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

Hotel Owners Start to Write Off San Francisco as Business Nosedives

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 163 posts

Re: Hotel Owners Start to Write Off San Francisco as Business Nosedives

#61

Post by losvedir »

kubb wrote: post #41

Is this the Bay Area population of HN expressing their frustration that there are many homeless people in SF? These posts come up from time to time. I was there some 4 years ago, and I met some homeless folks for sure, but the city was nice.

I can never tell if these things are SF residents expressing frustration, or people outside of SF expressing a sort of wishful spite. I sort of learned my lesson in taking these things at face value with that evolving story of the tech exec who was stabbed.

That said, what did strike me as a little odd were a lot of comments on the Vision Pro threads about where if you walk around with it on outside, you'll be instantly mugged. That's just... not the case where I live in my Indiana suburb. I leave my front door unlocked, and have had no issues leaving my laptop visible on the seat of my locked car when I'm out and about. People here seem to take for granted some amount of low level violence and theft as normal, which shocks me. I don't know if comments like those come from Bay Area residents, but I sort of assumed so because I've thought that's where the user base here skews.

Re: Hotel Owners Start to Write Off San Francisco as Business Nosedives

#62

Post by briandear »

evgen wrote: post #19
fallingknife wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't "fail to repay." Nobody ever repays this type of loan. They failed to refinance. And the fact that no one would refinance their $725 million loan means that the property has seriously declined in value.

It appears that the only thing that has declined here is the free money support for the fantasy valuation being claimed by the REIT. There are a lot of reasons that hundreds of billions in commercial real estate loans are going to be written off in the next few years and the original article mentioned none of them...

If it’s a fantasy valuation then was the government collecting property taxes based on those fantasy values?

Re: Hotel Owners Start to Write Off San Francisco as Business Nosedives

#63

Post by [deleted] »

paulcole wrote: post #36
zoky wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hotels may or may not be themselves run down, but there's also the neighborhood to consider, especially when you're talking about San Francisco. I know someone who used to travel to SF for work a lot, like 10-12 times a year. He had a favorite hotel there that was a block and a half away from his office. But every single time, he'd rent a car, just to drive from the underground parking at his hotel to the undergr…

It likely felt safer than walking but there is a 0% chance that a 1.5 block walk through San Francisco was truly more dangerous than a 1.5 block car ride. It’s much more likely that neither was dangerous at all.

[deleted]

Re: Hotel Owners Start to Write Off San Francisco as Business Nosedives

#64

Post by jl6 »

xrd wrote: post #10
gigatexal wrote: post #5

Me thinks similar things are going to happen (if they're not already) to Portland. I grew up there and then worked on SW 5th Ave from 2013 to 2018 and loved it. Since then I've been in Germany working. I went back last year to see family and my old "stomping grounds" near my old office and other places that I'd love to go eat at and such were overrun with folks with substance abuse issues, homelessness, etc., and man…

It's going to be interesting with the new ordinance to outlaw camping from dawn to sundown. If you camp during those hours, you face jail time. The theory is probably that this will separate hard core drug users from homeless people who aren't willing to go into a shelter. That'll be an interesting experiment.

Are they building more jails?

Re: Hotel Owners Start to Write Off San Francisco as Business Nosedives

#65

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

evgen wrote: post #19
fallingknife wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't "fail to repay." Nobody ever repays this type of loan. They failed to refinance. And the fact that no one would refinance their $725 million loan means that the property has seriously declined in value.

It appears that the only thing that has declined here is the free money support for the fantasy valuation being claimed by the REIT. There are a lot of reasons that hundreds of billions in commercial real estate loans are going to be written off in the next few years and the original article mentioned none of them...

There's even more reasons that interest rates won't stay this high for long enough to matter.

Re: Hotel Owners Start to Write Off San Francisco as Business Nosedives

#66

Post by mcculley »

ciabattabread wrote: post #49
kubb wrote: post #41

Is this the Bay Area population of HN expressing their frustration that there are many homeless people in SF? These posts come up from time to time. I was there some 4 years ago, and I met some homeless folks for sure, but the city was nice.

