 provides a rare opportunity to see what life is like on the water surrounded by San Francisco’s fastest-growing neighborhood, said Eric Castongia, the Zephyr real estate broker who has the listing. “Everybody has wondered about these places, but they could never get into them,” Castongia said.

Aside from being docked on a creek, the floating home is fairly typical San Francisco offering. It has a shingled Arts and Crafts vibe. It has a big open living room and kitchen with a fireplace, marble countertop, two decks, a master bedroom and a downstairs entertainment area. It has all the fancy appliances typical of landlocked condos. And its price tag is just a bit above San Francisco’s second-quarter median single-family home price of $1.65 million, according to the brokerage Compass.

But the experience of living on the boat is anything but typical, according to seller Amy Kuhlmann, who has lived on the vessel with husband Peter McCool for two decades.

Kuhlmann and McCool discovered the Mission Creek boat community 25 years ago when they went to a party there. McCool immediately told his wife that he intended to retire on Mission Creek — an idea that seemed far-fetched at the time because slips, the spaces where the boats are berthed, never came available. Plus, Kuhlmann wasn’t sure she wanted to leave her San Francisco house.

“We had a darling little house in Glen Park with a garden that I loved,” she said.

Still, McCool and Kuhlmann — who both worked in construction management — did what they were told was the only way to infiltrate the insular Mission Creek Community: They joined the Bayview Yacht Club, a blue-collar place that is the opposite of the stuffy clubs most associated with yachting culture. There they met about half of the creek residents and kept their ears to the water for docking opportunities. Even though they didn’t have a slip yet, they started working with an architect on designs.

As it turned out, an opportunity surfaced well before retirement age. In 1998, a 40-foot slip became available, and they grabbed it for $49,500. There wasn’t much of a structure tied up there — just a raft with a camping trailer on it.

“The guy who had lived there was named Slim,” Kuhlmann said.

After scrapping the old raft and trailer, they contacted Ian Moody in Sausalito to commission a barge. Most floating homes sit in concrete barges and most of them are constructed by Moody. “He is the only game in town,” she said. “They say he has built 300 barges and every one of them is still floating.”

The barge cost $23,200.

After having the boat tugged across the bay to Mission Creek, the couple then built the house right there — they acted as their own general contractors — which took 18 months. In August 1999, they moved in and christened it Oshun Oxtra, after the cute little riverboat in the Finnish comic series the Moomins.

They loved sharing the creek with 18 kinds of waterbirds — kingfishers, egrets, herons, cormorants, bufflehead and goldeneye. There were frequent sightings of sea lions, sharks, jellyfish and rays. Floating-home dwellers are a tight community and live cheek by jowl on the water, so there is more interaction than in a typical neighborhood.

“It’s like a great big family,” she said. “If you are in a family of 20 and you like 17 of them, that’s pretty good. Everybody takes care of everybody else.”

The creek community thrives in part because residents put a lot of volunteer work into the place, De Andrade said. Creek residents rescue loose moorings and keep the waterway clean. They built a community garden and park. When De Andrade’s houseboat sank in 2004, “the community came together to raise it and rebuild it.”

De Andrade said he is worried that collective spirit will vanish if Mission Bay’s floating homes become regarded as real estate investments available to the highest bidder.

“My biggest concern is that a speculative bidder paying top market rate might not understand the volunteerism, cooperation and community spirit that is essential to this place,” he said. “We have created a special place here with a lot of hard work.”

Even without the development of a floating home going on the open market, Mission Creekers have witnessed major changes to the neighborhood in the past two decades. When Kuhlmann and McCool arrived, there was nothing but warehouses on either side of the creek. The Giants had just opened ATT Park, and the first Mission Bay condos were still in the planning stages. UCSF had yet to start building its campus — there was no community center or hospital, no retail or parking garages.

“We watched all those condos marching down toward us, blocking our view,” Kuhlmann said.

But along with obstructed views and horrible traffic jams have come improvements. There are new parks and a public library, as well as restaurants and a food truck park. More than 5,000 housing units have popped up. Gus’s Community Market opened, becoming a gathering place for both the boat people and condo dwellers. Boat dwellers and condo owners meet up at the library on Wednesdays for weekly hikes.

While there are no comparative sales to indicate how fast the home —which is on the market for about $800 a square foot —is likely to sell or how much it will fetch, Sausalito broker Michele Affronte, a houseboat specialist, said it should go quickly. Affronte has sold five houseboats this year in Sausalito, which has about 600 houseboats and floating homes. The most expensive was $1.575 million, and the most affordable was $349,000. The highest floating-home price ever in Sausalito was $2.8 million.

De Andrade would not comment on the most recent floating-home sales. He said he sold his houseboat and bought another one last year, but both transactions were at “friendly valuations.”

“None of the sales have produced the kind of numbers we’re talking about here,” he said.

Kuhlmann and McCool hope to earn enough money from the sale to purchase another San Francisco house, this time on land. The boat is bigger than they need, and as they age — Kuhlmann is 64 and McCool 72 — the ramps and wharf will become harder to navigate. Kuhlmann said she has mixed feelings about leaving.

“I will miss the sun reflecting off the water and dappling the ceiling,” she said.

J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen

San Francisco has 637 homes on the market. Only one floats.

That would be 300 Channel St., Berth 55. The nearly 2,200-square-foot floating home has hit the market at $1.8 million and is one of only 20 that line Mission Creek — a waterway that runs from McCovey Cove near the Giants’ ballpark to Interstate 280 in Mission Bay, where it goes underground.

The listing is significant because it marks the first time one of the 20 bobbing abodes along Mission Creek has been been put on the open market, rather than being passed between family members or sold off-market to a friend, according to Philip De Andrade, president of the Mission Creek Harbor Association.

