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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

#541
post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think every California home owner is some evil beast trying to keep others out. I support building more homes, and would love it if every single family detached home were automatically rezoned for two units on the parcel. But if it weren't for Prop 13, my home and my business would have been forced out by people moving in and paying too much money for homes next door to me. And "raising property values" only…

By "forced out" you mean you could 1) sell, reaping a huge windfall. 2) use a HELOC or reverse mortgage to pay for the higher property taxes. But of course you'd prefer both to keep the windfall and not move, a privilege afforded to you by prop 13. That is only natural. Meanwhile, homelessness in the state continues to rise as high land values make housing production and anti-growth activists on planning committees e…

I find it acceptable that people want to stay at home where their social networks and memories are. You all act like it is OK to push people out from their homes, just because you have money and want that place.

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

#542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How dare you say "I don't care." Who are you to speculate about what I think about?

People are forced out of their home all the time, without the gigantic windfall of money that a property sale entails. Evictions happen all the time, and these poor folks do not get the windfall of a $1M investment paying out. They get the trouble of trying to find a place to rent with an eviction on their record, which means they will be paying higher rents with less ability to pay. Nobody should be forced from thei…

"You should be thankful for having to move despite really not wanting to, because some other people have been completely screwed" is an abusive logic tho.

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

#543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Upzoning never forces owners to "give up their home"-- maybe the issue is owners don't want their neighbors to be able to sell their homes to developers either.

Not necessarily true. An upzoning will likely increase the value of the land, which will result in higher property taxes (assuming this is a normal city with no prop13 nonsense). The higher taxes could effectively force a land owner to sell their property. Often part of what existing land owners are fighting for is preferential zoning which artificially keeps the "highest and best use of land" a low density detached…

This is assuming no or poor homestead exemption.

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

#544
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Supply and Demand really the end-all, be-all of economics? Don't things like Veblen goods demonstrate that there is some nuance to the topic.

No but when figuring out what informs a price you want to look at supply and demand first . There’s room for other variables, but you normally start there. EDIT: While I’m inside the edit window, let me throw in another big variable as an example. Costs are another factor that inform a price, and a big one. You could make a case that it deserves higher billing than supply and demand, but if your costs are $X but you…

>but it’s still incredibly important and often dismissed as a non-factor when discussing San Francisco rental and real estate prices

I've literally never seen it dismissed as a non factor - not even once.

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

#545
post #87

Oakland relaxed a lot of zoning, and permitting regulations about 5 years ago, and so now you're starting to really see production sky rocket. This article [0] mentions 2019 was had 15x more units completed than 2018. And 3x the total units from 2013-2018 combined . Anecdotally, I have several friends who've all moved to Oakland in the last year or so. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, and maybe, hope…

SF gets a lot of flak for housing - quite deservedly so - but we give a free pass to cities like Mountain View and Palo Alto. They have much much more restrictive zoning. Palo Alto outright bans a second storey. That’s where people go to work as well. They want to keep the offices there but not let the people live. What would be good is a tax system that’s distributed based on where people live nullifying the advantage of the lopsided advantage for favoring businesses over residents.

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

#546
post #87

Oakland relaxed a lot of zoning, and permitting regulations about 5 years ago, and so now you're starting to really see production sky rocket. This article [0] mentions 2019 was had 15x more units completed than 2018. And 3x the total units from 2013-2018 combined . Anecdotally, I have several friends who've all moved to Oakland in the last year or so. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, and maybe, hope…

SF gets a lot of flak for housing - quite deservedly so - but we give a free pass to cities like Mountain View and Palo Alto. They have much much more restrictive zoning. Palo Alto outright bans a second storey. That’s where people go to work as well. They want to keep the offices there but not let the people live. What would be good is a tax system that’s distributed based on where people live nullifying the advanta…

I agree with Palo Alto, but how is Mountain View restrictive by Bay Area standards? It's added a higher percent of people than Oakland on the past decade.

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

#547
post #541
post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "forced out" you mean you could 1) sell, reaping a huge windfall. 2) use a HELOC or reverse mortgage to pay for the higher property taxes. But of course you'd prefer both to keep the windfall and not move, a privilege afforded to you by prop 13. That is only natural. Meanwhile, homelessness in the state continues to rise as high land values make housing production and anti-growth activists on planning committees e…

I find it acceptable that people want to stay at home where their social networks and memories are. You all act like it is OK to push people out from their homes, just because you have money and want that place.

It's acceptable to force them out if they don't want to pay for the privilege.

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

#548
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public housing would.

California requires winning a plebiscite to build public housing. This is not optional. When it does manage to build public housing, SF spends approximately a million dollars a unit to do so. That's purely to get a habitable unit. It includes none of the maintenance costs, which will increase over time, or the social services required to make public housing work as intended. With that in mind, giving literally 100% o…

So because developers managed to kneecap an effective policy by putting all kinds of expensive and difficult requirements on it, you think it's bad?

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

#549
post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in southeastern CT and visit there occasionally. It's hard to describe how dead it is for commercial software development, even compared to Boston. Even if one was inclined to open a good software shop in CT, you'd have neither low property prices nor an existing pool of highly skilled labor.

doesn't Greenwich have a good amount of quant shops?

I'm not sure, but that's an excellent counterpoint if so.

I shouldn't have presumed to speak for the parts of CT near NYC.

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

#550
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California requires winning a plebiscite to build public housing. This is not optional. When it does manage to build public housing, SF spends approximately a million dollars a unit to do so. That's purely to get a habitable unit. It includes none of the maintenance costs, which will increase over time, or the social services required to make public housing work as intended. With that in mind, giving literally 100% o…

So because developers managed to kneecap an effective policy by putting all kinds of expensive and difficult requirements on it, you think it's bad?

I'm honestly not sure what effective policy kneecapped by developers you're talking about. Can you help me understand? I don't think any of the things I mentioned were set up or advanced by developers to kneecap effective policies, but I'd love to learn more!

If anything, I would naively expect most of the relevant policies here to be things property developers would be quite strongly against. Perhaps you can enlighten me with critical factors I've overlooked?

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