Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

socketsite.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 527 posts

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

#191

Post by dave_4_bagels »

bleepblorp wrote: post #182
chrismcb wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democrats are part of the problem. The solution isn't to vote democrat or republican, it is to vote for people that care. Term limits would go a long way to solving that problem.

At worst, the Democratic party will make all the right speeches but ultimately do nothing. In contrast, the Republican party stole medical supplies from blue states[0] during the acute phase of the pandemic and chose to minimize the federal response to SARS-CoV-2 because the pandemic was only killing Democrats[1]. Depriving your political opponents of medical supplies during a pandemic is arguably a crime against hum…

And de-fund police, which obviously is something that will improve public safety and reduce crime...

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

#192

Post by ChuckMcM »

vpass10 wrote: post #162
ChuckMcM wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

(mostly scrap yards) -- generally much less mass than a ship that is more seaworthy (a lot of early salvage happens before they get to the scrap shore, ships aren't fully loaded, look at their waterline in the videos). And most importantly much much less velocity (1/2mv^2 goes down rapidly with slower velocity). What is is truly impressive is that they estimate the mass, and know very closely what speed to get them too in order to solidly ground them without wasting a lot of energy getting them going faster than necessary.

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

#193

Post by dustingetz »

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…

How about Cape Town? Bali? Toronto? Athens? Rio? Remote work isn't even close to priced in yet and it's not the cost of living that needs to readjust - it's the salaries!

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

#194

Post by jayd16 »

InTheArena wrote: post #57

I live in a state where we are suddenly inundated with California’s refugees, fleeing the state now that they don’t have to physically live there. Reasonable taxes, a much less stressful work-life balance, bigger homes all make it very appealing to ditch the once0golden state. Our company has decided not to reopen a majority of it’s office space. Ironically, the Bay Area office is remaining open while other offices a…

I can't help but think this take is projecting a bit too much.

Inundated? How so? What are you seeing?

Tax benefits, work-life balance and bigger homes? Really, you can see these changes in the last 6 months of a pandemic? I could be wrong but I don't think the majority of employers are letting employees change states (and state taxes). WFH does not mean work from anywhere, especially tax-wise.

This all sounds plausible longer term but to say you're inundated seems like it must be hyperbolic.

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

#195

Post by xienze »

altdatathrow wrote: post #84
xienze wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that one stimulus check cost $2 trillion dollars. Doing that every single month for an indefinite period of time is, quite expensive to put it mildly. And that’s not even taking into consideration that there’s a lot of people with monthly expenses in excess of $1200 per month.

I know these are large numbers, but the 159 million economic impact payments cost $267 billion [1]. This article [2] gives a pretty good overview of the $4T spent in total so far [1] https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/159-million-economic-impact-pay... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/business/corona...

> I know these are large numbers, but the 159 million economic impact payments cost $267 billion [1].

Great, but the bill cost $2T. Same with the recent one that’s been put on ice. Because there’s no such thing as a bill that only contains direct cash payments to citizens, they’re loaded up with pork and stuff that doesn’t even having anything to do with the pandemic.

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

#196

Post by reaperducer »

erosenbe0 wrote: post #66
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).

In terms of suffering, I'm more worried about the loss of support workers and supporting businesses over the long-term. Especially in a place like Chicago where the installed base of offices is much much larger than SF, and where portions of the future sales tax revenue has already been securitized and sold to investors.

Developers in Chicago are building as fast as they can right now. It's counterintuitive to people on the outside, but from what I read, it's because labor, material, and capital are dirt cheap. So the developers are putting up new skyscrapers and other mega-developments so they're in a good position to take advantage of the recovery.

A new 57-story office tower opened just last week: https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2020/10/18/a-new-skyscra...

Dozens of new residential towers have been announced, and at least a dozen are under construction, including one that's almost finished at 101 stories tall.

https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2020/10/05/sit-back-brea...

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

#197

Post by vmception »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #165
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.

oh, those mid-atlantic satires of civilization have artists too

like them, SF will also be affordable to artists and creatives again soon

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

#198

Post by _euac »

drdeadringer wrote: post #151
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…

> NextDoor That place was a nice idea just like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn were. NextDoor worked out just as well as the rest of them.

Haha, I hear horror stories from my friends who are on NextDoor. At some point, a guy reported seeing a coyote on Lafayette park while walking his dog at 2am. You know, just being nice to the neighbors and letting them know to be careful about their dogs. Next thing you know, a bunch of people started questioning what he was doing 'so late' on the park, then other people started accusing him of being a drug dealer or some shit, one threatened to contact the authorities... WTF? It's like Facebook boomer threads on steroids, but in real life.

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

#199

Post by ilaksh »

mancerayder wrote: post #74
rsynnott wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... Wait, what would you expect the mayors to do about it? Use their dictatorial mayoral powers to force people to extend leases or the city’s infinite funds for a stimulus or bailout? The federal government and to some extent the states have the money and power; expecting a mayor to wave a magic wand and fix it is, well... optimistic.

Seriously? How about do what mayors have done for centuries: find ways to encourage investment and movement into the city. Business seems to be moving to places like Austin. Why do you think that is?

People move to Austin because it's trendy.

I really think most of our society actually operates on the level of a 14-year-old, with a ton of rationalization on top for why it makes perfect sense.

Maybe they have favorable taxes or something, but so so a lot of other cities that are ghost towns.

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

#200

Post by Thorrez »

erosenbe0 wrote: post #66
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).

In terms of suffering, I'm more worried about the loss of support workers and supporting businesses over the long-term. Especially in a place like Chicago where the installed base of offices is much much larger than SF, and where portions of the future sales tax revenue has already been securitized and sold to investors.

If the sales tax has been sold to investors, won't that be good for the city? It would mean the investors would lose out, not the city.
Post reply on HN