While the listing is creating buzz in the city’s real estate circles, it has raised concerns among current houseboat dwellers, who fear that selling to the highest bidder could change the character of a community that in 1960 moved to Mission Creek from Islais Creek, 2 miles south, De Andrade added.

For anyone who has looked longingly at the ragtag parade of vessels west of Oracle Park, the sale of the home at Berth 55 provides a rare opportunity to see what life is like on the water surrounded by San Francisco’s fastest-growing neighborhood, said Eric Castongia, the Zephyr real estate broker who has the listing. “Everybody has wondered about these places, but they could never get into them,” Castongia said.

Aside from being docked on a creek, the floating home is fairly typical San Francisco offering. It has a shingled Arts and Crafts vibe. It has a big open living room and kitchen with a fireplace, marble countertop, two decks, a master bedroom and a downstairs entertainment area. It has all the fancy appliances typical of landlocked condos. And its price tag is just a bit above San Francisco’s second-quarter median single-family home price of $1.65 million, according to the brokerage Compass.

But the experience of living on the boat is anything but typical, according to seller Amy Kuhlmann, who has lived on the vessel with husband Peter McCool for two decades.

Kuhlmann and McCool discovered the Mission Creek boat community 25 years ago when they went to a party there. McCool immediately told his wife that he intended to retire on Mission Creek — an idea that seemed far-fetched at the time because slips, the spaces where the boats are berthed, never came available. Plus, Kuhlmann wasn’t sure she wanted to leave her San Francisco house.

“We had a darling little house in Glen Park with a garden that I loved,” she said.

Still, McCool and Kuhlmann — who both worked in construction management — did what they were told was the only way to infiltrate the insular Mission Creek Community: They joined the Bayview Yacht Club, a blue-collar place that is the opposite of the stuffy clubs most associated with yachting culture. There they met about half of the creek residents and kept their ears to the water for docking opportunities. Even though they didn’t have a slip yet, they started working with an architect on designs.

As it turned out, an opportunity surfaced well before retirement age. In 1998, a 40-foot slip became available, and they grabbed it for $49,500. There wasn’t much of a structure tied up there — just a raft with a camping trailer on it.

“The guy who had lived there was named Slim,” Kuhlmann said.

After scrapping the old raft and trailer, they contacted Ian Moody in Sausalito to commission a barge. Most floating homes sit in concrete barges and most of them are constructed by Moody. “He is the only game in town,” she said. “They say he has built 300 barges and every one of them is still floating.”

The barge cost $23,200.

After having the boat tugged across the bay to Mission Creek, the couple then built the house right there — they acted as their own general contractors — which took 18 months. In August 1999, they moved in and christened it Oshun Oxtra, after the cute little riverboat in the Finnish comic series the Moomins.

They loved sharing the creek with 18 kinds of waterbirds — kingfishers, egrets, herons, cormorants, bufflehead and goldeneye. There were frequent sightings of sea lions, sharks, jellyfish and rays. Floating-home dwellers are a tight community and live cheek by jowl on the water, so there is more interaction than in a typical neighborhood.

“It’s like a great big family,” she said. “If you are in a family of 20 and you like 17 of them, that’s pretty good. Everybody takes care of everybody else.”

The creek community thrives in part because residents put a lot of volunteer work into the place, De Andrade said. Creek residents rescue loose moorings and keep the waterway clean. They built a community garden and park. When De Andrade’s houseboat sank in 2004, “the community came together to raise it and rebuild it.”

De Andrade said he is worried that collective spirit will vanish if Mission Bay’s floating homes become regarded as real estate investments available to the highest bidder.

“My biggest concern is that a speculative bidder paying top market rate might not understand the volunteerism, cooperation and community spirit that is essential to this place,” he said. “We have created a special place here with a lot of hard work.”

Even without the development of a floating home going on the open market, Mission Creekers have witnessed major changes to the neighborhood in the past two decades. When Kuhlmann and McCool arrived, there was nothing but warehouses on either side of the creek. The Giants had just opened ATT Park, and the first Mission Bay condos were still in the planning stages. UCSF had yet to start building its campus — there was no community center or hospital, no retail or parking garages.

“We watched all those condos marching down toward us, blocking our view,” Kuhlmann said.

But along with obstructed views and horrible traffic jams have come improvements. There are new parks and a public library, as well as restaurants and a food truck park. More than 5,000 housing units have popped up. Gus’s Community Market opened, becoming a gathering place for both the boat people and condo dwellers. Boat dwellers and condo owners meet up at the library on Wednesdays for weekly hikes.

While there are no comparative sales to indicate how fast the home —which is on the market for about $800 a square foot —is likely to sell or how much it will fetch, Sausalito broker Michele Affronte, a houseboat specialist, said it should go quickly. Affronte has sold five houseboats this year in Sausalito, which has about 600 houseboats and floating homes. The most expensive was $1.575 million, and the most affordable was $349,000. The highest floating-home price ever in Sausalito was $2.8 million.

De Andrade would not comment on the most recent floating-home sales. He said he sold his houseboat and bought another one last year, but both transactions were at “friendly valuations.”

“None of the sales have produced the kind of numbers we’re talking about here,” he said.

Kuhlmann and McCool hope to earn enough money from the sale to purchase another San Francisco house, this time on land. The boat is bigger than they need, and as they age — Kuhlmann is 64 and McCool 72 — the ramps and wharf will become harder to navigate. Kuhlmann said she has mixed feelings about leaving.

“I will miss the sun reflecting off the water and dappling the ceiling,” she said.

J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen