Can they repurpose these dead offices as homeless shelters?
San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash
151–160 of 622 posts
Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash
#152Trivia note: there are certain words that only appear in headlines. Like "brace" to mean "prepare." (Although I think that one might occasionally show up in normal text.) What else? "eye" as a verb. ("Supervisors eye relaxing building codes")
What? I've seen both of those used plenty before outside of headlines. I've also heard them used in television, movies and songs. Those aren't uncommon. "Brace" especially.
Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every place I've ever lived had plumbing in the walls. Now, it also had it in the floors, so your point is well taken. But I seriously doubt that a central plumbing stack is a serious holdup on plumbing out an entire floor. Then again, I don't have any real experience, so I'm very much being optimistic here without actual hands-on knowledge. I could be very wrong, and would love to hear why!
So, this is me reaching back aways in memory. Walls with plumbing through them are held to different standards to other walls. Walls with plumbing use 2 by 6s. Builders and architects try to optimize by making as few walls as possible walls with plumbing because they are more expensive. Your regular walls use 2 by 4s. So yes, some walls have plumbing running through them, but not all. Any architect and contractor wil…
I've never seen a wall framed with 2x6s because it had plumbing in it. It's all 2x4 regardless, here—you almost never see a 2x6 wall. Is that a California thing?
Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash
#154The city officials are asleep at the wheel. Blame it on remote work and pandemic as much as you want, but the reality is that the city was in decline even before that. It is too expensive to live in the city. It is too expensive to commute to the city. It is too expensive to feed yourself in the city. Crime is rampant. Drug use and filth is everywhere. Most importantly city has been hostile to tech and business owner…
Drug use isn't associated with crime and filth until we make it so via harsh city policies. I would, however, like someone to clean the 4 different instances of poop I saw on my 3 block walk this morning.
You think drug use doesn't lead to crime?
Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash
#155What about residential? I thought prices were high but manageable. New mortgages are all over 5% now, that makes those all too common $2-4 mil house prices insane.
A lot of people who own residential property in SF can afford to take a loss indefinitely on the assumption that prices/buyers will eventually return. Especially if those same people's wages keep up roughly with inflation.
Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe SF should relax the legal requirements of residential space, then? If they choose not to build sufficient housing... they can at least choose to use what they have. A windowless room with a community bathroom doesn't sound appealing, but at a certain price point it's better than nothing.
The requirements for residential units are primarily the International Building Code, which are the expensive ones. The city only manages planning, such as a residential use can go in a certain area. To actually build, you need a building permit which has to conform to City and State building codes [2], which right now is basically the International Building Code [1]. And yes, it would cost a fortune to convert offic…
Many of those codes have been designed to protect incombents from competition and various other forms of encouraging one form of living (car dependent) over others.
Plenty of people in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, etc live happy lives in much much smaller living areas. This makes them more affordable. But building codes in many places in the USA disallow making places that small.
Other examples of questionable codes are codes that require parking spaces, codes that require front yards, codes that require backyards, etc....
Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash
#157Residential crash is potentially already upon us, at least in the outskirts (East Bay for me). We've had our house on the market for over a month now, and nobody else in the neighborhood is selling either. Big changes from only 3 months ago, when sellers were closing in days.
I have a move to the East Bay area planned in next 6-8 months or so, if you can hold out for that long haha.
Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash
#158The city officials are asleep at the wheel. Blame it on remote work and pandemic as much as you want, but the reality is that the city was in decline even before that. It is too expensive to live in the city. It is too expensive to commute to the city. It is too expensive to feed yourself in the city. Crime is rampant. Drug use and filth is everywhere. Most importantly city has been hostile to tech and business owner…
Drug use isn't associated with crime and filth until we make it so via harsh city policies. I would, however, like someone to clean the 4 different instances of poop I saw on my 3 block walk this morning.
>Drug use isn't associated with crime and filth until we make it so via harsh city policies.
In an ideal world, sure. You can't establish causality here for sure but correlation, definitely.
Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
We as an industry are still sailing through the air thinking things are fine with WFH, but in reality the engines have stalled and we're gliding. What I mean by that is that the industry has all the benefits of in-person work, having social connections, having gotten jobs through networking, and of knowing the ins and outs of a domain from pre-covid standards. As time goes on, I think the working population will have…
Hi manager! :-) No, we don’t go back to the office.
I would expect managers to be pleased that it's more difficult to network and leave them for a better manager.
Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash
#160In a way I'm glad that a large chunk of San Francisco's population is getting exactly what they have wanted for years – to get rid of big tech takeover of the city. Maybe they will actually fare better with a significantly reduced number of tech workers and jobs, or maybe they won't. At least we'll know for certain now, and can stop all the whining.
I know people miss SF as it was before the boom, but can it actually readjust to substantially less tax revenue with the city government + responsibilities it has now?
From what I read about Detroit, once businesses started shrinking or leaving the tax base shrank.
The city was unable to cut down on services and spending, so it raised taxes on everyone remaining and the squeeze of more tax and worse QoL made people leave even faster.
I'd love to hear if anyone has examples of a city's tax revenue shrinking at least ~20% in a couple years where the city correctly adjusts their services and scope to match, without facing some runaway decline or lost decade.
Open to discussion on this.
EDIT:
Thinking aloud, maybe the people leaving Detroit due to loss of services/QoL were simply in the parts that Detroit was abandoning to make ends meet?