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Average Rent in San Francisco Has Dropped $1k This Year

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Re: Average Rent in San Francisco Has Dropped $1k This Year

#501

Post by Tiktaalik »

Kalium wrote: post #495
Tiktaalik wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah sure, but we should also be aware that the wealthy do not want these taxes, and will use every means to ensure they are not enacted. This includes spreading FUD about their implementation and results.

I, personally, hesitate to characterize the lived experiences with policy choices of other polities as FUD. I understand that this is a deeply personal choice, and as such some might differ.

I'm speaking mostly to the media (owned by whom?), politicians and the surrogates of wealth that appear as a talking head to speak about the wealth tax.

The "Taxes were repealed in Europe so case closed" message that wealth is all too happy to push is a deflection from a thorough examination of the policy. Why were these policies "failures" in Europe? Some of the flaws of the European taxes have been already directly addressed by more recent Bernie and Warren proposals. For another example the issue some European countries had of their wealthy fleeing the country to avoid the tax isn't even possible US's tax system which will tax you regardless of where you live.

Re: Average Rent in San Francisco Has Dropped $1k This Year

#502

Post by epistasis »

onecommentman wrote: post #435
epistasis wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though this is not an uncommon view in SF at the moment, I find it horrifying. What has made SF such a great place from the 1970s to ~2010 has been its willingness to accept new people, including the strange and the weird. That's not to say that it's been a great city for everyone , the first-wave gentrifiers from the 1960s pushed out Black people from the neighborhoods they took over, like Haight Ashbury, and the do…

“I find it horrifying” Please, for the sake of your good content, don’t go hyperbolic. It makes you sound less credible. Things that are horrifying: genocide, torture, slavery, famine, child abuse, elder abuse. Things that are not horrifying: almost everything else. Maybe bad, really bad, destructive...but not horrifying. Certainly not a personal view about The Zeitgeist of SF.

The downstream consequences of this "zeitgeist," the homelessness, the displacement, the destruction of communities, the people right on the edge of eviction doing everything they can to make rent, people overcrowding into apartments so they can get enough salaries together to cover the cost of a room... I'm tired of my friends being forced to move. I'm tired of people living in their cars until they can find some place to crash. In a land of great wealth, this is horrifying. We put people, with jobs, playing their part in society, through a damned meatgrinder just so some assholes don't have to see a new building. I'm not typically a fan of journalism that's driven by personal stories, but in the case of housing it's really important to pay attention to them because the stats alone don't tell the story of what it means to get evicted and to have your entire life upturned because the zeitgeist demands that rents MUST GO UP rather than somebody somewhere pay for a condo and subsidize below-market-rent for somebody else.

Calling the state of housing the Bay Area anything less than "horrifying" is sugar-coating it, and I would thank you not to tone-police others.

Re: Average Rent in San Francisco Has Dropped $1k This Year

#503

Post by site-packages1 »

ashtonkem wrote: post #34
the-dude wrote: post #10

I have somewhat inside info about a drop in rent for commercial real estate in a high end shopping street in NL ( The Netherlands ). This is unheard of, real estate owners rather keep a shop vacant than drop the rent. I think we have seen nothing yet in commercial real estate, obviously not limited to SF or NL.

Commercial real estate rents work differently, at least in America, because of how they’re financed. Unlike residential housing, commercial buildings are continuously refinanced. When the owner of a commercial building gets a new mortgage on their building, the potential for rent is weighed more by the banks than the current rent. The way the math works out, it’s much better for a commercial land lord to leave a unit…

Really interesting. There's an empty spot in my building that's a coffee shop storefront. When we moved in, I saw that it was vacant (beginning of 2020) and asked about rent. It was $9k/mo. I offered them $5k and they declined. Still vacant. That's a lot of lost income, but perhaps it makes sense in the sense of commercial real estate.

