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The Housing Market in San Francisco and Ideas to Fix It

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Re: The Housing Market in San Francisco and Ideas to Fix It

#161

Post by ceejayoz »

magnetix wrote: post #108
Agustus wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your example, the building you describe is a condominium? If so, then what does it matter what your tax bill is and if they are absentee owners; if the owner maintains the property, pays their bills and taxes, then you should be happy to have them. Tax reassessments during the boom of 2001 to 2007 were on track to price a lot of people out of their houses based on their current economic status. Proposition 13 and…

>If you have a job that pays $100,000 and the taxes on your $250,000 house is $7,500 (3% property tax) and the tax quadruples to $30,000 in five years; why would you want the market fluctuations to be able to force an individual to leave their house? A simple solution (for the elderly at least) would be to roll up all the debt until death, payable by the estate.

> A simple solution (for the elderly at least) would be to roll up all the debt until death, payable by the estate.

Simple until the next housing crisis.

Re: The Housing Market in San Francisco and Ideas to Fix It

#162

Post by muzz »

x0x0 wrote: post #145
muzz wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The magnitude of Prop 13's distortions contribute much more to the problem than policies that a city could implement itself. Housing is often viewed as a San Francisco problem, but really it's an area-wide problem acutely and a state-wide problem more broadly. I.e., areas outside the policy of San Francisco, such as peninsula, south bay, etc, are not significantly cheaper. And entire other metros, like Los Angeles an…

prop13 doesn't prevent sf from building, and building up.

Not directly. But it promotes a land grab by entitling the owners of that land, and discourages redeveloping existing properties bigger because the owner would then lose the entitlement have his property taxes increased.

Re: The Housing Market in San Francisco and Ideas to Fix It

#163

Post by jacalata »

x0x0 wrote: post #144
lubujackson wrote: post #134

I keep saying these same arguments put forth (add more affordable housing!) but the reality is that there are very specific laws that cause the crazy prices here and it ISN'T because of a lack of housing. It's lack of liquidity. First there is Prop 13, which is the Ponzi scheme that let's older owners pay basically the same tax rate forever. This means that landlords have little reason to repair or sell properties. W…

Fact: units built after 1979 are not rent controlled. Fact: neither are single family homes, including most condos if you moved in after 1 jan 1986 (30 years ago).

Has anyone tried to work out what percentage of the market is covered by rent control?

Re: The Housing Market in San Francisco and Ideas to Fix It

#164

Post by muzz »

x0x0 wrote: post #144
lubujackson wrote: post #134

I keep saying these same arguments put forth (add more affordable housing!) but the reality is that there are very specific laws that cause the crazy prices here and it ISN'T because of a lack of housing. It's lack of liquidity. First there is Prop 13, which is the Ponzi scheme that let's older owners pay basically the same tax rate forever. This means that landlords have little reason to repair or sell properties. W…

Fact: units built after 1979 are not rent controlled. Fact: neither are single family homes, including most condos if you moved in after 1 jan 1986 (30 years ago).

True but even with these, the percentage of rental units in SF that are rent-controlled is something like 75%

Re: The Housing Market in San Francisco and Ideas to Fix It

#165

Post by justifier »

lubujackson wrote: post #134

I keep saying these same arguments put forth (add more affordable housing!) but the reality is that there are very specific laws that cause the crazy prices here and it ISN'T because of a lack of housing. It's lack of liquidity. First there is Prop 13, which is the Ponzi scheme that let's older owners pay basically the same tax rate forever. This means that landlords have little reason to repair or sell properties. W…

> I keep saying these same arguments put forth (add more affordable housing!) but the reality is that there are very specific laws that cause the crazy prices here and it ISN'T because of a lack of housing. It's lack of liquidity.

i'm confused, how does liquidity affect the housing market?

if you can admit there is plenty of housing then why are you unwilling to simply say, 'all of you would be tenants move into this available housing'?

i think what you really mean by liquidity, which i'll interpret as an owner's ability to end a lease when and how they want, is that people, you?, want to live in a specific part of sf but all the housing there is already filled and the city has determined that those tenants' livelihood should be allotted some predictability by local law

this is the thing that confuses people who have lived in a neighborhood for 4, 8, or 16 years

the reason you want to move there is because of who is living there

evict all you want and it will just be those that paid for their place who remain and if those people are so flush that they can pay any amount to consume the local culture they want, then the question is, will they be willing to contribute to a local culture or will the region stagnate as some former cultural artifact

the poor will live where ever they can afford, and if that place is boring and seemingly uninhabitable then it is on them to make it fun, and they will, and then they will need to leave because you want to be where the pulse is at even if it is the exact same place you turned your nose up to 10 years earlier

fillmore in the 30s -> north beach in the 50s -> haight in the 70s -> mission in the 90s -> ???

() https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fillmore_District,_San_Francis...

() https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Beach,_San_Francisco

() https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haight-Ashbury

() https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_District,_San_Francisc...

Re: The Housing Market in San Francisco and Ideas to Fix It

#166

Post by TwoBit »

pascalxus wrote: post #29

I agree with the author for the most part: the ideal solution is to build lots more housing - it's the morally and ethically correct thing to do. But, SF lacks the political will to do this and we need to accept that. the 2nd best solution would be to get tech companies out of SF. I hate this solution as much as the author, but I think it's worth considering. There's no reason why tech companies must be in SF, when t…

For all these people complaining about San Francisco housing costs, I say: just go somewhere else. Nobody is forcing you to work or live there. By crowding in there you are just making it miserable for those already there.

