San Francisco Apartment Rents Crater Up to 31%, Most in U.S. • Hacker News Board

Re: San Francisco Apartment Rents Crater Up to 31%, Most in U.S.

#241

Post by jojo2333 » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

JamesBarney wrote: post #213

temporalparts wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The magnitude of that demand will never reach the same height. I don't believe this; very few companies are okay with permanent remote work after the pandemic is over, even though they are very notable exceptions, eg Facebook. This also assumes the population of people interested in living in destination cities is constant, but it's been growing every year the last decade except this one. COVID and the possibilitie…

I work in oil and gas, by no means the epicenter of innovation and many of these companies are talking about a moving to a mostly remote work force to save on real estate expenses.

I don't buy the "cost savings" narrative.

By a long shot, the largest expense for large companies in employee salaries - rent, by comparison, is a drop in the bucket. What follows is that companies should be most concerned about employee and team productivity rather then office expenses.

Re: San Francisco Apartment Rents Crater Up to 31%, Most in U.S.

#242

Post by seanmcdirmid » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

seattletech wrote: post #211

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but it hasn’t happened yet, it’s a seller market ATM. And we just moved from Bellevue where we were renting, houses are actually cheaper in Seattle, we could never afford anything decent in Bellevue.

That's driven alot by the superior schools in Bellevue. 30% of Seattle kids go to private schools...

That isn’t true, no way do 30% of Seattle students go to private school. We moved to Ballard, which has some pretty good schools (it’s high school is a 9/10). And yes, schools are why we didn’t consider south Seattle.

Re: San Francisco Apartment Rents Crater Up to 31%, Most in U.S.

#243

Post by grawprog » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 4:15 PM UTC

leetcrew wrote: post #200

jdmichal wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet this is exactly what is done for farming: Paying farmers to leave fields fallow in order to maintain supply and thereby pricing. Dropping property prices shouldn't even be an issue for owners. Property value and thereby property taxes should also go down. As long as they can cover that, then they can continue to own the property. Except in reality everyone is actually leveraged against their property and don'…

> And yet this is exactly what is done for farming: Paying farmers to leave fields fallow in order to maintain supply and thereby pricing. I'm sure there are some subtleties I'm missing, but this has always struck me as a little odd. why do we subsidize agricultural production and then turn around and also pay farmers not to use fields to stop the price from falling too low? also a price collapse isn't necessarily ca…

>I'm sure there are some subtleties I'm missing, but this has always struck me as a little odd. why do we subsidize agricultural production and then turn around and also pay farmers not to use fields to stop the price from falling too low?

Farm fields need to be left fallow every four years or so to replenish the soil

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallow

>Fallow is a farming technique in which arable land is left without sowing for one or more vegetative cycles. The goal of fallowing is to allow the land to recover and store organic matter while retaining moisture and disrupting the lifecycles of pathogens by temporarily removing their hosts.

Fallow fields also tend to be good habitat for small mammals, which in turn draws in birds of prey and stuff and provides habitat for them.

These guys go a step further

https://deltafarmland.ca/

They work with farmers and pay them to actually plant native grasses and nitrogen fixing cover crops for a couple years to allow natural habitat to develop.

As far as I remember, those farmers tend to have a couple fields they rotate every 4 years or so. Leaving one fallow with natural grasses while planting the others with crops.

Re: San Francisco Apartment Rents Crater Up to 31%, Most in U.S.

#244

Post by irrational » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 4:15 PM UTC

rgbrenner wrote: post #239

corytheboyd wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess as to what will happen, for the sake of playing along with the hypothetical simply because it’s fun. Destination cities will still be desirable, however there will be a very slow rebuilding of demand. The magnitude of that demand will never reach the same height. The entire world was forced to work from home for an extended period of time, introducing those from industries that would scoff at the idea to a d…

The magnitude of that demand will never reach the same height. The US is expected to add 80m people in the next 30 years. So that seems very unlikely, even if there is a shift in behavior. Edit: reduced the population estimate with newer numbers from the census bureau.

But those 100m are going to grow up in a world where remote working is the norm.

Re: San Francisco Apartment Rents Crater Up to 31%, Most in U.S.

#245

Post by InTheArena » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 4:16 PM UTC

PascLeRasc wrote: post #90

burlesona wrote: post #51

I would say the city being “closed” is the major driver. Among my group of ~40 coworkers, about 30 (including me) have left the city. As far as I know all but one were renting. Everyone who left gave the following rationale: - we can work remotely so move wherever or nomad now - SF is not very fun during the pandemic - WFH in my tiny apartment is much less enjoyable than when I was working in the office and didn’t sp…

Compared to other big tech-hub cities, I'd think SF would be one of the better ones to spend the pandemic in. There's great parks like Dolores, Lands End, etc, and they'll still be comfortable to be in during this winter. Is there more to it than that?