Re: Average Rent in San Francisco Has Dropped $1k This Year

#504

Post by kelnos »

NineStarPoint wrote: post #8
SllX wrote: post #3

> the weighted average asking rent for an apartment in the city, which currently measures around 2.3 bedrooms when counting a studio as having one, has dropped to $3,100 a month. Still too high. Was checking into apartment prices earlier in the year and it is amazing the number of landlords that will try and sell you on a “kitchen” that is a mini-fridge, tiny sink, microwave and a hot plate whilst still charging you…

Do they ignore it, or are they using it for their own gain? For people who actually own property in San Fransisco, consider how enriched they have become by the obscenely rising rent/real estate prices. This comes along with them getting to keep their neighborhoods static instead of having to have a gigantic shadow erected across the street. Sure there are downsides, but you can always just sell and get our with a pr…

I rented in SF for the past 10 years, and bought earlier this year. I don't look at my primary home as an investment; it's me paying to live in a place I love. Obviously I'd prefer that my mortgage not end up underwater, and a capital loss when I eventually sell wouldn't be awesome, but that would be a small price for me to pay for housing in this city to become more affordable for lots of people.

But I'm extremely lucky that my financial situation is such that my home is not the bulk of my net worth. For most homeowners in the US, their home is not only the vast majority of their net worth, but it's the basis for their retirement nest egg (with the intention being to sell in retirement and trade down to a smaller home, keeping the difference in cash value). So while it grates on me, I can absolutely understand how homeowners will do everything in their power to not only protect their home values, but ensure they keep going up, year after year.

At the same time, though, it does feel a little greedy to see people who bought 20-30 years ago holding on to their obscene hundreds (thousands?) of a percent gains so jealously, to the detriment of so many others. But again... it's hard to blame them too much, considering how uncertain retirement finances can be in the US. Solving that problem decisively with a housing windfall is an attractive proposition.

I imagine there are some truly awful people who are very rich and continue to push policies that keep their home values high, even when they don't really need them to stay high to support their lifestyles. But I expect that's a small minority of people, if only because few people are that financially secure.

Re: Average Rent in San Francisco Has Dropped $1k This Year

#505

Post by kelnos »

pydry wrote: post #346
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think NIMBYism only looks financially attractive because everyone who bought a square of land in a "city" since the 1970s or so and held for at least a decade has won big regardless of where. That doesn't mean that SF/SV isn't forgoing a lot of money in order to keep its NIMBY policy. Think about how much just the squares of land those single family homes and low rise buildings in SV are on would be worth if the SF…

Seriously? There are two types of people in SF: * People who have watched their property appreciate in value by 4-10x for basically doing... nothing. * People who have taken out an eye watering loan for well over a million dollars and are kept up at night by the idea that theyll owe a million dollar loan on a $750,000 home. Of course they're going to be conservative! Of course they're going to try to avoid anybody ro…

I think you and your parent are not using "property rights" in the same way. You're talking about the right to own property in a sort of static sense, while the parent is talking about the right not only to own property, but build and develop on it as the owner sees fit.

SF homeowners of course believe in the kind of property rights you're talking about, but mostly do not believe in the latter. Most homeowners here want (and unfortunately mostly have) absolute veto right over any kind of construction or development that their neighbors want to engage in, whether it's as simple as reasonable cosmetic changes by a resident homeowner, or as complex as a denser rebuild by a housing developer.

(But I mostly agree with you in your characterization of the two types of SF homeowners. There also are some who are nominally in your second category but wouldn't be catastrophically financially impacted if their mortgages went under water, but they're definitely in the minority.)

Re: Average Rent in San Francisco Has Dropped $1k This Year

#506

Post by kelnos »

nitrogen wrote: post #328
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think NIMBYism only looks financially attractive because everyone who bought a square of land in a "city" since the 1970s or so and held for at least a decade has won big regardless of where. That doesn't mean that SF/SV isn't forgoing a lot of money in order to keep its NIMBY policy. Think about how much just the squares of land those single family homes and low rise buildings in SV are on would be worth if the SF…

This is because fundamentally people aren't buying houses for "upside", they are buying them because they want somewhere to live .

