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

tomdale.net

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

#341

Post by secabeen »

michaelochurch wrote: post #282
Loughla wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an asinine argument. You're more likely to run into terrible neighbors in an apartment setting, with the higher turnover in living spaces. Your argument is done in by basic research into the neighborhood. That's like saying that you shouldn't buy a home simply because it might burn down one day, whereas living in an apartment is fine, because if it does burn down, it's not your building.

That is an asinine argument. You're more likely to run into terrible neighbors in an apartment setting, with the higher turnover in living spaces. Your argument is done in by basic research into the neighborhood. Disagree. A lot of neighborhoods have homeowners' associations, which are like New York co-op boards and basically an excuse for non-working house-spouses to get in peoples' way because they have literally n…

HOAs do exist, and can be intrusive, but OP's final line still applies: "Your argument is done in by basic research into the neighborhood."

Anyone buying a home knows if the home their looking at has an HOA or is a condo. I know many people who would never consider buying a home covered by an HOA, and many other people who like knowing that their neighbor can't paint their house pink and do car repair in the front yard with death metal playing. Caveat emptor.

Finally, many of these risks are reduced by actually being a part of the community. Don't want a factory built 0.5 miles from your home? Go to the planning meetings, talk to your city planning staff/council members. Join the HOA board. Being a homeowner means that you have an incentive to invest in your community and make it the community you want it to be. If you just disconnect and let others make decisions for you, yes you can be screwed. However, if you participate, get to know your neighbors, and become a part of the community, you can make it everything you want it to be, and more.

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

#342

Post by jimray »

jacoblyles wrote: post #250
enraged_camel wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I'd love the city I'm sure, but after glancing around I've come to the conclusion that home ownership is unthinkable to anyone who hasn't had a cash-out event. I've never understood this crazy, if not outright insane obsession with home ownership. Why does everyone want to tie significant amounts of their lifetime earnings into physical property that historically has had very low appreciation in value? It's like pe…

Communities are built by people that are in for the long haul. How many renters show up at city council meetings? The age of renting is the age of "bowling alone".

I completely agree with your point, but that's not a problem of renters, per se.

If the city of San Francisco (where my wife and I live) made a committed effort to build a stable stock of rental property that allowed families of 3-5 to rent for less than $3k a month, I guarantee you'd see more families sticking around instead of fleeing to points north or east. Instead, you get mostly young, single (your "bowling alone" category, less likely to show up at those city council meetings) splitting 3 bedrooms four ways and paying $4k for the privilege of all sharing one kitchen and one bathroom.

I'm optimistic that all of the new housing being put up in SOMA will help alleviate this but there needs to be some complementary regulatory structure to help keep those community types (which are often what the young singles become in 5-10 years) around. Otherwise, SF is quickly on a path towards being a place where only the rich, the young, the single, and the poor (via subsidized housing) can afford to live. The middle gets squeezed.

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

#343

Post by walshemj »

patio11 wrote: post #135
potatolicious wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 S…

Being blamed for things they self-evidently do not control? Eye rolls? These are classic markers of low status.

well at least she didn't say "thats nice what sort of cars do you work on" when she found out that he was an engineer

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

#344

Post by coenhyde »

muzz wrote: post #188
api wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building more housing is the only option, and like you say you can't build anything. Maybe Peter Thiel needs to build his floating seasteading metropolis. If he put it in the bay you could connect SV to Newark and Fremont via a gentrified version of The Raft from Snow Crash.

> you can't build anything This canard keeps getting repeated over and over in comments. Not sure if it is a projection of bias, or ignorance, or just denial of the facts. The reality is that tens of thousands of units (22,000 since the article, a year ago, more now) are either in construction or in the pipeline. This is a construction boom. http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-apartment-construc...

It may be a boom compared to historical levels but it is in no way enough. 22,000 is tiny! There's probably already a shortage of half a million. Think about how many people live outside the city because rent is too expensive. SF is a desirable location, just because there are only 800k people here now doesn't mean more do not want to live here.

SoMa should have massive sky scrappers being built on every block, it's the perfect location to build this high density housing/offices solution (big blocks, flat land, underutilized and close to the city center). And I mean real skyscrapers Manhattan size or larger.

The city should take care in SoMa to make sure they do not allow new skyscrapers that do not reach a minimum height. The space there is valuable (even if it's not used correctly now). You wouldn't want a situation where medium density is built instead.

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

#345

Post by njonsson »

methehack wrote: post #233

Well come on down, Tom Dale! Portland, on behalf of me, welcomes you. With regard to the tech scene here, a few things. First, it's a little sleepy, sure -- but it's not groggy, more waking up. I'm sure it will appreciate whatever leadership you can contribute. Second, as you'll soon be demonstrating, living in Portland and working for a company in SFO should be a pretty good combination. The flight down is frequent,…

I have to admit that the “OVER!” scene from “Portlandia” came to mind as I read Tom’s post. http://youtu.be/YlGqN3AKOsA

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

#346

Post by dusing »

mncolinlee wrote: post #284
enraged_camel wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>If I plan to own the house for multiple years, a large chunk of my money goes to equity: I'm banking away value for later that you will get back when you sell the house. (Assuming the market doesn't go pear-shape: a big assumption.) In contrast, money you spend on rent is a pure cost, and irrevocably lost. This logic is fundamentally flawed. Contrary to the popular conventional wisdom (repeated by our Baby Boomer p…

Conventional wisdom is just that... a convention. Each region of the country has different real estate markets with different cost dynamics. This buy-rent article merely proves that you have to do the math yourself. I currently live near the Twin Cities, Minneapolis-St. Paul, which has one of the costlier rental markets for low end apartments. The cheapest apartments you can rent cost more per month than my mortgage.…

I also live in the twin cities and the rent to mortgage ratio for single family homes is heavily slanted toward high rents. So we just bought a place for 1200/mo that we are renting for 1500 a month, and we live elsewhere. It's a great market if you can buy right now.