Re: The Housing Market in San Francisco and Ideas to Fix It

#167

Post by Gibbon1 »

rsync wrote: post #98
muzz wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The magnitude of Prop 13's distortions contribute much more to the problem than policies that a city could implement itself. Housing is often viewed as a San Francisco problem, but really it's an area-wide problem acutely and a state-wide problem more broadly. I.e., areas outside the policy of San Francisco, such as peninsula, south bay, etc, are not significantly cheaper. And entire other metros, like Los Angeles an…

I am sympathetic to the notion that prop 13 is a massive distortion that is driving all of these problems ... But I have a hard time reconciling that with the relative pricing in other equally desirable coastal areas that do not have prop 13 (or anything like it). I am simplifying greatly, but in a broad sense, SF housing is as expensive as Boston housing is as expensive as NYC housing ... and certain hot-or-not insp…

I'm a life long Californian. I dislike Prop 13 and it's evil sister Prop 58 which allows children to inherit their parents property tax break along with the property. AKA my dad has a house with an assessed property tax value of about $75k, when he dies and my sister inherits it, she'll also inherit the $75k property tax valuation as well.

That said I don't think the current issues with housing in the bay area have much to do with Prop 13. It's why your schools suck. It's why the prices are high, because the carrying cost is 1% lower than you'd expect because property taxes are too low.

Real issue is the deranged FIRE based economy we have. FIRE Finance, Insurance, REal estate. Combined with low growth and income inequality. Means you have a lot of money pouring into 'hot markets' like SF, Boston, Vancouver etc. Same time there is collusion between the people that sit on the boards of large companies to suppress wages.

Re: The Housing Market in San Francisco and Ideas to Fix It

#168

Post by slackstation »

zt wrote: post #36
pascalxus wrote: post #29

I agree with the author for the most part: the ideal solution is to build lots more housing - it's the morally and ethically correct thing to do. But, SF lacks the political will to do this and we need to accept that. the 2nd best solution would be to get tech companies out of SF. I hate this solution as much as the author, but I think it's worth considering. There's no reason why tech companies must be in SF, when t…

(I'm the author) Even putting aside the ethical and moral arguments, which carry a lot of weight for me: (1) There are network effects in urban environments. (2) Globally, specific industries often concentrate in specific cities. A lot of tech has concentrated in the Valley up to the San Francisco. The effects are getting stronger as that migration occurs. That's a great thing: it allows for people to move between co…

Here in Santa Monica, CA companies are seeing more candidates because the ridiculous rents that you pay in SF affect your bottom line.

Living in SOMA requires $120k/yr minimum to responsibly afford renting a 1 bdrm. Getting paid 20% less but, having housing costing 1/4 of what it is in SF is a win overall. And this is coming from someone who loves the tech scene in SF. So many smart people, so many great ideas, so much energy. But, to move there, I'd have to make at least $35k/yr more just to break even and that's living in a hovel in comparison to where I live now.

Re: The Housing Market in San Francisco and Ideas to Fix It

#169

Post by tryitnow »

lubujackson wrote: post #134

I keep saying these same arguments put forth (add more affordable housing!) but the reality is that there are very specific laws that cause the crazy prices here and it ISN'T because of a lack of housing. It's lack of liquidity. First there is Prop 13, which is the Ponzi scheme that let's older owners pay basically the same tax rate forever. This means that landlords have little reason to repair or sell properties. W…

Hmmm, rent control has some problems, but your critique is missing a pretty big part of the picture.

We need to look at what the average rents are, not the average rents of current available units. Rent control reduces the former dramatically, but probably increases the latter. In other words, a lot of people are paying a lot lower rent than they would otherwise have to pay, but a lot of non-residents will have to pay higher rents in the future.

I used to be anti-rent control until I thought about both sides of the issue. Rent control can make sense if your goal is to "reward" long time residents, but it may discourage new residents. From a policy perspective you have to ask yourself "Does our city have a problem attracting new residents." SF does not have this problem. But there is a problem of long term residents being forced to move. Rent control alleviates the latter problem.

Re: The Housing Market in San Francisco and Ideas to Fix It

#170

Post by more_corn »

BurningFrog wrote: post #62
Fede_V wrote: post #31

Housing in SF is an incredibly powerful illustration of the danger of letting things get so bad that the usual remedies no longer apply. Basically: - Traditionally, the proper fix for a shortage of housing is to build more houses. Just lift the existing regulations, and let the free market do what it does best: take care of the demand at an efficient price. - However, after years and years of very slow building, the…

...the houses would almost all be built for the very well off. The amount of houses you'd have to build before you started constructing truly affordable housing is immense. This is a common mistake. In reality, all added supply brings down price levels across the board.

I don't think you thought this all the way though. True, each new unit reduces the delta between supply and demand. But for prices to actually drop that delta would have to be reduced dramatically. Also the housing market has interesting striations.

Reducing demand at the top prevents the demand for high-end from overflowing into mid and low end. This does little good if the majority of people moving to SF are middle class. (Which they probably are because bell curves) To make a real difference you have to also add massive quantities of mid and low end --quantities about an order of magnitude higher than SF is currently planning. (going by the 10x disparity between population growth and housing supply creation)

And here comes the hard part: it's hard to build middle end and affordable units when neighborhood associations block the building permit until the developer pays multi-million dollar bribes (sorry donations). http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/

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