The rents are astounding to me as an Atlanta area resident. My fully loaded mortgage+escrow payment on an entire 3 BR house with a full basement (in which I have an office and wired for Cat6 ethernet) is less than $1100/month. There are tons of tech companies within commuting distance and even more remote work opportunities as a developer. Chances are good that we'll finally have gigabit fiber to the home within a year and current Comcast service is serviceable at 75 MBps.
Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets
181–190 of 352 posts
Re: Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets
#182Is this trend holding for the whole bay, or just SF?
(Looking at possibly taking a job in Mountain View)
Re: Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets
#183Re: Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Woah, I knew about things being bad in the USA, but I didn't know living conditions are going towards third-world standards :/ Where I live (The Netherlands) there are laws that even protect foreign workers (i.e. from Poland) from all being stuffed in a single room. At this point it's starting to look like even jail cells have more room and privacy.
This is not representative of the US.
It's not even representative of Los Angeles. The "one-day notice" thing makes this person's situation different, but it's not hard at all to find 2 bedroom apartments for less than $2400, even in expensive areas like Hollywood. Split each bedroom two ways (assuming relatively "equal" bedrooms…) and you'd have If you expand the scope to Long Beach, the Valley, and South Bay, I'm sure you could find some 3BRs for < $2000 and pay around $600/mo to have your own room. For what it's worth, among my friends in LA — most of whom aren't well-off tech workers — none split a bedroom with anyone other than a significant other.
Re: Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets
#185I 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…
NIMBY is a real and powerful lobby.
The thing though with this situation is that things have been so bad and so extremely NIMBY that it isn't really possible to do worse.
Things are still bad, but when rents hit the outer atmosphere, there isn't really anywhere for them to go but down.
Re: Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets
#186Los Angeles though... :( One of my friends just moved here and is sharing a 5-bedroom home with 25 other people. I thought he was bullshitting me, and I still couldn't believe it when I went over. He's paying $600 a month to share a bedroom with four other guys. He told me it was the best thing he could find on 1-day notice. He pays for rent online, and he has no idea who the actual owner is, nor who is actually rece…
Woah, I knew about things being bad in the USA, but I didn't know living conditions are going towards third-world standards :/ Where I live (The Netherlands) there are laws that even protect foreign workers (i.e. from Poland) from all being stuffed in a single room. At this point it's starting to look like even jail cells have more room and privacy.
I'm reasonably sure there are laws against this in LA, too. It doesn't sound like an above-board operation at all. (Unless it literally is a hostel, as some have said, and the OP misunderstood.)
Re: Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
that's cheap if it's a decent place in a nice neighborhood. i was doing 1500 (utilities included) on nob hill with 3 other roommates and 1 bathroom a year ago. and that was the cheapest i could find in a decent location, and that's including many of my emails that went unanswered.
For historical perspective - when I first moved out to the Bay Area in 2009, I paid $900/month for a master bedroom + private bath in a 3BR townhome, in Mountain View. My roommates paid $650/month. If you've never been through a downturn in the Bay Area, you'll be amazed at how low prices can go (and also at how many people can become unemployed and move back to where they came from).
I've read Yelp reviews on a previous 2/2 in San Mateo. $2600 at that point, one review had a price listed a few years back (~2011), ended up being near 20% increase year over year.
Also heard of the U-Haul stories of where there was none left in the bay because everyone moved out. Don't think that's going to happen this time around. Think that start ups, or at least their employees will be acquired into bigger/more stable companies. Did that happen last time around? For example, did Yahoo, AOL, PayPal go on a buying spree?
Re: Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets
#188The best cure for high prices is high prices. Very few trust that supply vs demand doesn't work, but it absolutely does. Sure there will be temporary spikes in price, but as rents go to ridiculous heights (I think $5000 for a 2 br condo is utterly ridiculous, and that prices is about 5 years old in SOMA), it will abate at some point. As long as there isn't a monopoly, or people aren't manipulating the markets, fair a…
It's very debatable whether the SF property market could be considered a fair and properly functioning market, given the massive impediments to new construction, legislative rent controls, and crazy tax breaks for longtime residents.
Re: Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets
#189Los Angeles though... :( One of my friends just moved here and is sharing a 5-bedroom home with 25 other people. I thought he was bullshitting me, and I still couldn't believe it when I went over. He's paying $600 a month to share a bedroom with four other guys. He told me it was the best thing he could find on 1-day notice. He pays for rent online, and he has no idea who the actual owner is, nor who is actually rece…
The homelessness problem in LA is getting worse, too. There are something like 40 people becoming homeless every day; that's about 15,000 each year...
Re: Rents are plunging in the most expensive U.S. markets
#190Clicked on that list hoping to see good news in Seattle... turns out we're up more than any other city in the top 10. Sigh. There actually is a decent amount of housing construction in progress but it seems like it's not nearly enough.
I've been seeing a 9.5% year-over-year increase on our apartment in Downtown Bellevue. We stay because it's still the best deal we can get in the area for an apartment the same size as ours.
But paying what we pay in rent is depressing. I record and chart our expenses in a spreadsheet and the piece of the pie for rent just dwarfs everything else.