San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash • Hacker News Board

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#461

Post by alistairSH » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 8:19 PM UTC

georgeecollins wrote: post #423

SECProto wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole Bay Area is a NIMBY nest The whole every urban area of North America is a NIMBY nest. Pretty much every city is stuck with swathes of land zoned only for single family homes, with any density needing development agreements and land use change hearings and etc. Some cities are less geographically constrained (more sprawl is possible) or slower growing (the zoning changes can accommodate the growth) but the…

Smart, ethical people-- like the ones here-- can be YIMBYs. Suburb I live in everyone is mad about: "McMansions" (whatever that means), multi-family homes and any development particularly apartment buildings. These people need to be shamed for their selfishness. I am a homeowner and a YIMBY. Join me!

McMansions (whatever that means)

A cookie-cutter, mass-produced home that has no clear architectural style and prizes superficial appearance and size over quality.

https://mcmansionhell.com/

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#462

Post by fakethenews2022 » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 8:19 PM UTC

fakethenews2022 wrote: post #459

LatteLazy wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ways you list are fine for getting a few extra dollars our of tourists. But there nothing compared the millions who commute in and out daily to work and pay no property taxes. And that's without counting criminals or people with mental health issues or 101 other groups who travel in and become the cities problem.

Read the article. It disproves your point completely. The commercial property owner is paying taxes and very high ones at that if it is recently purchased property. Do you know what the rents were per sq ft in SF? They were Manhattan level. SF was collecting on that. According to your notion, why isn't the town the employee resides also collecting commercial property tax on where the employee works? That town provide…

Do you know the transportation agencies were regionally paid for? It wasn't just SF that was paying for BART or CalTrain.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#463

Post by DeWilde » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 8:20 PM UTC

mbfg wrote: post #278

bluedino wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or if you call the police, they just never show up, or when they do, tell you not even bother filing a report. Citizen: Someone stole my backpack and laptop out of my car! Police: And?

Ok, imagine for me the society for which you can file a police report for a stolen backpack, and you relatively efficiently have your backpack returned, and the perpetrator brought to justice. What does that society look like? How does that happen?

This is my experience even in some of the poorer parts of Europe. You describe stolen items or provide photos of them and the police usually have a rough idea of who might have stolen it or have recently arrested someone in possession of your items.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#464

Post by fakethenews2022 » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 8:21 PM UTC

fakethenews2022 wrote: post #459

LatteLazy wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ways you list are fine for getting a few extra dollars our of tourists. But there nothing compared the millions who commute in and out daily to work and pay no property taxes. And that's without counting criminals or people with mental health issues or 101 other groups who travel in and become the cities problem.

Read the article. It disproves your point completely. The commercial property owner is paying taxes and very high ones at that if it is recently purchased property. Do you know what the rents were per sq ft in SF? They were Manhattan level. SF was collecting on that. According to your notion, why isn't the town the employee resides also collecting commercial property tax on where the employee works? That town provide…

Also is it your notion that SF wasn't receiving enough taxes even though it was 5x equivalent sized cities in California? Is spending 50k per homeless not enough?

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#465

Post by ceejayoz » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 8:21 PM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #441

ceejayoz wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Put another way, the guy stealing your catalytic converter isn't doing it because he's scared to burn your house down. He's doing it because he has every reasonable expectation of getting away with it and getting paid for it. Catalytic converter thefts are up everywhere, though. Not just in liberal bastions, but in places like Arkansas and Mississippi, too. Cops saying "if you just gave us more money and toys, we'd…

True to some extent, certainly. But if a cop in Arkansas catches you stealing a catalytic converter, the rest of your day is going to play out very differently compared to how things would have gone in SF.

> But if a cop in Arkansas catches you stealing a catalytic converter, the rest of your day is going to play out very differently compared to how things would have gone in SF.

I don't doubt it. I doubt the cops' unsupported claim that said difference is an effective deterrent against the crime.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#466

Post by nebula8804 » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 8:27 PM UTC

hollywood_court wrote: post #352

pessimizer wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because many methods of making money are cruel, a lot of stupid people develop an intuition that the best business decision no matter what is the one the people beneath you least want you to do. They see a world where they're trying to get all they can out of lazy employees that are constantly trying to get one over on them. Those employees' tricks are what is standing between them and retiring on passive income. Thi…

What you described is seen all over small towns here in the South. So many of my peers think that their employees owe them something. As a tradesman, I hear the same thing from so many of my peers in the real estate repair/building industry. What most of them don't realize is that they are actually successful exploiters of labor rather than successful business people. I judge a company by how well they treat the lowe…

Times like this I am reminded of all those Swiss CNC shops that offer to train people out of high school sometimes for 4+ years fully paid and then offer them a full time job often a lifetime position. These businesses have operated for generation some for 100+ years now. We are starting to see bits of this come back but I wonder if this country still has the culture to make it stick.

[1]:https://youtu.be/kWBQHicfyfQ?t=254

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#467

Post by abeppu » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 8:27 PM UTC

inferiorhuman wrote: post #320

abeppu wrote: post #299

So the commercial real estate problem is real, but this article also is concerned with the impacts to the municipal government. How important are those really? > The city’s budget office expects property tax revenues to continue to grow. But Howard Chernick, an economics professor at Hunter College and co-author of the report that forecast an up to 43% decline in SF’s property values, paints a much worse picture: His…

This data is several years old, but in a ranking of large American cities by budget per citizen That is an incredibly disingenuous metric and it's not surprising at all that DC and SF are at the top of the list. Washington DC is a quasi-state masquerading as a city and San Francisco is a consolidated city and county. The budgets of those two cities encompass things that are externalized in other cities.

Ok, but San Francisco also seems to be spending a lot more per person than any other consolidated city and county, so while that may explain part of SF's budget, it doesn't seem like a complete explanation. In that list, the next consolidated city/county is Honolulu, and SF was at that point spending close to 50% more per person. (I think that specific example also suggests that SF's spending is not just because local cost of living is high.) Other large city/county examples like Denver, Philadelphia and New Orleans are nowhere close.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#468

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 8:27 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#469

Post by rossdavidh » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 8:30 PM UTC

Cupertino95014 wrote: post #83

Trivia 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")

len("brace") == 5

len("prepare") == 7

len("eye") == 3

len("consider") == 8

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#470

Post by fakethenews2022 » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 8:31 PM UTC

fakethenews2022 wrote: post #459

LatteLazy wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ways you list are fine for getting a few extra dollars our of tourists. But there nothing compared the millions who commute in and out daily to work and pay no property taxes. And that's without counting criminals or people with mental health issues or 101 other groups who travel in and become the cities problem.

Read the article. It disproves your point completely. The commercial property owner is paying taxes and very high ones at that if it is recently purchased property. Do you know what the rents were per sq ft in SF? They were Manhattan level. SF was collecting on that. According to your notion, why isn't the town the employee resides also collecting commercial property tax on where the employee works? That town provide…

Also it is quite telling that when measures that accord with your attitude were passed, the businesses and services that you tout were more than happy to move out. And this was pre-COVID. 49ers poof. Stripe poof.

No more people coming into the city and freeloading.