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

Average Rent in San Francisco Has Dropped $1k This Year

socketsite.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 562 posts

Re: Average Rent in San Francisco Has Dropped $1k This Year

#41

Post by iaw »

Swizec wrote: post #17
chrisseaton wrote: post #6

It looks like the house in the background is being constructed literally from sticks and cardboard.

You don’t want to use brick in a seismic zone, reinforced concrete is overkill for a 2 storey house, and steel frame is not just overkill but also uses sticks and cardboard for nonstructural components. As far as I can tell, almost every building in western USA that isn’t tall is wood frame construction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_(construction)

There's a growing concept of 'mid-rise' woodframe construction as well due to how the codes are written.

Re: Average Rent in San Francisco Has Dropped $1k This Year

#42

Post by pydry »

SllX wrote: post #13
NineStarPoint wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they ignore it, or are they using it for their own gain? For people who actually own property in San Fransisco, consider how enriched they have become by the obscenely rising rent/real estate prices. This comes along with them getting to keep their neighborhoods static instead of having to have a gigantic shadow erected across the street. Sure there are downsides, but you can always just sell and get our with a pr…

Both. I spent the last decade having these conversations with people who also grew up here and can’t afford to remain here without staying with their parents, with some of the stranger conversations devolving into my counter parties brainstorming ways to kick tech people out of the City and stop new people from moving in altogether, as if freedom of movement in the United States wasn’t really a thing. It’s not “suppl…

It's a side effect of de-taxing land. The more land becomes an asset and the less it becomes a liability (e.g. by capping property taxes) , the greater incentive there is to hoard it and jealously guard its value with NIMBYism which leads to even less development, greater shortages and even higher prices on an upward spiral.

Saying "it's about supply and demand" is not technically wrong but it glosses over the toxic systemic changes which brought us here and exculpates the people who deliberately fought for them to create this mess.

If land were closer to being in a liability in SF then the NIMBYism would be a pale imitation of what it is now and the land would be used much more efficiently and property wouldn't be as astronomically expensive.

However, land owners need an economic incentive to develop that requires them to lose money if they use land unproductively.

That means taxing the value of the land - preferably directly (via LVT) but failing that by raising property taxes.

Re: Average Rent in San Francisco Has Dropped $1k This Year

#43

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

ashtonkem wrote: post #30
FreakyT wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly -- there's a pervasive belief in the bay area that high rents are solely due to the evil cabal of landlords who meet every week in a dimly lit room and agree to charge sky-high rents while cackling maniacally and twirling their perfectly-waxed moustaches. The sudden COVID-related rent price drop indicates that this theory is nonsense, and that the high rents are solely a function of supply and demand, but I'm…

I’m not sure why, but a surprising number of people seem to have convinced themselves that supply and demand doesn’t apply to housing.

I think most people doubt supply and demand to some degree. How often have you seen someone argue we should secure the supply of food to disaster zones by repealing price gouging laws? Rent control is popular because many people believe, wrongly but wholeheartedly, that landlords are just price gougers and everyone could get cheap adequate housing if they weren’t manipulating it.

Re: Average Rent in San Francisco Has Dropped $1k This Year

#44

Post by bluedino »

the-dude wrote: post #10

I have somewhat inside info about a drop in rent for commercial real estate in a high end shopping street in NL ( The Netherlands ). This is unheard of, real estate owners rather keep a shop vacant than drop the rent. I think we have seen nothing yet in commercial real estate, obviously not limited to SF or NL.

There ar e plenty of commercial buildings in the USA that have been empty twenty years.

Re: Average Rent in San Francisco Has Dropped $1k This Year

#45

Post by duxup »

ashtonkem wrote: post #27
momokoko wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop it.

This is incredibly unhelpful and un-persuasive.

On a semi related note, I've seen a lot more 'stop' and 'stop it' on the internet lately. Arguably the various forms of saying the same thing come and go in terms of what is commonly used, but I've been surprised to see such empty words suddenly so common.

Personally I would be a bit embarrassed to just tell people to 'stop it' as to me it seems sort of childish, but apparently not everyone.

It's strange.

Re: Average Rent in San Francisco Has Dropped $1k This Year

#46

Post by Schiendelman »

xyst wrote: post #40

If the city would rezone all of the single family homes into higher density buildings, this wouldn't be a problem. Flood the area with supply and the cost will go down to reasonable levels. This is a problem all across the nation. Everyone wants a single family home, so this leads to two things: outrageously high costs of homes, or people moving out to the suburbs and thus worsening the rush hour traffic and smog iss…

And a lot of people only want a single family home because they want a certain amount of living space. In a commodified housing market, they would likely pay less for that space in a condo.

Re: Average Rent in San Francisco Has Dropped $1k This Year

#47

Post by plants »

whimsicalism wrote: post #19

Good thing I signed right before the rent drop and can't break my lease

look for vacant units in your building (if you're in an apartment) and see if you can negotiate a lower rate with your landlord based on the price of the units that are currently up for rent. if you're not in an apartment, you might be able to do the same thing with houses in your area

Re: Average Rent in San Francisco Has Dropped $1k This Year

#48

Post by ihsw »

xyst wrote: post #40

If the city would rezone all of the single family homes into higher density buildings, this wouldn't be a problem. Flood the area with supply and the cost will go down to reasonable levels. This is a problem all across the nation. Everyone wants a single family home, so this leads to two things: outrageously high costs of homes, or people moving out to the suburbs and thus worsening the rush hour traffic and smog iss…

> or people moving out to the suburbs and thus worsening the rush hour traffic and smog issue

Phoenix AZ seems to handle being an enormous suburb fairly well.

Re: Average Rent in San Francisco Has Dropped $1k This Year

#49

Post by Schiendelman »

ModernMech wrote: post #25
paulpauper wrote: post #9

renting in SF...talk about a cash incinerator

Yup. I was part of a startup that raised in the millions. Of that, probably 30-50% went to office rent and the rent of the employees. Might as well be a direct line from investors into Bay Area landlords’ pockets.

And that’s why those landlords fight tooth and nail to keep zoning restrictive.

Re: Average Rent in San Francisco Has Dropped $1k This Year

#50

Post by momokoko »

welder wrote: post #36
momokoko wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop it. Do you live in San Francisco? I don’t mean the Bay Area. Do you actually live in San Francisco? Why did Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland see very similar percentage based increases at the same time? Why has the entire Bay Area? Foreign investment. As soon as Vancouver passed legislation to curb foreign investment their real estate moved back to normal. 1 in 4 housing purchases in California are all cash. Tha…

Yes cash, but not necessarily foreign. I recently went through the process of placing bids on 2 houses in SF and both had cash offers higher and both cash offers came from local residents already living in SF.

That does not mean the funds did not come from overseas. It is common that it will be passed through a local resident, by way of LLC, for the actual purchase.
Post reply on HN