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Nearly 12M Square Feet of Vacant Office Space in S.F

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Re: Nearly 12M Square Feet of Vacant Office Space in S.F

#161

Post by brian-armstrong »

api wrote: post #53
sebmellen wrote: post #2

A close relative of mine is a top real estate appraiser based in San Francisco, and she's terrified about what happens in Q2 2021, when leases will start terminating en masse. She's had a call with the St. Louis Fed, as they're trying to get an idea of what this will look like. She thinks it will be a bloodbath, and deal a death blow to corporate real estate (and other capital markets by extension).

There is a mass exodus of people from HCOL cities as jobs go virtual as well as a massive amount of office downsizing. Residential real estate may be okay in the cities receiving this exodus in the South, Midwest, Texas, Idaho, etc. but as for HCOL cities I’m just not sure. There may be enough demand to at least cushion it. Commercial will definitely be a bloodbath of epic proportions, especially in formerly hot mark…

Housing prices are actually already trending back upward in the bay area. I don't think there will really be that much of an exodus. Your company might let you retain most of your salary post-relocation but once you change jobs you'll have far fewer prospects. Also the internet doesn't help with timezone differences.

Re: Nearly 12M Square Feet of Vacant Office Space in S.F

#162

Post by vpass10 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #132
sebmellen wrote: post #2

A close relative of mine is a top real estate appraiser based in San Francisco, and she's terrified about what happens in Q2 2021, when leases will start terminating en masse. She's had a call with the St. Louis Fed, as they're trying to get an idea of what this will look like. She thinks it will be a bloodbath, and deal a death blow to corporate real estate (and other capital markets by extension).

This is a good point. I explained it to my mother with an analogy to a cruise ship heading toward shore at full speed. Everyone knows this means the ship will run aground, but few appreciate that given the mass (and thus momentum) the ship would travel far inland just scraping across the ground. The coming economic response to the pandemic has the potential to be like that, basically 10x the 2009 "great recession" an…

Videos on YouTube actually show that large ships stop astonishingly quickly when driven onto shore (mostly scrap yards).

Re: Nearly 12M Square Feet of Vacant Office Space in S.F

#163

Post by drdeadringer »

andrewxdiamond wrote: post #3

If this trend continues, I wonder if these office spaces can be converted to apartments. SF is in desperate need of living space

I'm still waiting to see derelict shopping malls of the 1980s-2000s to be converting to apartments or other similar useful spaces.

I therefore have a doubt about the current COVID-19 Office Space Glut in San Francisco, let alone the Bay Area, on top of all that.

Re: Nearly 12M Square Feet of Vacant Office Space in S.F

#164

Post by meddlepal »

treis wrote: post #141
meddlepal wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ive been told in a lot if cases this is virtually impossible due to cost and structural constraints of office construction vs residential... notably ceiling heights, plumbing and floor plans are poorly designed for residential conversion.

Eh, we converted factories and warehouses. I'm sure we can convert office space as well. It's just a matter of cost/benefit.

Which is more or less what I said in my comment...

Re: Nearly 12M Square Feet of Vacant Office Space in S.F

#165

Post by dimitrios1 »

vmception wrote: post #24

Still not moving back. Seeing those empty Walgreens shelves was it for me. Even the social programs and tolerance of the squalor is not that real, it is simply that the transient population is not affected: students and programmers. The same population that just left. I appreciate all the optimism for San Francisco but it just seems to lack context from the mid-atlantic cities that are carcasses of an industrial era…

I'll never forget the conversations I had with Uber drivers during my many trips there. Many were natives who were pushed further and further out. "Even out of Oakland" they lamented.

I imagine the non-transient population, as you describe, cannot wait for them all to be gone, and the city can get its soul back.

Re: Nearly 12M Square Feet of Vacant Office Space in S.F

#166

Post by spenczar5 »

ashtonkem wrote: post #129
InTheArena wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won’t. Not Can’t. This problem is entirely of the Bay Area’s own making. They have been pursuing exclusionary housing policies while cranking up taxes and spending for a long long time. Now the revenue base for those taxes are collapsing at the exact time they need the revenue to weather the storm.

SF literally created the first zoning laws in America. Nothing that's happened there in terms of zoning and real estate cost is an accident, it's a natural result of politicians and citizens valuing real estate value above pretty much anything else.

> SF literally created the first zoning laws in America.

This is not true. The first was either in Modesto in 1885, LA in 1908, or NYC in 1916, depending on how you define things. Definitely not SF, though.

Doesn’t really change your point, I just want to correct an urban legend.

Re: Nearly 12M Square Feet of Vacant Office Space in S.F

#167

Post by onecommentman »

Texasian wrote: post #102
Aeolun wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how most of HN is probably comfortably within the 1%, but as soon as we start talking about ‘owners of real estate in SF’, we are easily able to call them ‘the rich’, because the wealth is on a completely different level.

Most? You’ve gotta be earning more than 400k to get into the 1%. Top 10% maybe, since that’s around 125-150k.

According to this, in 2008 UN researcher determined the 10% threshold was $61K in 2000 dollars. It’s now 2020...

https://www.mic.com/articles/2636/compared-to-the-rest-of-th...

Re: Nearly 12M Square Feet of Vacant Office Space in S.F

#168

Post by UglyToad »

meddlepal wrote: post #9
andrewxdiamond wrote: post #3

If this trend continues, I wonder if these office spaces can be converted to apartments. SF is in desperate need of living space

Ive been told in a lot if cases this is virtually impossible due to cost and structural constraints of office construction vs residential... notably ceiling heights, plumbing and floor plans are poorly designed for residential conversion.

England's experience with it should probably serve as a warning too. We had a law change that meant office blocks could be converted to housing without planning permission. Having lived in 1 that was converted into studio flats at the higher end of the market I think they really become houses of last resort, some of the units in the UK ones ended up being smaller than a single car garage. Obviously there are chances for better conversions if the country has housing standards that are enforced but even the ceiling height, like you say, gets oppressive after a few months.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/mar/02/will-these-be-...

Re: Nearly 12M Square Feet of Vacant Office Space in S.F

#169

Post by TeMPOraL »

VectorLock wrote: post #67
908B64B197 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess they could make bigger apartments if they are bottlenecked on plumbing. But I wonder what people could do with commercial office space so cheap? For startups that can't really go 100% remote (mostly hardware) that's a dream come true!

I wonder what it would be like to live in a 10k SF open-plan office with a single bathroom.

I wonder how it would be like to work there, because that already sounds like a sweatshop from my worst nightmares.

(There are only 96 five-minutes bathroom breaks available during 8-hour work day, to share between all employees.)

Re: Nearly 12M Square Feet of Vacant Office Space in S.F

#170

Post by dang »

sebmellen wrote: post #155
dang wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly it's offtopicness, especially generic tangents: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Understood. Hope I didn't do anything "wrong" in this case.

Not at all! Your comment was super specifically on topic.

The generic one which I detached was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24890238 - detach means it's no longer a reply to your comment but is rather a top-level comment that can therefore float to a lower location on the page.

There's nothing wrong with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24890238 either. It was just more generic. Also important to understand: the moderation decision is not primarily about a comment, it's about the entire subtree. I don't want people to feel blamed for what they posted, especially when it was other commenters who ended up going further off topic.

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