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Rents are dropping across the US

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Re: Rents are dropping across the US

#281

Post by jseliger »

mortenjorck wrote: post #115
ghaff wrote: post #3

"across the US" as in "in expensive coastal cities." I don't know the broader trend but, anecdotally, I know people who have/are in the process of moving out of cities for more rural locations. One couple I know just moved out of a major Northeast city to the coast of Maine. Others are seriously considering vacating NYC etc. With many tech industry jobs mostly WFH until the end of the year and the future in general u…

"Expensive" and "coastal" are critical caveats. Looking at the full Zumper report ( https://www.zumper.com/blog/rental-price-data/ ), there are surprisingly high year-over-year increases in a lot of other metro areas: Arizona sees nearly 8% increases in both Scottsdale and Tucson; Austin, TX is up almost 7% while even California has seen sizable increases in its second-tier cities like Sacramento (7%) and Bakersfield…

If we only had some kind of technology that could be used to increase the number of housing units on a given parcel of land, we could increase the supply of housing in a given area until it matched the number of people who wanted to live there.

Re: Rents are dropping across the US

#282

Post by hackernews »

asdfman123 wrote: post #111

One dark thing the article doesn't seem to mention: what about COVID-19 evictions? Have to get new tenants when the old ones are being kicked out or going back home to live with their parents.

You're correct, it's dark thing and that no one is talking about it.

How do courts open back up when 30%+ rentals are overdue on rent?

Re: Rents are dropping across the US

#283

Post by chadlavi »

mdorazio wrote: post #210
chadlavi wrote: post #34

I for one am ready and rarin' to go for a housing market crash (or "correction" if you wanna call it that) here in NYC, and strongly encourage everyone who doesn't feel like living here to strike out for the heartland. It'll be a better city all around with fewer people and lower rents.

I've been thinking about this and the problem I keep circling around is that basically everyone I know says the exact same thing (waiting for a housing market drop so they can buy in). That implies that the latent demand in the market is huge and any price drops will immediately be gobbled up by an army of millennials who've been waiting for their chance. The question to me is if there are more homes existing owners…

This is an annoyingly good point, honestly.

I'm mostly hoping that a lot of the other millennials who have been waiting their chance are planning to skip town for some cheaper suburbs.

Re: Rents are dropping across the US

#285

Post by kregasaurusrex »

kyledrake wrote: post #193
pengaru wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe they really want to be with their extended family in a suburb of Cleveland. This especially made me laugh because the VP of Eng at one of my Silicon Valley startups was from Cleveland and would often joke "I escaped a prison sentence by leaving Cleveland" and "The place is so polluted the river caught on fire, TWICE!".

That fire was in 1969. This is kind of like moving to SF because it used to have hippies. I've been to Cleveland and it's actually a pretty solid place to live. I would argue you could have a far better life there with a $50k house than slavishly working for the rest of your life for a multi-million dollar tiny home in a giant sprawled out suburb. FWIW I never met a single person in the bay area that didn't want to l…

After the 2008 housing recession, the price of homes in suburban Cleveland dropped to some of the lowest levels in the country. You'd likely pay more for a new car than buying an entire house, after incentives like the first-time homebuyer's credit. The locally famous Cleveland Tourism video[0] said that you could buy a house for the price of a VCR and it's not too far off.

[0] https://youtu.be/oZzgAjjuqZM

Re: Rents are dropping across the US

#286

Post by jddj »

ACow_Adonis wrote: post #177
treeman79 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids change mindset. Kids love yards. They love the little creek that runs past. I love the safety. Small neighborhood, we all know each other and look out for the kids that run around playing.

I have a kid. And a cat. My neighbour has two kids and a dog. Their neighbour has a kid. Across the hall from them, two kids. approx 80 sqm apartments each. I might as well just copy your last paragraph. Additionally, we love the parks, the playgrounds, the gardens, we walk to childcare, walked to work before this whole pandemic thing. We all have memberships with the museum and the zoo that give us unlimited visits.…

Oh man, please allow me to do my best to offer some subjective validation of your life choices.

I grew up in one of the small, very coastal Australian towns that stayed beautiful but got expensive and boring (alternative seems to be: grew big and turned awful, not much middle ground here).

This was a ride your bike to school at 6 years old, spend one third of your life in the ocean, "just try to be home for dinner" town.

Then I spent some time in some of the nicer, central suburbs of a second tier Aussie city.

Then some small, blue collar northern European industry towns, then a major southern European city.

Of those, and given the chance/choice, I'd raise children in the tiny coastal village and the dense European city (within 100m of my apartment - pedestrian streets - there were two small playgrounds, a market, a school, a library, a park, the beach was a 15min walk). Anywhere between those two extremes and adventure turns into a thoroughly planned outing, with a strict time limit on the paid parking if you got lucky and found a spot.