Go to denver/boulder. You get snow on occasion, but it's gone the next day, and the whole state is a park. Plus Skiing, 300 days of sunshine, and while the housing has become much more expensive, it's still way less then California.

Re: San Francisco Apartment Rents Crater Up to 31%, Most in U.S.

#246

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 4:16 PM UTC

lukeschlather wrote: post #232

corytheboyd wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess as to what will happen, for the sake of playing along with the hypothetical simply because it’s fun. Destination cities will still be desirable, however there will be a very slow rebuilding of demand. The magnitude of that demand will never reach the same height. The entire world was forced to work from home for an extended period of time, introducing those from industries that would scoff at the idea to a d…

WFH is fine. Bothers me not at all. I hate not being able to breathe the same air as my friends. It makes so many things impossible - things that are also impossible unless my friends mostly live within 30 minutes travel of me.

[deleted]

Re: San Francisco Apartment Rents Crater Up to 31%, Most in U.S.

#247

Post by DivisionSol » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 4:16 PM UTC

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #156

DivisionSol wrote: post #147

Absolutely anecdotal to a single apartment building, but I check the listed prices for units inside my building in Redwood City. My particular unit-type, on another floor, has fallen ~$700... I was a fool for renewing the lease.

Since you are right in the middle of this, what prevents you from walking out on the lease? As in, what starts a flood of renegotiation / changing apartments from similarly lease-locked renters?

This exact discovery has me reconsidering now. Trying to solve the following now:

1) Convincing company to let me work remote full time in a much cheaper city.

2) Commit to learning how much it's gonna cost me to break my lease.

Before the factors was: "This is a lot of talk in SF about falling rent, but, what, a 10% savings?" (It's a lot larger than that, even locally. Knowing I'm overpaying in my locality is enough frustration that it makes me want to move, or get a new lease, or something) And how well the company was going to handle WFH, and they've been doing fine, so, good opportunity to find a cheap place to live.

Re: San Francisco Apartment Rents Crater Up to 31%, Most in U.S.

#248

Post by thaumasiotes » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 4:16 PM UTC

foota wrote: post #166

thaumasiotes wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> rent is the quintessential example of inelastic supply. A tiny shortage of housing can cause a huge jump in price. You'd need inelastic demand for this, not inelastic supply.

It seems to me like both are required. Supply is more elastic, but only in the medium term.

> It seems to me like both are required.

That's a fair point. With inelastic demand and elastic supply, you'd expect to see expanding supply, not skyrocketing prices.

But if we're defining the circumstances to be a "shortage", are we defining away the possibility of expanding supply?

Re: San Francisco Apartment Rents Crater Up to 31%, Most in U.S.

#249

Post by justnotworthit » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 4:17 PM UTC

bredren wrote: post #65

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traffic jams are a quite sudden occurrence; 1000 cars / hour is no problem, but 1100 cars / hour and the whole system can suddenly collapse. https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-a-traffic-flow-sudden... is one source, I'm sure there's better ones out there.

This has similarity to rain storms that cause sewage to overflow into the river in Portland, Oregon. Portland uses a combined sewage overflow system (CSO). When there is a heavy rain, it used to be sewage would pour into the Willamette river. However, for the past 10 years the city has been installing rain gardens that contain water storage devices that allow flash rain to be collected like a capacitor and then slowl…

For your next wikipedia rabbit hole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infiltration_basin

As kids we'd boogie board and paddle in these.

Re: San Francisco Apartment Rents Crater Up to 31%, Most in U.S.

#250

Post by tschwimmer » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 4:17 PM UTC

nullc wrote: post #212

Personally I think SF itself, compared to the surrounding region, is a terrible place to live whos downsides must only be barely mitigated by specific positives which appeal to some people-- E.g. nightlife and access to high paying jobs. And right now the pandemic has killed the positives: destinations are closed and businesses have cut back and/or accepted remote work in large numbers. Not everyone sees it my way, o…

Having living here for about 5 years I originally had the same thought but I've realized that this is an overstatement.

San Francisco is actually quite a beautiful city in many respects, especially in the more northern parts of the city. The weather is usually quite nice. There is (was?) a really good restaurant scene with pretty good cuisine in pretty much any category you could want. There's great nightlife, with a strong music scene, good theater and some great museums. It's also proximate to a bunch of really cool areas (Tahoe, Napa/Sonoma, Marin). I think there are genuinely a lot of people who really enjoy living here.

That said, there are also a ton of folks that are effectively forced to be here for work and would leave if they could. I think there are enough of these folks that want to leave that if they could, it could have a pretty sizeable impact on the rental market and the whole economy. Remember that not everyone has to leave. Even a 10% outflow could potentially tip the balance back towards a real estate market crash (or at least a correction).