Average Rent in San Francisco Has Dropped $1k This Year • Hacker News Board

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

#341

Post by kansface » Mon, Dec 28, 2020, 6:37 PM UTC

momokoko wrote: post #50

welder wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

SF has (had?) the highest percentage of millionaires/billionaires in the US. It is (was) arguably the richest city in the US or possibly the world. Many of the thousands of fresh millionaires that it mints yearly come from very large windfalls... which are immediately used to purchase houses in cash. At the same time, SF is building literally no new detached single family houses.

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

#342

Post by throwaway201103 » Mon, Dec 28, 2020, 6:37 PM UTC

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #119

pydry wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zoning is a result of NIMBYism. NIMBYism is a result of people who really want to protect the value of their land. Some of these people will be quite desperate to do this because they're highly leveraged. Negative equity is a good incentive to turn up to your local planning meetings and inhibit development.

I think NIMBYism only looks financially attractive because everyone who bought a square of land in a "city" since the 1970s or so and held for at least a decade has won big regardless of where. That doesn't mean that SF/SV isn't forgoing a lot of money in order to keep its NIMBY policy. Think about how much just the squares of land those single family homes and low rise buildings in SV are on would be worth if the SF…

> everyone who bought a square of land in a "city" since the 1970s or so and held for at least a decade has won big regardless of where

Not true at all, look at Detroit, Gary, or any midwest "rust belt" town. Abandonded properties everywhere, can't find buyers even at tax sale prices.

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

#343

Post by stjohnswarts » Mon, Dec 28, 2020, 6:37 PM UTC

ambicapter wrote: post #70

SllX wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I am happy to discuss all variables which inform the price, so long as we agree to give supply and demand top billing. We can even discuss the variables which inform supply if you like.

Is Supply and Demand really the end-all, be-all of economics? Don't things like Veblen goods demonstrate that there is some nuance to the topic.

no but it's the #1 factor, #2 is human irrationality

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

#344

Post by bnralt » Mon, Dec 28, 2020, 6:37 PM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #331

bnralt wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an odd point of view - you're xenophobic if you don't prioritize unending population increases above all else?

I certainly didn't say "unending population increases" or "above all else." But if you think that building enough housing for the people means unending population increases, that's really in line with the garden variety xenophobic anti-immigrant thinking I grew up with in the Midwest. The zero-sum philosophy of a newcomer arriving meaning that a current resident loses out, or that the newcomer is "extracting" from th…

> I certainly didn't say "unending population increases" or "above all else."

If you don't think that, then there's a certain density level where it's considered fine to oppose it, and there are certain things one could prioritize above population increases that could lead people to favor restrictions. Maybe some of the people favoring restrictions think the high point of density has been reached, or perhaps they favor restrictions because of what values they place above population growth. It's worth at least considering before we simply dismiss them all as xenophobic.

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

#345

Post by SllX » Mon, Dec 28, 2020, 6:39 PM UTC

ashtonkem wrote: post #317

SllX wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just new construction. Studio apartments in old buildings have also been retrofitted into 1-bedrooms by gutting the kitchen and carving out one of these crap kitchenettes from the main room, including in a building I used to live in. When I was exploring listings to see how the pandemic affects prices earlier in the year, these “kitchens” I described were also the norm over in the Sunset and Richmond around... Se…

Were mini-kitchens the norm in September, or were they all on the market because suddenly everyone needed a full kitchen? If I lived in SF during the first lock downs, upgrading to a unit with a full kitchen would be very high on my housing priority list. When we moved out of Santa Monica, our craptastic unit was re-rented inside the 30 day window and occupied two days after we left. Why? Because it had a tiny sliver…

That’s a good question I don’t actually know the answer to, but you’re right that I should have considered it.

I think it’s worth investigating later, but for now I’m inclined to say it is probably a little of column A and a little of column B.

If I hadn’t personally observed apartments renovated to remove features try and pass it off as a 1 bedroom prior to the pandemic, I might have considered that angle initially, but for now it is still coloring my view of what I saw in September. I think this is becoming more of a norm, and they were the norm as far as what was available at the time, but this could also have been that units with kitchens were getting filled faster at the same time I was making my observations.

What infuriated me personally wasn’t that there were so many, but that the asking prices were about the same as the asking price for an equivalent unit with a full kitchen. It’s a seller’s market, that’s what I’ve been more or less communicating all up and down the thread, but damned if that doesn’t peeve me.