Yes and no, and this is a big part of the problem: young adults in the US are taught that their primary residence is/will be their biggest investment. So you get this weird set of fears that encompasses the worst of both.

The house-as-residence aspect makes them fearful that you won't make your mortgage payments, or your mortgage will end up under water, and the bank will foreclose on you and you'll be homeless. The house-as-investment aspect makes them fearful that they'll take a loss or even break even come sale time, and then their retirement nest egg will be weak.

So I agree that fundamentally yes, people are buying a house to live in, but it's a lot more loaded than that.

If housing costs were more reasonable, perhaps we could turn the tide against this "primary-home-as-investment" attitude, which I believe to be counterproductive.

Re: Average Rent in San Francisco Has Dropped $1k This Year

#507

Post by kelnos »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #73
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if land were historically taxed at say NYC rates in SF the supply and demand problem would still rear its head. The problem is artificial supply constraints created first and foremost by zoning and secondly by a myriad of other regulation that infringed upon property rights and adds friction (time, money, risk, all of the above) that prevents people from exercising their property rights. Prop 13 (a monetary ince…

> a myriad of other regulation that infringed upon property rights and adds friction (time, money, risk, all of the above) that prevents people from exercising their property rights. Prop 13 (a monetary incentive to not sell) falls into this latter category. I think Prop 13's incentive not to redevelop is actually more significant here than its incentive not to sell.

Right. At least when you're old enough to be in retirement there are a bunch of ways (expanded this year) to sell and keep your old tax assessment on your new place. AFAIK redevelopment will always trigger a reassessment no matter what.

Re: Average Rent in San Francisco Has Dropped $1k This Year

#508

Post by Schiendelman »

lock-free wrote: post #51
Schiendelman wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a lot of people only want a single family home because they want a certain amount of living space. In a commodified housing market, they would likely pay less for that space in a condo.

I want a single family home because it has no shared walls and a private backyard space for my kids and dog. It's not that hard to find condos or apartments with decent floor space.

Do you understand why we’re all talking about housing? What you said seems to be a “whoooosh” moment.

Re: Average Rent in San Francisco Has Dropped $1k This Year

#509

Post by monocasa »

chrisseaton wrote: post #499
monocasa wrote: post #498

Rent will jump back up just as soon as the vaccines are out and the people who moved to Boise or wherever this year can go back to restaurants they're missing without it making them feel sad.

Maybe the places they moved to will get their own high-quality restaurants and we'll all be better off?

Probably not. The labor force ecosystem behind those got hung out to dry this year and overwhelmingly don't have the capital to move. It's the upper (and upper middle) consumption class that could move on a whim, and will move back on a whim.

Re: Average Rent in San Francisco Has Dropped $1k This Year

#510

Post by wpietri »

SllX wrote: post #122
wpietri wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> freedom of movement in the United States To the extent that this means the freedom of poor people to get out of the way of rich people, you can see how some would not be excited. SF's black population has fallen by half in recent decades, for example. Honestly, the geographic narrowness of the tech boom has always been weird. At the same time we've been selling the limitless power of the Internet to connect people,…

It means government authorities don’t have the authority to restrict people from moving in if they are US Citizens or otherwise in the country legally certainly not on the basis of whether they were born, grew up in the City or based on the type of job they have and its location. An HOA might, I’m not too familiar with them, but as I understand it even they have legal limits on the restrictions they can place on peop…

I understand what the words nominally mean, thanks. But based on America's long, long history of de jure and de facto segregation by race, class, and income level, it's reasonable for people on the sharp end of that to not take "freedom of movement" very seriously as some sort of American core principle.

It reminds me of this classic line: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal loaves of bread.” -- Anatole France

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