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

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

#191

Post by jeffbee »

daniellarusso wrote: post #140
fennecfoxen wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dear SF, More apartments built are the only thing to make housing more affordable for normal people. But, when you think of them, you're thinking way too small. You need to think in terms of, like, literally doubling the number of apartments available, and they may then be in reach of normal people once more. You also need to get yourself together and reverse that trend where your transit system has carried fewer peo…

So, the infrastructure can handle double its current utilization? Aren’t the sewers in SF literally over a century old? No issues with adequate water supply and sewage treatment?

These are bad faith arguments and therefore you are either debating in bad faith, or a dupe. San Francisco's gross water demand has been falling consistently for the last 50 years. Not per-capita. Gross. In 1998 the demand was 82 million gallons per day and in 2019 it was 63 million, with a population 17% greater. The more people you pile into a city, the less demand there is, because grossly wasteful activities like washing cars and watering grass get squeezed out. The east bay's EBMUD service area has experienced the same trend: total water demand has plummeted since mid-century and now stands at its lowest point in history, despite the exploding population.

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

#192

Post by sct202 »

daveFNbuck wrote: post #169
cogman10 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxing unoccupied homes and apartments will fix things real fast.

If the problem is developers making a bunch of apartments and releasing them slowly, wouldn't such a tax just mean they'd switch to a strategy of making them slowly to get the same effect?

The governor of my state ripped toilets out of one of his mansions to make it "unlivable" for tax reasons. No doubt the developers could stall finishing units if they had to.

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

#193

Post by cogman10 »

sokoloff wrote: post #183
cogman10 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be specifically to fix the problem of a builder making a bunch of apartments and slowly letting them into the market to artificially inflate home values. Presumably, the building company would be the owners for all the empty apartments which would make it easy to find and tax. It would be more difficult to detect someone buying a home/apartment as an "investment".

At what point do they become apartments though? When the Certificate of Occupancy is issued? "No problem; those units aren't finished yet. [They need a smoke alarm to be legal units and somehow we haven't found the time to get around to it yet.]" Or whatever the threshold is between "this is a vacant lot" and "this is a taxable unoccupied unit", you're just providing incentive to stay on one side of that line if ther…

IDK, probably have to do some research into how much time it takes to finish a unit to say when the clock starts ticking.

For example, obviously a smoke alarm is something that takes 15 minutes to install, so that wouldn't be when you start the clock.

You might be able to base it on when any single unit is sold in the block. That is "You sell 1 apartment, you've got a year to sell to rest or you are going to start seeing vacancy taxes".

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

#194

Post by dredmorbius »

TrackerFF wrote: post #86
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…

Having lived on another island, with the same woes of SF (limited land, high growth), the problem is always the same - even though it's been on a much smaller scale. The people that have owned for the past 30-50 years, are completely unwilling to give up on their single family homes, gardens, etc. They basically demand to live a nice and cushy suburban life, in the middle of a big city. It then takes forever to build…

The Big One may solve that problem.

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

#195

Post by daniellarusso »

jjoonathan wrote: post #164
daniellarusso wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, the infrastructure can handle double its current utilization? Aren’t the sewers in SF literally over a century old? No issues with adequate water supply and sewage treatment?

Well, here's the thing: pipes can be built. Big pipes can replace small pipes. Plant capacity can be upgraded. Shocking, I know, but it's true.

So, rip up all the roads, start digging, and start upgrading?

So, who pays for that? All the taxpayers, or the builders, or the potential new tenants?

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

#196

Post by jeffbee »

daveFNbuck wrote: post #169
cogman10 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxing unoccupied homes and apartments will fix things real fast.

If the problem is developers making a bunch of apartments and releasing them slowly, wouldn't such a tax just mean they'd switch to a strategy of making them slowly to get the same effect?

Literally nobody has ever done this. Large apartment builders have banks breathing down their necks. They try to lease up as fast as they can, which generally takes about a year to get to 90% because there's a lot of friction in getting people to move.

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

#197

Post by bjt »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #160
robbyt wrote: post #99

Dear SF, More apartments built will not help make housing more affordable for normal people. Learn about the NYC real estate market- even pre covid apartment vacancy was extremely high, and the true numbers are unknown because building developers are manipulating the market by releasing units slowly. With all the excessive inventory in NYC, you'd think that a normal person (defined by median income) could afford to b…

How about mixed-cost buildings? Some higher-cost "luxury" units whose price/rent subsidizes the lower cost "essential" units, where firemen, teachers, local people can live.

They've been doing that quite a while. https://sfplanning.org/project/inclusionary-affordable-housi...

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

#198

Post by imtringued »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #137
SllX wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No but when figuring out what informs a price you want to look at supply and demand first . There’s room for other variables, but you normally start there. EDIT: While I’m inside the edit window, let me throw in another big variable as an example. Costs are another factor that inform a price, and a big one. You could make a case that it deserves higher billing than supply and demand, but if your costs are $X but you…

But property supply itself is a constrained effect of politics and the relative power of various social groups, not a unique and independent primary cause. If landlords can make a killing by constraining supply politically, they will. So the primary cause is the incentive system and the political environment which makes it possible for them to do that. It's all about how the reward functions are designed. So of cours…

It depends on your definition of "landlord". If by landlord you mean the typical NIMBY homeowner then sure it's true. But in practice landlords can make more money off of building more units vs squeezing out more profit from a smaller amount of units. So if you were a politician and followed the advice of the greediest landlord you would not end up with scarcity. The political environment doesn't listen to the greediest landlord though. It primarily listens to the homeowner type of landlord.

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

#199

Post by flaque »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #166
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…

I live in a rural area, so I'm no expert...but how do you weigh the value of private property of San Fransiscans vs. the communal good of more apartment units? Surely you wouldn't "knock down" old houses, or would you? Just curious as to your thoughts.

Rezoning doesn’t force anyone out of their homes. It just lets someone sell their homes to someone who will turn around and build a larger building. Buildings in the old zone are grandfathered in.

But folks who want to live in a single family home in the middle of san francisco can still do so. Just don’t sell the house.

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

#200

Post by jjoonathan »

daniellarusso wrote: post #195
jjoonathan wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, here's the thing: pipes can be built. Big pipes can replace small pipes. Plant capacity can be upgraded. Shocking, I know, but it's true.

So, rip up all the roads, start digging, and start upgrading? So, who pays for that? All the taxpayers, or the builders, or the potential new tenants?

Modern construction is amazing and better than you would think at avoiding ripping up roads, but yeah, that's gonna have to happen too.

Who pays for it? This is infrastructure 101 stuff. You want the people who use it to pay for it, so you finance it and have the new tenants pay for it.

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