Most of this site still believes Bob Lee of Cash was killed by a homeless guy.

Did you run a poll? How did you arrive at this conclusion?

Re: Hotel Owners Start to Write Off San Francisco as Business Nosedives

#67

Post by randunel »

dougmwne wrote: post #34
randunel wrote: post #20

Has San Francisco become that bad? My father lives in the city, but I've never heard him complain about the state of things.

What does “that bad” even mean? Like in some kind of relative sense, people still live there and go about their lives. Some of the things that made it a popular and pleasant city are intact. In an absolute sense, if you were to compare SF with Zurich, you would conclude that it’s a lawless mad max anarchy.

The article paints a pretty gloomy picture:

> The city’s lodging business has been squeezed by crime and other quality-of-life issues that have kept many convention bookers away.

> concerns over public safety are prompting groups and associations to shift their business to markets like Las Vegas

and the links [0], [1] in the article are even worse

> There has been an exodus of retailers and other businesses from the mid-Market Street area of downtown amid rampant public drug use and homelessness.

> “We try to call security, but they are usually busy. So we just let them do what they want.”

[0] https://archive.is/C6FPb [1] https://archive.is/pG5oN

Re: Hotel Owners Start to Write Off San Francisco as Business Nosedives

#68

Post by Etrnl_President »

paulcole wrote: post #36
zoky wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hotels may or may not be themselves run down, but there's also the neighborhood to consider, especially when you're talking about San Francisco. I know someone who used to travel to SF for work a lot, like 10-12 times a year. He had a favorite hotel there that was a block and a half away from his office. But every single time, he'd rent a car, just to drive from the underground parking at his hotel to the undergr…

It likely felt safer than walking but there is a 0% chance that a 1.5 block walk through San Francisco was truly more dangerous than a 1.5 block car ride. It’s much more likely that neither was dangerous at all.

[dead]

Re: Hotel Owners Start to Write Off San Francisco as Business Nosedives

#69

Post by HlessClaudesman »

paulcole wrote: post #36
zoky wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hotels may or may not be themselves run down, but there's also the neighborhood to consider, especially when you're talking about San Francisco. I know someone who used to travel to SF for work a lot, like 10-12 times a year. He had a favorite hotel there that was a block and a half away from his office. But every single time, he'd rent a car, just to drive from the underground parking at his hotel to the undergr…

It likely felt safer than walking but there is a 0% chance that a 1.5 block walk through San Francisco was truly more dangerous than a 1.5 block car ride. It’s much more likely that neither was dangerous at all.

Getting accosted several homeless people in a short stretch feels unsafe, especially to the sort of out of towner who is not inured to it, in a way that driving does not. Both have a very low risk per unit of travel, but in the moment we have no way of qualitatively measuring that risk.

I stayed in SF for a few nights, it was pretty shocking to me the amount of homeless people (euphemism creep: temporarily unhoused) and the various tactics they employed to try and get money. One lady was just screaming at people in a fast food restaurant, I guess she was hoping to get paid in order to go away. This was 20 years ago and I hear the situation has only gotten worse since.

California treating homeless people like sacred cows is eventually going to wreck their inner cities for everyone.

Re: Hotel Owners Start to Write Off San Francisco as Business Nosedives

#70

Post by zoky »

paulcole wrote: post #36
zoky wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hotels may or may not be themselves run down, but there's also the neighborhood to consider, especially when you're talking about San Francisco. I know someone who used to travel to SF for work a lot, like 10-12 times a year. He had a favorite hotel there that was a block and a half away from his office. But every single time, he'd rent a car, just to drive from the underground parking at his hotel to the undergr…

It likely felt safer than walking but there is a 0% chance that a 1.5 block walk through San Francisco was truly more dangerous than a 1.5 block car ride. It’s much more likely that neither was dangerous at all.

Well, keep in mind that he was working somewhat odd hours. He would often be leaving work at around 23:00 or later. There are definitely parts of San Francisco where you do not want to be walking even a single block through that late.
Post reply on HN