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San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

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Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#101

Post by michaelochurch »

DanBlake wrote: post #8

The reason for San Francisco's high rent/home price is very simple, despite how others like to complicate it more: 1: Its desirable for most people to live here. Possibly the most desirable place in the USA, depending on your tastes. As a result, people are willing to pay more to live here. There are jobs, culture, food, art and much more all in this great city. 2: Rent Control. I wont get too much into it, but my ta…

This is a decent explanation but it's actually simpler than that.

People who are upwardly mobile follow the jobs. In general, they choose jobs, then cities. Except for the very rich who don't have to work, desirability (excluding commute) is a minor factor in prices. I can back that up, but I think most people buy this already.

However, real estate demand is extremely inelastic. If 5 percent of the houses in Manhattan were destroyed, the price increase wouldn't be 5%. It would probably be 2-5x, possibly 10x. That's why, even though rent control only affects a small percentage of the market, its price influence is huge.

New development is supposed to correct for that, but often the result of it is creation of more expensive housing, which solves quality problems but doesn't have the desired price effect until many years later. (Real estate rarely goes down in dollar-denominated amounts, for psychological reasons; what does happen in a soft market is that prices stay flat and lose to inflation. In effect, it's a loss-limit on price declines that is very tight when inflation is low.)

Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#102

Post by potatolicious »

patio11 wrote: post #96

At the risk of unsolicited dating advice: is the reason one is embarassed to mention one's occupation to a woman at the bar caused by tech salaries being too high, or by years of social conditioning telling you that geeks are low status? (Or by learning that the way one signals high status is by constructing a low status outgroup and then explaining how you're unlike them?) An alternative: just pretend society really…

Can't speak for OP, but for me it's much more of the former than the latter.

When I lived in Seattle, and later SF, I loathed to tell someone my job. Firstly because in that city it automatically paints a "has a truckload of cash" target on one's head, regardless of whether or not it's true.

Secondly because the tech folks in the city are blamed for basically all of the city's woes (this is true in both Seattle and SF). It has little to do with how "low status" software work is (because in those places, it's not really).

Now that I'm in NYC I feel much more free about telling people my job. For one thing, the response is generally "oh that's cool, tell me more" instead of "[eyeroll] yet another one", and secondly I'm not the biggest species in the pond anymore. The response to "I'm a software engineer" isn't automatically "you must make a lot of money".

Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#103

Post by ryandrake »

api wrote: post #68
RKoutnik wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you looked into Alameda? It's hundreds cheaper than anywhere in SF proper, quieter/cleaner and my commute's only 20 min.

Where do you commute? My possible offer's in Mountain View, and that seems like it would take a while. I also looked at Fremont/Newark, but have never physically been there. What's that area like? School district maps say some of the schools are decent. FYI I am 35 with a new baby, so the question is "can a family live in SF comfortably without having a cash-out event or a salary in excess of $240k?" The offer I'm pu…

Good luck. If you're planning on buying, the only areas in the Bay Area affordable to a single-income family will be places you don't want to live (East side and south San Jose, Hayward, and the nastier parts of Oakland). Also, in the current real estate market, you're going to need all-cash (or a very, very high down payment) and be willing to waive all the usual contingencies. It is a brutal seller's market, and as a buyer you are competing with foreign cash investors and hedge funds buying properties 10 at a time.

This is from someone who has been trying unsuccessfully to buy a home in the Bay Area for the last year and a half. We wrote an offer on a home that got 45 written offers and ended up selling for 25% over asking.

Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#104

Post by ionforce »

typicalrunt wrote: post #37
alxbrun wrote: post #13

SF is great for two categories of people: - The wealthy - The homeless (yes, social services and tolerance is much better here than in any other big city in the US) People caught in the middle who own a house will survive 10 years before quitting. If they don't own a house they have already left. I'm doing more than $100K and I had to leave the day I started a family (try to find a rent below $6K for something suitab…

I feel exactly the same way except that I'm in another city, Vancouver BC. There is an odd assortment of people in Vancouver consisting of the obscenely rich, wannabe rich, obscenely poor, and singles/couples with no children. Once you have children, you are pushed out of the Vancouver area and into the suburbs due to cost of adequate living conditions [1]. But people say, "oh, it's just the suburbs, it's not that fa…

How can middle class not mean anything? Doesn't it refer to the fat section of the income curve, where there are supposed to be the most number of people?

Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#105

Post by ionforce »

gkop wrote: post #50
dmix wrote: post #3

> The recent BART strikes are just a single data point in a larger trend: we’re alienating everyone who isn’t in technology. I'm not from SF but from an outside perspective: Taxes have increased 33% in the bay area since 2008 [1] and BART is "running at a surplus"...but BART transit workers have not had a pay raise since 2008? Can someone explain to me why the SF tech community are the bad guys here? ...Besides a few…

Specifically on the subject of transportation, many wealthy tech companies have deployed private buses that benefit only their employees and not the community. I don't think it's evil by any means, merely rational (at least in the short-term), but also still a missed opportunity to strengthen the community by covering employees' public transit passes, encouraging employees to live closer to work, or moving work close…

Well there must have been an underlying reason why companies would go out of their way to invest in their own transportation system than invest in the one that already exists. Maybe they were met with resistance? What is this resistance?

Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#106

Post by jaggederest »

GFischer wrote: post #94
api wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Oakland can get stabby. So it's stabby and overpriced. No thanks. If I wanted stabby I'd go to Detroit and get a Victorian for $25k.

I had to look up "stabby".. Is this what you were talking about? www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=stabby‎ or http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stabby ?

Stabby as in "You might get stabbed".

Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#107

Post by Kickmr »

GFischer wrote: post #94
api wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Oakland can get stabby. So it's stabby and overpriced. No thanks. If I wanted stabby I'd go to Detroit and get a Victorian for $25k.

I had to look up "stabby".. Is this what you were talking about? www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=stabby‎ or http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stabby ?

They mean to get stabbed by a knife, a common misconception about the east bay. Yes there's violence, but theres also beauty, you just need to know where to go and where not to go (san francisco is the same).

Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#108

Post by michaelochurch »

RyanZAG wrote: post #6

Doesn't seem like a great solution. If the tech guys leave SF, it would be like Detroit. SF and tech are now linked in the way Detroit and cars were. If you try pull the tech out, you'll be left with a husk fighting over crumbs. I don't even live in SF and this is clear to me. Or maybe it's clear to me because I don't live in SF?

I don't see San Francisco turning into Detroit. It's more likely to follow Pittsburgh's path, and Pittsburgh isn't a bad place to live these days (but it's far from a star city).

Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#109

Post by potatolicious »

GFischer wrote: post #94
api wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Oakland can get stabby. So it's stabby and overpriced. No thanks. If I wanted stabby I'd go to Detroit and get a Victorian for $25k.

I had to look up "stabby".. Is this what you were talking about? www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=stabby‎ or http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stabby ?

He's referring to high crime rates. Parts of Oakland does have extremely high crime rates, much higher than even SF's notably elevated violent crime rates.

Many Oaklanders would point out that not all of the city suffers from extreme violent crime, but it would also seem that the areas convenient to a SF commute generally tend to be worse, and the good areas aren't that cheap.

Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#110

Post by untog »

GFischer wrote: post #94
api wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Oakland can get stabby. So it's stabby and overpriced. No thanks. If I wanted stabby I'd go to Detroit and get a Victorian for $25k.

I had to look up "stabby".. Is this what you were talking about? www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=stabby‎ or http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stabby ?

Mr. Stabby may provide an unsubtle hint:

http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/Mr+Stabby/

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