The moderate densities are (or become) sprawling nothings with one coles/woolies/liquorland/bws/bunnings "hub" and long commutes to anywhere. Like you, many of my friends who plan to become young families seem to gravitate towards these starter-package lives, and although I'm probably listening for it, I hear the same regret and resignation from them that you do.

Older relatives live in more expensive versions of the same thing, with a better quality finish on the bathroom and a glass fence on the pool they never use, and an 80k SUV for the just-as-long commute. There might be a flashy bowls club filled with pokies instead of a shitty tavern filled with pokies.

Keep fighting the good fight. We build these 5 bedroom homes in the suburbs so that we're comfortable staying home. Because there's nothing to do outside, because we spent so much energy building nothing suburbs.

Re: Rents are dropping across the US

#287

Post by bradlys »

01100011 wrote: post #254
bradlys wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in my circle - none are leaving. We all recognize that leaving the area means leaving job opportunities behind too. We've seen what happens to engineers career trajectory who are remote at an in-person company.

So we can expect the population of the valley to shift towards even more career minded over achievers while normal folks flee. Great.

I mean - did we ever expect the trend to reverse? This region is built on the idea of professional opportunities (FAANG, bleeding edge tech, etc.) and the possibility of getting rich if you join the right startup (aka - buy the right lottery tickets/exercise-options).

I've only seen it get worse as I've spent my time here. Has it ever been worse in terms of wealth disparity? I think it will continue to get worse short of radical change. (Prop 13 dying, rezoning w/ hundreds of thousands of apartments built, radical public transit, etc.)

Re: Rents are dropping across the US

#288

Post by paulgb »

sickcodebruh wrote: post #255
paulgb wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the insight. Any perspective on NYC specifically?

I have no insight into other buildings but management where I live, a pricey 400+ unit in LIC, haven’t budged on anyone’s rent as leases end. Everyone we socialize with (we have a small daughter and there used to be a big crew of babies) has either left or is leaving in the next few months, the garage is less than half full — it’s a ghost town. They’re still raising rents and refused to negotiate with anyone we know.…

> The building is rent stabilized so maybe they fear that lowering the rent will make it impossible for them to hit certain numbers over the next few years?

A friend of mine was speculating this as well -- that the market hasn't moved as much as it could because landlords are worried about getting “locked in” at a lower rate. My hunch is that it's not entirely true yet, or else we'd be seeing more concessions (free first month, etc.) that don't impact the stabilized price -- at least in my Manhattan building, even concessions that have been offered (off and on) under normal circumstances are not listed any more.

Re: Rents are dropping across the US

#289

Post by qqqwerty »

legitster wrote: post #166
Pxtl wrote: post #38

Seems silly to discuss the falling rental prices in prestigious cities without even a nod to AirBNB. AirBNB rentals have collapsed , and so a lot of owners have moved their properties into conventional long-term rental. This has created a glut in the rental market, and is driving prices down. https://www.straight.com/news/some-vancouver-airbnb-units-ar...

A report came out that showed the effect is super weak: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3006832 "1% increase in Airbnb listings is causally associated with a 0.018% increase in rental rates and a 0.026%" This is about a fifth of the overall increase. We're talking about a $9-10 a month difference in rent in most urban areas. Not great, but clearly Airbnb is a small part of the problem.

You seem to be misinterpreting the study. The $9-10 a month number is for the median zipcode in the US, which is unlikely to be an urban area. And it represents the difference for each 1% increase in Airbnb listings. So a median zipcode with 10% more Airbnb listings would see a ~$100 difference in rent from a similar median zipcode.

Assuming that 'a fifth of the overall increase' is correct, that means that a place like SF can attribute at least a few hundred dollars a month in rent increases to AirBnB, as the median rent has increased by almost ~$2k since AirBNB came into existence.

Re: Rents are dropping across the US

#290

Post by tartoran »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #275
tartoran wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mangattan has been partially a ghosttown even before the COVID pandemic. If you walk around Manhattan, almost half the commercial space is empty, it has been empty for the past few years actually and now getting worse. The bubble is popping On the other hand it might be a good idea to be on the move and buy/rent something cheap.

Have lived and worked in Manhattan for years, and this is an exaggeration. Retail vacancy rate is more like 12-15% in Manhattan, and lower than that city-wide. It’s a problem, but Manhattan was in no way a “ghost town” with half the stores empty before the pandemic.

In the commercial sense a ghost town compared to 20 years ago when I first moved here. But yes, I think it’s not the right word.

I don’t know any official figure but I’ve seen entire blocks half-occupied or even less than that (storefronts) about half a year ago when I ventured to Manhattan. I was shocked then and imagine it must be worse now. I was reading an article about the real storefront occupancy rate in Manhattan and it is not a known thing. Various realtors have their internal figures but they don’t share it with the world, so any figures may as well be inflated by them. The bubble is wobbly if you ask me

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