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San Francisco, Silicon Valley rents plunge amid downturn

sfchronicle.com

111–120 of 342 posts

Re: San Francisco, Silicon Valley rents plunge amid downturn

#111
post #57

I expect in the near future, the urban rents in general will fall. Between COVID and rioting, living in a dense city just lost a lost of luster.

You overestimate our cultural attention span :) Anyway, even with COVID + Rioting, I'd much rather live in a big city than in the countryside.

Incidentally, I think this is the real harm of social media. I really believe our collective attention span is being decreased by infinite-scrolling feeds of content that demands nothing of the user other than clicking a little heart icon.

Re: San Francisco, Silicon Valley rents plunge amid downturn

#112

I live in the greater Boston area and recently all suburbian homes I've seen sold for more than the asking price. I'm not following rentals so cannot tell. I don't think prices gonna drop any time soon. I hope I'm wrong. Boston has tech but smaller than SF. It's big on pharma, hospitals, and universities. Such industries cannot switch to fully remote so change here might not be as drastic as in other places.

Houses are still selling for over asking in the Bay Area as well, although I did see an article saying 2019 prices were down 1.9% over 2018. Rentals are a different market.

Re: San Francisco, Silicon Valley rents plunge amid downturn

#113
My community has dropped prices 10% and is offering 1 month free (4 year old complex in north san jose). However they are not offering this to current renters whose renewals are coming up. They offered me a 0% increase and when I cited that the 5 other identical apartments are currently available for essentially 20% off (10% discount over 12 months plus one month free), they began been pushing the narrative that the rent will increase by the end of June and that I should sign now before they change the offer. So now its a waiting game.

Re: San Francisco, Silicon Valley rents plunge amid downturn

#114
post #85
post #33

Anyone seeing a similar dip in the NYC metropolitan area? I've been casually watching rents and not seeing much of a dip. It seems that there are less units available as well, so perhaps that is counterbalancing a decrease in demand.

Streeteasy data [0] shows a drop in listings but no fall in asking rents. However there has been a sharp rise in concessions - i.e. free month upon new lease signing. My guess is landlords are currently keeping apartments off the market rather lock in lower rents, and when they do need to move a unit they use concessions since they look better from an accounting basis. I think eventually we will see a fall in gross r…

Now that I think about it, you are right about there being more concessions. You are seeing a lot of "2-3 months free" listings now.

Re: San Francisco, Silicon Valley rents plunge amid downturn

#115
post #94

The employers and employees is getting use to work from home. It is just matter of time for certain percentages (20,30% or more) of folks decide to move out to Tracy, Sacramento, etc to just commute to work may once every 1,2 weeks or as needed.

There's an entire 1/8th complete housing development at Diablo Grande that looks like the result of a nuclear holocaust from last time someone thought people would commute 3 hours for the luxury of living absolutely nowhere.

Re: San Francisco, Silicon Valley rents plunge amid downturn

#116

I expect in the near future, the urban rents in general will fall. Between COVID and rioting, living in a dense city just lost a lost of luster.

People without kids aren't gonna move to the suburbs because of viruses/riots. Subrbian life is optimized for families.

Re: San Francisco, Silicon Valley rents plunge amid downturn

#117
post #55
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't even evict people right now due to the emergency regulations. I wonder why the landlords are even bothering right now? Wait until after, evict for non-payment (one of the only easy ways to evict), then either try to collect or send back rent to collections and claim it as a loss and move on.

We were once evicted from an in-law unit without cause. They wanted the space back for use as a home office. (I suspect that’s extremely common these days) In hindsight, we should have held out for a “make us move” offer. $10K’s is typical for that sort of situation in Berkeley. We’re too nice, and moved without a fight, in return the landlord came up with some BS reason to withhold our security deposit.

Before the bump in the move-out offer minimum, they could have done an Ellis Act eviction if they wanted to recover for their own use while paying you the minimum possible. (Actually, Ellis Act is one of the only eviction types allowed right now.) That said, it sounds like they wanted to have their cake and eat it too, so it's too bad you didn't feel like taking them to task.

Re: San Francisco, Silicon Valley rents plunge amid downturn

#118
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're staying in the same market and you already own, then it doesn't matter much. What matters more is that your other investments are relatively outperforming the house (likely already true because of the Fed's money printer). If you don't already own, waiting for a drop might be wise, but if you're going to sell stock to do it, you might wanna do it now. I'm looking at trading up to a new place right now and t…

> if you're going to sell stock to do it, you might wanna do it now Might be a wise move, but the current interest rates make it hard to pass up a mortgage..

Oh I'm assuming a mortgage is still involved. Buying a house purely with cash is a stupid move when the fed is handing out free money. Debt is a great tool if you use it correctly.

Re: San Francisco, Silicon Valley rents plunge amid downturn

#119
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're staying in the same market and you already own, then it doesn't matter much. What matters more is that your other investments are relatively outperforming the house (likely already true because of the Fed's money printer). If you don't already own, waiting for a drop might be wise, but if you're going to sell stock to do it, you might wanna do it now. I'm looking at trading up to a new place right now and t…

Doesn't "the Fed's money printer" inflate housing just as much as other assets?

Not without some substantial delay. The stock market and the housing market are definitely correlated, but not perfectly so.

Re: San Francisco, Silicon Valley rents plunge amid downturn

#120
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My rent was $4300. They're currently renting the same unit on a higher floor for $3500. You should ask them to lower your rent to $3500. Then ask if you can move in upstairs.

He probably can at the end of the lease, but usually not in the middle. I've done it, but it seems to take an open-minded management company. It also depends on things such as how much money/time/effort the landlord want to put into "turning" an apartment, the number of corporate long-term rentals a complex has, what the landlord thinks is going to happen in the near future, and even what property management software…

Right, I asked. And they literally laughed at me, which is what I expected.
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