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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

#381
Apartments are getting cheaper. I’m not seeing houses getting cheaper in the rest of the bay. Renting a house where I live in the peninsula is about the same cost as it was a year ago. Maybe 10% less.

Basically, anything sharing walls or space is going down but not the other stuff...

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

#382
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is hard to beat the economies of scale of a restaurant, as much as the "you only need to factor the cost of raw food" camp like to tell otherwise I'd be interested in seeing your math on the subject, and it probably depends on location and at what rate do you "bill" your time, but restaurants have a lot of overhead ( property, staff, taxes) that offsets economies of scale. Even without going all-in with cheap fo…

It seems the average Big Mac meal is $6 these days. It provides approximately 1,000 calories, and the average person needs approximately 2,000 per day, so we'll assume you'll need to order two. That puts the food costs at $12 per person. The average cost to install a kitchen is around $60,000. If we assume a rate of return of 5%, that is $3,000 per year right there that the money needs to provide to justify it being…

> It seems the average Big Mac meal is $6 these days. It provides approximately 1,000 calories, and the average person needs approximately 2,000 per day, so we'll assume you'll need to order two. That puts the food costs at $12 per person

Yeah, i assumed so. Eating Big Macs is... let's say suboptimal. If you eat only that, you'll probably have all sorts of health issues. When counting actual food, fresh and with vegetables and all that, it's slightly more expensive than Big Macs. Around here, cheapest option for a decent actual meal is ~8-10/eur/person.

> The average cost to install a kitchen is around $60,000

Seriously? In France fancy kitchens are at 10k, "starter" ( recommended if you're going to let or for first buy) are at 2k, everything included. I guess if you start from $60k, you need to cook quite a bit more to make it financially viable.

And that's if you have close to no dietary or allergic restrictions.

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

#383
post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of LVTs is precisely to alter participants' behavior in the market. The value of LVTs is in aligning incentives so that landlords have an incentive to build more housing and use it more efficiently. It makes vacancy & speculation a money-losing endeavor (the same way that inflation makes holding cash a money-losing endeavor), and creates political pressure to repeal zoning laws and create smart public impro…

> The point of LVTs is precisely to alter participants' behavior in the market. Maybe this is the point to its proponents. However: > Its value as a revenue source is secondary, and many proponents (of the geolibertarian sort) actually support lower tax receipts and smaller government. Statements like this muddy tax discussions. The primary reason for any tax at all, regardless of type or preference is to raise reven…

> The primary reason for any tax at all, regardless of type or preference is to raise revenue for government. That fact shouldn’t be lost when discussing which kinds of taxes and what percent to raise them at is discussed, even when optimizing for political outcomes.

That's a political statement speculating at intentions. For instance, the number one purpose of a carbon tax is to disincentivize carbon emissions. This is exemplified by the fact that carbon tax proponents generally support returning the money to all taxpayers as a 'green dividend', i.e. it's a net-zero redistributive policy.

Raising government revenue isn't that important compared to the prime purpose of the carbon tax.

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

#384
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, and will remain true until prop 13 is repealed. The same dynamic is at play between San Jose and Mountain View/Cupertino/Palo Alto.

What does Prop 13 have to do with the fact that they're not building enough housing?

not enough housing to meet demand means raising property values, which is beneficial for property owners without having to pay more taxes

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

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What incentive do they have to negotiate? I haven't heard of anyone doing this. (also there are no empty units in my apartment)

You could incentivize them by offering to extend your lease early, if you can lock in a lower rent. You should at least try to lower your rent. The worst thing that can happen is your rent doesn't change. You might get a discount, which you certainly won't get if you don't ask.

Unfortunately, I can't do that because I will be moving for a new job when the lease is up. Agree that its worth an ask, but don't think it's particularly likely anything will come of it.

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

#386
post #92
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> freedom of movement in the United States To the extent that this means the freedom of poor people to get out of the way of rich people, you can see how some would not be excited. SF's black population has fallen by half in recent decades, for example. Honestly, the geographic narrowness of the tech boom has always been weird. At the same time we've been selling the limitless power of the Internet to connect people,…

You're totally right that SF has forced poor people to get out of the way of richer people. They've done this by downzoning the city, refusing to build anything more. This means that only the wealthy get to live there. Prime example is Haight-Ashbury downzonings.

When there isn't enough room for everybody, the rich get served first. So everytime somebody protests a new housing development which adds to the supply, they are advocating for the rich to stay, and to kick out the same number of people that would otherwise occupy those units.

In the 20th century, we declared housing a human right. But in San Francisco, we have declared that only the wealthy should be able to afford housing, and that the everybody else should leave.

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

#387
post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Any in/near a major city?

It's not 20 years, but the old Circuit City building in Assembly Square (just outside of Boston) has been vacant for 11.

That does seem strange, it’s hard to imagine the financial and legal structure that would incentive the beneficial owners to let a desirable chunk of real estate sit idle for 11 years.

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

#388
post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does Prop 13 have to do with the fact that they're not building enough housing?

not enough housing to meet demand means raising property values, which is beneficial for property owners without having to pay more taxes

I don't think every California home owner is some evil beast trying to keep others out. I support building more homes, and would love it if every single family detached home were automatically rezoned for two units on the parcel. But if it weren't for Prop 13, my home and my business would have been forced out by people moving in and paying too much money for homes next door to me.

And "raising property values" only raises my property tax, while giving me no real benefit.

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

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems the average Big Mac meal is $6 these days. It provides approximately 1,000 calories, and the average person needs approximately 2,000 per day, so we'll assume you'll need to order two. That puts the food costs at $12 per person. The average cost to install a kitchen is around $60,000. If we assume a rate of return of 5%, that is $3,000 per year right there that the money needs to provide to justify it being…

"The average cost to install a kitchen is around $60,000." An ordinary home kitchen? That is ... quite a lot. I am in a different part of the world, but I still managed to equip a home kitchen with reasonable-quality appliances (no scraping the barrel, mostly Bosch and Whirlpool) for some 4000 dollars in 2019.

There is a lot more to a standard kitchen than appliances. Like walls, floors, counters, etc. None of that comes free, or even cheap.

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

#390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commercial real estate rents work differently, at least in America, because of how they’re financed. Unlike residential housing, commercial buildings are continuously refinanced. When the owner of a commercial building gets a new mortgage on their building, the potential for rent is weighed more by the banks than the current rent. The way the math works out, it’s much better for a commercial land lord to leave a unit…

Do you know of anywhere I can read more about this? I've been trying to understand this phenomenon in NYC for a while.

Here's a good comment covering it[0]. I got my summary slightly wrong; buildings aren't re-financed, but rather the owner has the ability to delay payment on any unleased units. Leasing a unit at a lower rate suddenly modifies the value of the building, which means signing a lower lease can put the loan underwater. The same basic motivation structure applies though, it is far better for the owner to leave a unit empty and pray that someone can rent it at market rates later than it is to lower rates and get a tenant now.

0 - https://old.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/innhah/nearly_twothird...

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