251–260 of 640 posts
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Very different. San Diego is not a mega city like LA or the great Bay Area. Much better weather than SF, seems a bit more relaxed pace and not as overrun.
Looking at a map there really isn't much of a gap between LA and San Diego. It's pretty much one mega-city.
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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?
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Those factors are real, but they apply to dozens of big cities. They don't explain why rents in SF are falling more than anywhere else. To be fair, the article only says 31% is the most. If other cities are around 29-30%, forget what I said.
Bay area rents rose far higher and far faster than most other places. So they had the furthest to fall.
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…
It is manifestly the case that enough people disagree with you to keep San Francisco rents among the highest in the world under normal circumstances. Not only do we have nightlife and good jobs, we also have world-class restaurants (seven three-star Michelin restaurants in the Bay area and an accompanying halo of lower-tier options), theatre, opera, ballet, good weather most of the time, redwood forests, beaches, sai…
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The "yellow peril" theory that Bay Area housing bubbles are caused by foreign money laundering is popular on Nextdoor but I think on HN you're going to need some evidence. Prior to this pandemic 97% of dwellings in San Francisco were physically occupied by actual living people. Nobody is parking money in empty SF condos. It's true that investors are attracted to Bay Area real estate, because the government has dedica…
1) 'Occupation' less of an issue, it's 'Ownership'. Foreign owners can rent homes out. Though it's such a problem in Vancouver, they are now taxing empty homes for precisely this reason [1]. Maybe SF should follow suit. 2) That foreign ownership is a primary factor in the rise of home prices in SF, Van, Toronto is completely unambiguous. There's plenty of evidence. The degree of impact is still debatable, but not tha…
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This is what leases are for, they fix prices for a year or so by adding cost friction to moving (usually a few months of rent). Which, in theory, act as a buffer to stabilize prices. The problem is that the cost savings of moving is so great that it was cheaper to pay to break the lease than it would be to stay. We saw the reverse of this before: when landlords were paying people $8,000 to move early because rent inf…
> cost savings of moving is so great that it was cheaper to pay to break the lease than it would be to stay What's the law on this? I've read that the landlord is required to make a good faith effort to replace you, but if they can't (or if they can't recoup the costs), you are on the hook. So if the cost is 32% lower and the landlord can only find a tenant willing to pay that much, it seems like you are responsible…
I know more than a few people from SF who were paid to break their leases. More churn means more "market adjustments" for rent prices, and market adjustment historically favored landlords.
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…
It is manifestly the case that enough people disagree with you to keep San Francisco rents among the highest in the world under normal circumstances. Not only do we have nightlife and good jobs, we also have world-class restaurants (seven three-star Michelin restaurants in the Bay area and an accompanying halo of lower-tier options), theatre, opera, ballet, good weather most of the time, redwood forests, beaches, sai…
Sure, winter gets cold, but it's easier to handle on the cities where downtowns have pedestrian subways, and the city clears the snow. Plus there are events like Luminary Loppet.
Sure, the summer is humid, but lots of folks have basements. And offices have AC. And the lakes are still cold once you get more than two feet down.
The only things it really needs are mountains and ocean nearby. Even then, it's got some excellent areas nearby
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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.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/more-than-1-i...
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Yes. I live in SF and I see people loading up moving vans in my neighborhood all of the time now, my neighbors in my row house moved to auburn, multiple houses are now up for sale, it used to be impossible to get a parking space but now it is not a problem anymore. Things have definitely changed
If I were living in SF and gone fully remote for the foreseeable future, I'd absolutely get out of my expensive apartment and (literally) head for the hills.
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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.
I know companies in Canada that are way ahead of the curve on this: they've been consulting for American companies for years, meaning they can afford way more person hours than american counterparts given a US dollar contract size solely because of the salary gap difference.