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

#346

Post by pydry » Mon, Dec 28, 2020, 6:39 PM UTC

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #119

pydry wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zoning is a result of NIMBYism. NIMBYism is a result of people who really want to protect the value of their land. Some of these people will be quite desperate to do this because they're highly leveraged. Negative equity is a good incentive to turn up to your local planning meetings and inhibit development.

I think NIMBYism only looks financially attractive because everyone who bought a square of land in a "city" since the 1970s or so and held for at least a decade has won big regardless of where. That doesn't mean that SF/SV isn't forgoing a lot of money in order to keep its NIMBY policy. Think about how much just the squares of land those single family homes and low rise buildings in SV are on would be worth if the SF…

Seriously?

There are two types of people in SF:

* People who have watched their property appreciate in value by 4-10x for basically doing... nothing.

* People who have taken out an eye watering loan for well over a million dollars and are kept up at night by the idea that theyll owe a million dollar loan on a $750,000 home.

Of course they're going to be conservative! Of course they're going to try to avoid anybody rocking the boat! Of course they'll be NIMBYs!

Why on earth would you think that the one thing that keeps them ludicrously wealthy - property rights - is the thing that they'd stop believing in??

It makes zero sense.

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

#347

Post by wyclif » Mon, Dec 28, 2020, 6:40 PM UTC

fallingknife wrote: post #298

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That concern, though, is something I've grown much more sympathetic to. There's a fundamental unfairness in putting in work to make your local community great, making it so good that rich people want to live there, and then being told that the community no longer has room for you because the rent is too high. If the city won't allow enough housing to keep your area affordable, you have a right to feel aggrieved, and…

Nobody moves to SF for the community. They come for the high paying jobs.

Now that you can get a high-paying job with the same company without moving from a different region of the US (because of COVID), I expect the SF housing market to collapse. Why move to a shoebox apartment and pay SF cost of living rates when you can have a nice, big property elsewhere?

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

#348

Post by kansface » Mon, Dec 28, 2020, 6:42 PM UTC

jnwatson wrote: post #106

lotsofpulp wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say it’s basically impossible to recreate a dense city based on today’s codes of construction requiring numerous safety/ADA measures in the US. In an existing city, the cost to purchase land and buildings that would need to demolished, rezoned, and rebuilt as a higher density area with accompanying infrastructure is astronomical and wouldn’t be possibly by anyone other than the federal government only because…

Citation needed. The biggest issue with residental construction today is approval process and the amount of land that can be utilized. An unreliable approval process means increased investment risk which keeps away investors. Setbacks and parking space requirements significantly impact the amount of usable living space per acre of land. Both of the above can be addressed by local municipalities. High density dwelling…

I don't have a citation for you, but it sure seems that something requires new construction apartments in SF to devote half of their square footage to wheelchair accessible bathrooms... I'd guess every apartment I lived in in SF would be illegal to construct today due to things like clearances.

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

#349

Post by imtringued » Mon, Dec 28, 2020, 6:42 PM UTC

Kalium wrote: post #256

tehjoker wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public housing would.

California requires winning a plebiscite to build public housing. This is not optional. When it does manage to build public housing, SF spends approximately a million dollars a unit to do so. That's purely to get a habitable unit. It includes none of the maintenance costs, which will increase over time, or the social services required to make public housing work as intended. With that in mind, giving literally 100% o…

>With that in mind, giving literally 100% of San Francisco's budget to building public housing could produce 12,000 units. That would mean shutting down Zuckerberg General Hospital, street cleaning, street repaving, SFO, schools, and anything else SF does.

You are skipping over the part where the government can change the relevant laws that make public housing expensive. Public housing also doesn't have to be built by the government directly so if private construction firms can do it cheaper the government can let them build the housing.

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

#350

Post by jefftk » Mon, Dec 28, 2020, 6:43 PM UTC

fennecfoxen wrote: post #214

oconnor663 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was no room for negotiation or to even take a day to think it over, if you walked away from it, there were 2 people right behind you to take it. Naive question maybe, but if demand is that high, why don't prices rise even higher to balance it out a bit? Presumably most landlords would prefer another hundred or two a month at the cost of a few extra days on the market?

> Naive question maybe, but if demand is that high, why don't prices rise even higher to balance it out a bit? It's not always legal to charge more in San Francisco.

What are you referring to?

(SF rent control does not apply when you're bringing in a new tenant)