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Hotel Owners Start to Write Off San Francisco as Business Nosedives

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

#91

Post by briandear »

courseofaction wrote: post #23
xrd wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A cruel experiment that will neither relieve suffering nor address its cause. America is insane.

America is insane? You might want to look at what cities in Europe do for their honelesss.

https://www.slowboring.com/p/they-have-homelessness-in-europ...

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

#92

Post by muglug »

Varqu wrote: post #35

Congrats to SF politicians (and people who voted for them) for ruining this city.

TIL that SF politicians created the COVID pandemic and drove the WFH policies that emptied out the business district.

SF suffers from many of the same problems that other much-more-conservative cities suffer from, but you don’t hear about them as much because it doesn’t fit a narrative.

I live in NYC, and visit SF often for work. I’m fascinated in the similarities and difference between the cities.

For example, pre-pandemic SF public transport had half the daily ridership per capita that NYC had, implying workers there were much more dependent on cars. That, combined with the much lower housing density, meant that white-collar workers were much less interested in returning to the office.

NYC and SF have a similar unhoused percentage, yet one seems worse. Maybe a bunch of that is due to laissez-faire policing? But it could also be due to SF’s climate that makes being out on the street year-round slightly more doable.

Downtown has particularly low housing density. How much of that is due to SF government, and how much is due to big tech paying ridiculously high rents for buildings?

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

#93

Post by fmajid »

prepend wrote: post #8
ghastmaster wrote: post #4

Wolf Richter rips on this article pretty hard: https://wolfstreet.com/2023/06/12/ive-had-it-with-stupid-stu... > Park Hotels failed to pay off a $725 million interest-only non-recourse mortgage that matured last November. The mortgage was secured by two run-down mega-hotels in San Francisco, the 1,921-room Hilton San Francisco Union Square and the 1,024-room Parc 55 San Francisco. > Park Hotels only owns the properti…

> run down These aren’t run down hotels. These are both rated 4.2 [0, 1] and while aren’t the greatest in the world are both Hiltons and decent hotels. The criticism doesn’t change the nature of the original article in that San Francisco is less good as it once was and as a result businesses are defaulting on pretty big things rather than invest in keeping them up. The inaccurate language seems to have a “everything’…

Not just hotels. Westfield just chose to default on its downtown shopping mall as well (the one that just lost its Nordstrom).

San Francisco progressives got their wish: those evil gentrifying techies are leaving in droves. Unfortunately for the progressives, that also means they are taking their money with them, that was being spent by SF like drunken sailors.

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

#94

Post by rsynnott »

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.

I mean, you could say that of practically anywhere compared to Zurich.

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

#95

Post by umrcumrcu »

ghastmaster wrote: post #4

Wolf Richter rips on this article pretty hard: https://wolfstreet.com/2023/06/12/ive-had-it-with-stupid-stu... > Park Hotels failed to pay off a $725 million interest-only non-recourse mortgage that matured last November. The mortgage was secured by two run-down mega-hotels in San Francisco, the 1,921-room Hilton San Francisco Union Square and the 1,024-room Parc 55 San Francisco. > Park Hotels only owns the properti…

That article is full of fallacies. Brick and mortars in other large cities aren't closing like they are in San Francisco, especially not in the the epicenter of the financial district. Hotel rates in other cities have reached record highs while SF has declined even with inflation.[1]

[1] https://www.otainsight.com/resources/blog/us-hotel-pricing-t...

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

#96

Post by gigatexal »

CalRobert wrote: post #16
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 only a feeling, and might be confirmation bias (I moved abroad as well) but it feels like more people I know are leaving the US entirely. Certainly more of my peer group than my parents' generation.

I agree. I miss a lot of home (family, taco bell, friends, some freedoms) but I really do enjoy the healthcare, the lack of anxiety from gun violence, the stable government, and the lack of stress.

I am trying to get folks I know to move out of the US, too!

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

#97

Post by briandear »

nradov wrote: post #80
CalRobert wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only a feeling, and might be confirmation bias (I moved abroad as well) but it feels like more people I know are leaving the US entirely. Certainly more of my peer group than my parents' generation.

The US still has a positive net migration rate with pretty much every other country, including all major EU member states.

That’s going to be a lot poor people moving from poor countries. But to OP’s point, there are a lot of middle-upper class, especially remote workers that are looking to get the heck out of the US. I am one of them. When sex changes for children is a topic of national debate, or my kids are being taught that your skin color makes you racist — it’s time to go.

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

#98

Post by ddorian43 »

Fervicus wrote: post #55
ufo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, SVB didn't go broke because of subprime loans. They had a bank run.

They mismanaged their risk. You make it sound like they did nothing wrong.

Can the other banks handle the same thing that happened to SVB?

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

#99

Post by nemo44x »

losvedir wrote: post #61
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 instan…

Yeah it’s a sad state of affairs. It’s the stripping of freedom that I can’t believe people live with. If you can’t leave your home without considering you might be the target of a crime, you’re not free.

The mentality I don’t understand is the whole it’s “part and parcel” for living in a city. That it’s normal for crime to creep around, for litter and feces to be spread, and for drugged out people to be laying in the streets.

That’s not normal and it’s considered unacceptable in many places. Places for free than SF nowadays.

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

#100

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

Incipient wrote: post #73
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The hotels themselves are operated by other companies, and when Park Hotel defaults on a mortgage and walks away from the property, it means ownership of the property will change. That’s all it means for the hotel. The operating company remains the same. I'm curious about this part. Is that actually true? That sounds like the contract that the management company has is with the lender to begin with rather than Park…

I would expect there is some clause in their contract about novating it on transfer of the property ownership. Properties do get transferred, and it would be beyond insane not to have such a clause. It's not as if the operator of thy hotel can just rent another space down the road. But not my industry, just seems like it would be reckless from the outside.

I'm sure the contract has terms that determine what happens on a sale, return to lendor or whatever else is going on. But I'm not convinced that the assumption that "nothing changes for the management company" is such an obvious assumption.
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