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Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

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Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#681

Post by conanbatt »

fineline wrote: post #526
AndrewBissell wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The runup in real estate prices is fundamentally driven by the huge amounts of money printing by the Fed earlier this decade. The Bay Area has just been the canary in the coal mine on this because the strong job growth and self-injurious housing policies caused the price pressures to show up earlier than elsewhere, but it will become an undeniably nationwide phenomenon soon enough. High real estate prices & rents are…

Bingo. I do wonder why people insist on seeing house price inflation as being solely caused by rising value of houses - due to increasing demand, constrained supply ... kitchen renos? - without acknowledging the role of the falling value of money - increased supply via deregulated debt creation, artificially low interest rates and QE. The capital gain on housing then becomes a self-reinforcing loop as capital seeks y…

I buy into the increased supply by the fed, but i falter to understand what the prediction on that model is.

As someone that worked in RE, housing has been sensibly overpriced based on wages since at least a few years ago and globally. But its also not clear it would crash, because housing has met genuine demand.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#682

Post by conanbatt »

rcoder wrote: post #331
joebubna wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm. I both recently sold my home, and used to be a licensed real estate appraiser before switching to Software Dev. Our house in the not-super-desirable area of NE Portland was worth ~$265k when we looked at the data in late February/March of this year (strong data supporting that number). When we finally put it on the market in the beginning of May, it sold in 1 day, with multiple offers, for a sales price…

We bought a small one-bedroom condo in downtown PDX for my brother to live in ~3 years ago b/c it seemed like a better investment than random stocks/ETFs. He lived there for a year, and we rented it part-time for another four months. Purchase price was $145k. Sale price (after only 16 months) was $190k. We used to proceeds from that sale to buy a two-bedroom house for my parents move into for their retirement. Paid $…

Not inflation, demand shock.

Inflation is generalized increase in prices. Im sure beers and miso-fries have barely changed prices if at all.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#683

Post by x2f10 »

refurb wrote: post #420
projectramo wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually hopeful since there are so many secondary and tertiary tech cities. This means: we should all buy houses in the secondary tech hubs that are still affordable so our kids can afford to have families at tech firms when housing becomes unaffordable.

Trust me, it's not different this time. The crazy hot housing markets will eventually falter and go down in price. It always happens and as interest rates start to rise it's going to happen in the not too distant future.

I can't wait. I'm in the NW and housing is to the point that a 'starter family' is incapable of living in a 'starter home'. Studio apartments $1,200+.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#684

Post by davidw »

JBlue42 wrote: post #663
davidw wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market would absolutely produce more housing in a lot of places were there not a ton of regulations in place to stop it from doing so. And I don't write that as a fingers-in-ears, market-will-solve-all-problems libertarian, but as a fairly left-wing guy.

There has to be an incentive for real estate developers. There's a project at my former company that will redevelop a part of downtown SF. There was a massive back and forth and iterations that had to be done because the numbers guy at the real estate development company wanted to cut out all residential since commercial would be more profitable. Those are the people you have to incentivize to make it work.

What SF probably needs is not huge projects downtown, but more incremental growth further out. In Europe, in a city that size, you'd see a lot more 4/5/6 story development, rather than the huge skyscrapers downtown and then 1/2/3 story in a lot of residential areas.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#685

Post by JBlue42 »

davidw wrote: post #684
JBlue42 wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has to be an incentive for real estate developers. There's a project at my former company that will redevelop a part of downtown SF. There was a massive back and forth and iterations that had to be done because the numbers guy at the real estate development company wanted to cut out all residential since commercial would be more profitable. Those are the people you have to incentivize to make it work.

What SF probably needs is not huge projects downtown, but more incremental growth further out. In Europe, in a city that size, you'd see a lot more 4/5/6 story development, rather than the huge skyscrapers downtown and then 1/2/3 story in a lot of residential areas.

I agree. Same in LA. I was merely pointing out things I heard directly from people working with a major real estate developer there. I know from the design side that there was a major fight to try and get in some sort of affordable residential vs what the developer was hearing from their number crunchers.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#686

Post by [deleted] »

conanbatt wrote: post #677
aswanson wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they're eating their own lunch. I'd bet if the metric is revenue-per-employee, 37Signals is probably kicking most of the bigger tech companies arses.

37Signals does not have a scale worth comparing to.

[deleted]

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#687

Post by lancefisher »

client4 wrote: post #14

Montana, a land of National parks, natural beauty, fast internet, and a low cost of living has a number of high tech jobs open. Full disclosure, I own an internet company here and want more tech savvy people in the area ;) Social Finanace (SoFi) | Helena, MT Oracle | Bozeman, MT OnXMaps | Missoula, MT Zaneray Group | Whitefish, MT Submittable | Missoula, MT Applied Materials | Kalispell, MT

I'm late to the party, but if anyone here is interested in opportunities in Missoula, I'm happy to talk. I work at Submittable (YC S12) and we'll be hiring more engineers in 2018.

I have been back in Missoula since 2001, and worked a number of different tech jobs here from local government to remote to public companies and startups.

The tech scene has grown a ton here over the last 15 years. There are good opportunities. The biggest hurdle I've seen is being able to find good work for your SO.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#688

Post by davidw »

JBlue42 wrote: post #685
davidw wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What SF probably needs is not huge projects downtown, but more incremental growth further out. In Europe, in a city that size, you'd see a lot more 4/5/6 story development, rather than the huge skyscrapers downtown and then 1/2/3 story in a lot of residential areas.

I agree. Same in LA. I was merely pointing out things I heard directly from people working with a major real estate developer there. I know from the design side that there was a major fight to try and get in some sort of affordable residential vs what the developer was hearing from their number crunchers.

Yeah, stuff in SF is complex. Could be that, yeah, if they decided to add some residential, they got more NIMBY pushback, or some kind of requirement to add N% 'affordable' that made it pencil out as less profitable.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#689

Post by JBlue42 »

davidw wrote: post #688
JBlue42 wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Same in LA. I was merely pointing out things I heard directly from people working with a major real estate developer there. I know from the design side that there was a major fight to try and get in some sort of affordable residential vs what the developer was hearing from their number crunchers.

Yeah, stuff in SF is complex. Could be that, yeah, if they decided to add some residential, they got more NIMBY pushback, or some kind of requirement to add N% 'affordable' that made it pencil out as less profitable.

It's possible but honestly I don't think that's a factor only that commercial real estate in downtown SF is going to get them more bang for their buck right now. Their timeline is looking 5-10 years out so they have their shit together (as well as experience) to deal with SF stuff.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#690

Post by philgoetz »

softawre wrote: post #435
rdtsc wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing is these companies talk about digital connectivity moving to the cloud, editing files in the cloud, video conferencing in the cloud, make social networks in the cloud, buy things online without leaving your house, watch movies online etc. Everything is online, pretty, efficient, and convenient. Then they turn right around and tell all their employees to move to the area, then to get in their cars, bus…

If that's really such a waste then where are all the remote-only companies eating everybody's lunch? Has it not yet been long enough since remote working has reached some workable peak?

Google and Amazon have, instead of going remote, established branch offices all over the US, in every cool city where hip young non-Republicans live.
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