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

#347

Post by steveklabnik »

ionforce wrote: post #104
typicalrunt wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Marxists, for example, do not find 'the middle class' to be a concept of any significance.

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

#348

Post by 7Figures2Commas »

enraged_camel wrote: post #230
gknoy wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who recently (this past year) went from being a renter to a homeowner, and had previously been a home owner for several years, it's not all rational... but here are some of the reasons. I don't have to worry about the rent going up every year / six-months. If I plan to own the house for multiple years, a large chunk of my money goes to equity: I'm banking away value for later that you will get back when yo…

>>If I plan to own the house for multiple years, a large chunk of my money goes to equity: I'm banking away value for later that you will get back when you sell the house. (Assuming the market doesn't go pear-shape: a big assumption.) In contrast, money you spend on rent is a pure cost, and irrevocably lost. This logic is fundamentally flawed. Contrary to the popular conventional wisdom (repeated by our Baby Boomer p…

> This logic is fundamentally flawed.

In my experience it's rarely worth appealing to logic when discussing home ownership. It's just such an emotional subject that rational debate is often hard to come by.

1. Many home buyers make purchases with relatively little knowledge of their local real estate markets. For instance, in some areas heavily hit by the crash, you can find buyers who don't know that a considerable amount of the local sales activity has been driven by individual speculators and institutional buyers who are attempting to rent out the homes they purchase. They might be on a block where a double-digit percentage of the houses are rentals and not even know it or recognize how this could affect them.

2. Many people don't actually run the numbers for themselves so they can't intelligently weigh the cost of renting versus the total cost of home ownership and the potential gain or loss if/when the house is sold, an event that could be a decade or more away. At best, they do back of the envelope math and where assumptions are required, use a single set of assumptions that is favorable to the decision they have already made.

3. Many people who buy a house are really buying an interest rate and mortgage payment. The recent rise in interest rates has actually provided a good opportunity to observe this: some buyers who are in the market today are willing and eager to purchase a good deal "less house" than they could have purchased even a year ago because they're simply targeting a mortgage payment. Many conversations with realtors are eerily similar to conversations with auto salesmen: the best auto salesmen focus on the monthly payment, not the price of the car and what you're getting for it, because they know that the average person will apply a completely different, and less rigorous, analysis to the purchase when it's done this way.

4. Owning the dwelling you call home is an emotional thing, so home ownership proponents often resort to weak arguments like "if you're renting you're throwing money away" to justify their decision. Of course, there's no shortage of things that people "throw money away" on and some of those people, of course, are homeowners. It's not hard, for instance, to find homeowners with a $400/month auto lease or a 48 or 60 month loan on a car that costs half of what they gross in a year. And plenty of new homeowners spend more on unnecessary upgrades and "stuff" (i.e. large televisions, expensive audio systems, etc.) shortly after they move in to their new houses. Yet many of these same people don't see the irony in bragging about how financially astute they were to purchase a home and start building "equity".

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

#349

Post by DanBC »

brigade wrote: post #323
enraged_camel wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>What, exactly, is "crazy" about it? As a renter, you don't control your own destiny. You're at the whim of your landlord. As a home-owner, or better yet, a property-owner, you have much more control over your living situation. Don't like the paint color? Change it. Don't like your stove? Get a new one. Want to plant some new flowers? Go for it. This is hilarious. As a home-owner, you have control over your own home…

> there isn't a single thing you can do about it. There are laws against most of the things neighbors could do to annoy you. Which means you can involve police and/or the courts, until your neighbors stop annoying you. If you're renting, especially in an apartment complex, and go to sue, that likely means involving the landlord, and thus getting kicked out as soon as the legal retaliation period is up.

I'm not sure what happens in the US, but I think both renters and home-owners are screwed when they have bad neighbours.

See the Steve O documentary "Demise and Rise" about his drug addiction. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkvVcQr6JU4) See especially this bit (http://youtu.be/vRTrOF6lGzk?t=4m47s)

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

#350

Post by timcederman »

jedmeyers wrote: post #146
fingerprinter wrote: post #18

My wife and I made a very conscious decision to NOT move to SF when we were looking to move back to the US from Australia. Frankly, SF and the whole valley were not where we wanted to raise our three kids (6, 2.5 and newborn). Doing cost comparisons, quality of life and education we just couldn't justify SF over other places. This is, by all accounts, a career limiting move for me (I'm in tech, but I work remote righ…

It will be nice to see your comparison of the cost of living between Bay Area and, let's say, Sydney. Can you please provide one? Starting with the assumption that AUD 80k salary in IT in Sydney for the software engineer position will be equal to around $100k in SF.

Cost of living in Sydney is just as high, if not higher than the Bay Area.

I moved my family to the Bay Area from Australia and am very happy with the decision.

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