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San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

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Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#161

Post by hollywood_court »

SoftTalker wrote: post #103
mancerayder wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see plumbing exposed in the ceiling in some of the cool fancy new lofts that were converted from offices (in NYC).

Yeah but your ceiling is the next level's floor. If drilling a 4" hole in the floor/ceiling to accomodate a toilet drain is too damaging to the structural integrity (not sure I believe that, but I'm not an engineer) then it's a non-starter. Maybe you could build the bathrooms and kitchens along partition walls that have space behind them, so pipes could run above the floor, between walls, to the building core where a…

A 4" or 6" hole won't be a problem. In fact, if you go to any commercial project you will probably find more than a few holes that shouldn't have been drilled because there was an over eager mechanical employee or someone who could not read plans properly. Those holes are often just covered up.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#162

Post by systemvoltage »

darth_avocado wrote: post #127

The 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…

No post body was provided.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#163

Post by coryrc »

silicon2401 wrote: post #131
whartung wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't say for certain, but I think most regulations about windows are about having an escape in case of disaster. Specifically, there was house we were looking at, and one of the previous owners covered up the back porch. However, one of the bedrooms used to overlook that back porch, and had a window on that wall. They were not allowed to remove that window because "bedrooms have windows", even though the window wa…

I completely forgot about the fire thing, and that only strengthens my argument/stance. The Triangle fire was a terrible tragedy in American history during which a lot of women died not even because of lack of windows, but because doors and windows were barred. Now imagine how many people would be at risk if they didn't even have windows in the first place.

The windows in a 50-story skyscraper are not very useful for escape.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#164

Post by zanny »

fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #26
ptmcc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most offices have physical layouts that make conversion to residential difficult to impossible. Big things like lots of interior square footage without windows and plumbing only to a few central locations. And while some or even most of this is fixable, major renovations are a ton of cost and effort to convert them to something that will still be expensive and weird, if even possible to meet the legal requirements of…

Can they be converted into huge units with an open floor plan and bathroom/kitchen near the center? If someone can figure out how to make it look cool, office conversions could be the 2020s version of the warehouse loft.

It should be doable to take each floor and put a kitchen / bathrooms / storage in the middle with living space around the exterior windows with connecting hallways. On larger buildings split it in half or quarters (the only issue then becomes stair access, which is often along the edge of a building and would need a hallway from a central elevator). You might have some odd bedroom arrangements with long narrow rooms to get some outside light in each, but I don't think its unworkable.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#165

Post by dividefuel »

unethical_ban wrote: post #36
hollywood_court wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not near a big tech center, but I know of exactly 3 businesses in my town that no longer exist because they would not allow their employees to work remotely. Two of them were owned by former clients of mine. They allowed themselves to fail because they wanted to make their employees’ lives more difficult. It was that simple. There was no need for either business to have a brick and mortar location at all. No need…

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…

We're 2.5 years into the big, unplanned WFH experiment. I would think all of the in-person benefits you mention would be visibly expiring by now. Are they? I'm sure in some cases they definitely are, but industry-wide I would think we'd see more clear evidence by now if that was the case.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#166

Post by pixl97 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #137
darth_avocado wrote: post #127

The 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…

> city officials are asleep at the wheel Eh, San Francisco's voters have been drinking crazy water for some time. New developments blocked by renters. Stringent building codes and environmental reviews defended by those who think they're being compassionate to the poor. Scolding tech companies for hiring in the city and then panicking when they stop hiring in the city. This obviously isn't all of them. But it's not l…

Yea, people love blaming (elected) city officials but NIMBYism and "Housing is an investment that should only go up in price" will eventually kill any market.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#168

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #95

This is a labour union issue and not a prop 13 or even a NIMBY issue. https://sfstandard.com/housing-development/labor-unions-have... Those commenting here don’t understand how labour unions in CA have the Senate and Assembly by the balls. As long as the public keeps focusing on imaginary enemies amongst themselves and we keep lobbing ‘prop 13’and ‘nimby’ balls at each other, we lose. Nobody here on HN is going to be…

> is meant for affordable housing and to move vote banks from other counties

We have this in New York. It's far from as cancerous as the situation in California. When Marc Andreessen is talking about building housing in California while screaming about it in his backyard, you have the poster child for the problem [1].

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-18/atherton-...

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#170

Post by colinmhayes »

rapind wrote: post #78
ethbr0 wrote: post #19

Earlier 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.

> A windowless room with a community bathroom doesn't sound appealing, but at a certain price point it's better than nothing. You make this legal and tomorrow every RE developer stops putting in windows.

Except people will pay extra for windows...
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