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

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441–450 of 527 posts

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

#441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends, and whilst San Francisco can’t be compared to Harlow there can be some tragic ramifications: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-47720887

Who in their right mind calls anything "Terminus"!? Outside of the a hipster morgue that is not an appropriate name. The building looks and was named straight out of judge dredd.

Yeah, and bus terminals? The last stop sounds pretty fatal!

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

#442

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…

It is already worse than the GFC in 2009. UK GDP dipped 21.7% in Q2, NZ ~13%, and the US ~10%. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-health-economy Where it ends is anyone's guess, and the worst part will be the second and third order effects it won't be super easy to predict. Things like pension/401K/Superannuation funds with high Commercial real estate exposure leading to reduced retirement income, state pension funds t…

> Things like pension/401K/Superannuation funds with high Commercial real estate exposure leading to reduced retirement income,

An interesting second (or even third) order effect of the 2008-2009 financial meltdown was the collapse of many German state banks (Landesbanks I think they're called) which had invested massively in US-based CDCs and the like. I don't think many people would have predicted that happening in 2005-2006.

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

#443
post #330
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A majority of tech workers in California are from somewhere else, who came to California for the opportunity. They know what it's like back home. And yes, especially the 30-somethings with kids, they're leaving

I'm not saying there isn't some desire among employees but most companies do not want to pay taxes in 50 states. I don't think the vast majority of workers can simply move without changing employers.

You are an engineering manager for XYZ Corp. Your boss asks you whether employees should be able to work out of state, and still be equally productive.

After during research, you come to the conclusion that yes, productivity won’t fall. However, you note that finance has flagged the payrolls issue.

Your boss tells payroll to sort out multi state taxes.

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

#444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article linked by the comment I replied to stated this: > Smith is one of hundreds of residents placed at Terminus House in Harlow by councils in and around London, often many miles from everything and everybody they once knew. I'm not familiar with the specifics of UK subsidized housing, but it sure sounds like the residents were placed in this building by government.

Yeah, you're not and totally misunderstanding how that works. Councils used to be the biggest house builders in the UK. Then the neoliberals decided that was silly and the free-market could sort it. So they banned councils from building houses in the 80s. House builds plummeted from 300k per year to 30k per year. Plus they forced the council to get rid of their affordable housing by letting people buy their council h…

> Yay, free market.

Can anyone buy some land and build whatever they want on it, like massive apartment buildings? If the answer is no, how can you claim there is a free market? I think the problem is clearly on the heavy regulations, licensing and zoning that keep companies from building.

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

#445
post #413
post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business has been moving to places like Austin for years. Las Vegas, Phoenix, Atlanta, Nashville, Orlando. The pace will accelerate now that it is even more acceptable to do so.

Can’t think of a single unicorn that came out of these cities over the last 10 years, forget the Facebooks, Googles, Tesla’s, Ubers, Airbnb’s, Slacks, Snowflakes, and Zooms of the worlds. I have lived in Phoenix and Vegas for many years. Extremely overrated and couldn’t wait to leave

I think the existence of unicorns is more predicated on access to VC funding more than anything else. One would expect that to be concentrated around areas with lots of VC's of which the Valley is probably the prime exemplar.

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

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, you're not and totally misunderstanding how that works. Councils used to be the biggest house builders in the UK. Then the neoliberals decided that was silly and the free-market could sort it. So they banned councils from building houses in the 80s. House builds plummeted from 300k per year to 30k per year. Plus they forced the council to get rid of their affordable housing by letting people buy their council h…

> Yay, free market. Can anyone buy some land and build whatever they want on it, like massive apartment buildings? If the answer is no, how can you claim there is a free market? I think the problem is clearly on the heavy regulations, licensing and zoning that keep companies from building.

> Can anyone buy some land and build whatever they want on it, like massive apartment buildings?

They probably can, but The Market™ may give better ROI to (e.g.) condominiums so who'd want to do it?

With apartments you have to do things like put up with tenants and such, and who wants to do that? With condos you sell the units, create a condo corporation, and then walk away with your money once it's constructed and never think about it again.

Why build rental units for poor people when you can sell to oligarchs who want an asset to park their money in?

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

#447
post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Read the WP article linked above, it's actually insane how much pork was in that stimulus.

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

#449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Especially good if the converted office space also provides a good work from home environment. Or... you know... just give homeless people housing?

Is there data supporting the conclusion that lack of housing is what causes homelessness? I always thought that it was more of a failure of the social safety net.

There seems to be milage in the idea that if you give someone a home you reduce homelessness

https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/how-to-fix-homelessness-give-...

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

#450
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love your certainty. I'm not sure it's warranted though.

Well, just look the evidence: Venezuela, Argentina, Spain, etc.

I'll give you Venezuela and Argentina, but can you clarify how Spain matches your argument?
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