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Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets

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Re: Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets

#11
post #7

A friend used to rent out a spare room in SF on a regular basis. Two years ago, he could get $1850 for a single room with it's own bath room, furnished. We're talking 6-10 replies from a Craiglist post within 24 hours. Stopped renting it out about a year ago. He just posted it again. Zero takers at $1850. Finally got someone for $1600 (-13% decrease in rent) after a month. A dramatic change. The rental market in SF i…

>The rental market in SF is definitely turning towards the buyer. Am I misunderstanding something? If rents are going down (like you suggest in your story) wouldn't that mean that the rental market in SF is turning toward the renter? Edit: Thanks for the clarification. Terminology can be confusing since there can be buyers/sellers for the renting homes market and buyers/sellers for the buying homes market.

No, it would be turning toward (as in, in favour of) the buyer.

If it was turning toward the seller it would be fast to rent at a higher price (best situation for seller), yet he is describing the opposite, where buyers have plenty of time, choice, and more purchasing power.

Re: Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets

#12
post #7

A friend used to rent out a spare room in SF on a regular basis. Two years ago, he could get $1850 for a single room with it's own bath room, furnished. We're talking 6-10 replies from a Craiglist post within 24 hours. Stopped renting it out about a year ago. He just posted it again. Zero takers at $1850. Finally got someone for $1600 (-13% decrease in rent) after a month. A dramatic change. The rental market in SF i…

>The rental market in SF is definitely turning towards the buyer. Am I misunderstanding something? If rents are going down (like you suggest in your story) wouldn't that mean that the rental market in SF is turning toward the renter? Edit: Thanks for the clarification. Terminology can be confusing since there can be buyers/sellers for the renting homes market and buyers/sellers for the buying homes market.

A "buyer's market" is good for people who haven't bought yet but want to.

A "seller's market" is good for existing owners who want to sell.

Re: Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets

#14

The past 2 years for me have been about the enormous exposure of how rent has been going up and house affordability has become a real problem world-wide. As legislation started to get promoted in different countries (Vancouver's foreign tax, Berlin's Airbnb ban, Argentina rent-caps) I always thought that the origin of this entire problem is the low rates for lending, and that these laws would only be a hinderance to…

I agree that laws passed to deal with high housing costs are often counterproductive in the long run. The classic example is rent control.

Can you explain your theory that low rates drive high rent inflation? Seems like it would be the opposite for several reasons: low rates are associated with low inflation, low rates make it much cheaper to build and operate apartment buildings, etc.

Re: Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets

#16
post #7

A friend used to rent out a spare room in SF on a regular basis. Two years ago, he could get $1850 for a single room with it's own bath room, furnished. We're talking 6-10 replies from a Craiglist post within 24 hours. Stopped renting it out about a year ago. He just posted it again. Zero takers at $1850. Finally got someone for $1600 (-13% decrease in rent) after a month. A dramatic change. The rental market in SF i…

>The rental market in SF is definitely turning towards the buyer. Am I misunderstanding something? If rents are going down (like you suggest in your story) wouldn't that mean that the rental market in SF is turning toward the renter? Edit: Thanks for the clarification. Terminology can be confusing since there can be buyers/sellers for the renting homes market and buyers/sellers for the buying homes market.

[deleted]

Re: Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets

#17
I know nothing about the San Francisco housing market apart from what I've heard in discussions here on HN. The received wisdom here seemed to be that powerful NIMBY lobbies in SF were preventing needed development and causing the sky-high rent. But this article is talking about an "historic construction boom". Did something change regarding development in SF? Or was the NIMBY effect always a bit over-stated? Anyone care to speculate?

Re: Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets

#20

Can this please be re-titled as a US study? First blush of the article title made me go "What? Seriously?"; the two markets I look at first are London and Sydney.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-24/london-pro...
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