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

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#541

Post by seanmcdirmid » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 12:41 AM UTC

fakethenews2022 wrote: post #533

vkou wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SROs were a housing solution for low-income people who were not functional[1] enough to live with roommates, but were functional enough to be able to live alone. When we got rid of them, many of their former inhabitants ended up on the street. [1] For an incredibly broad definition of 'not functional'.

I agree. Your Democratic mayors and supervisors did that. They tore down the SOMA SROs and replaced them with tech campuses without a plan of where to house those people. But it is multi-factorial. You have mental health institutions closed down a decade earlier as well. They should have been reformed instead of closed down.

> Your Democratic mayors and supervisors did that.

You mean: the people who run the cities did that, who all happen to be incredibly Democratic. They also did it in San Diego, where I bet a Republican mayor was in power at the time (since you know, that was mostly true in the 80s, 90s, and 00s), but economics rather than political ideology was the main driver of the gentrification.

> You have mental health institutions closed down a decade earlier as well.

Mostly by that famous Democrat named Ronald Reagan?

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#542

Post by abawany » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 12:43 AM UTC

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #35

jeffbee wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. On an area-weighted basis most of SF is wasted on detached single-family homes. https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7470676,-122.4914956,314m/da...

Why "wasted" ? Does everyone need to live with the least amount of space possible?

Plus one thing that gets forgotten in dense housing is that most of them are infested (1) with HOAs (home owner associations) and associated 'management companies' that work hard to suck up the residents hard-earned funds. They, like political systems that don't have mandatory voting, take advantage of resident indifference to perpetuate astounding pilfering, malpractice, and incompetence. Most newer single family homes are also infested with these parasites so you are never safe but they almost seem to be mandatory in higher density housing; the best reason I can think of why newer homes have these is so the builder can milk the hapless buyers one last time as they usually maintain complete control of the HOA while the project is in the building phase. I pine for the old-school townhomes that were not thus infested - I suppose it is too much to hope that builders will build neighborhoods without encumbering them with this atrocity.

1: I use this term deliberately and with intention plus restraint, having suffered through these for years now. I hope you never experience the misery that is an HOA.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#543

Post by swearwolf » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 12:57 AM UTC

honkycat wrote: post #473

Americans has been priced out of America. We're all paying our wages / rent to mega-corps who own everything and don't have to lower rent to become competitive. I do empathize with the comments complaining about the homeless in Downtown SF. We have a similar problem in PDX and it really does kill any motivation to go downtown. I also visited SF last June and the homeless issue there was INSANE. It is all anyone can t…

Very nicely put.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#544

Post by cpursley » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 1:02 AM UTC

dlp211 wrote: post #531

cpursley wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good grief, is anyone right of center considered "fascist" now?

When you use political power to replace political enemies, what do you call that?

Try stepping out of your mothers basement every once in a while and chat up somebody who doesn't share your same zip code. Of course that means you might learn that your neighbor (across town) is actually more tolerant than you are.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#545

Post by fakethenews2022 » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 1:22 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #540

fakethenews2022 wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My opinion is that the problem with SF isn’t as much housing. It is more with mental health and drug addiction. You do know where many immigrants live right? It isn’t so much on the streets. It is 16 packed into a single apartment. So the mechanisms people talk about already exist. It is that the homeless can’t work because of mental or social issues that compound with drug abuse. You need to fix the mental issues, s…

> It is that the homeless can’t work because of mental or social issues that compound with drug abuse. You mean "chronic homeless." There are homeless that you don't notice because they aren't standing out. They are living in cars or maybe crashing on someone's couch. Let's not equate homelessness with mental illness drug abuse.

Agree.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#546

Post by vkou » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 1:24 AM UTC

fakethenews2022 wrote: post #533

vkou wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SROs were a housing solution for low-income people who were not functional[1] enough to live with roommates, but were functional enough to be able to live alone. When we got rid of them, many of their former inhabitants ended up on the street. [1] For an incredibly broad definition of 'not functional'.

I agree. Your Democratic mayors and supervisors did that. They tore down the SOMA SROs and replaced them with tech campuses without a plan of where to house those people. But it is multi-factorial. You have mental health institutions closed down a decade earlier as well. They should have been reformed instead of closed down.

This has happened across the entire country, in big towns and small, in red states and blue, (and, to a great extent, across the rest of the developed world). I assure you, the Democratic boogiemen are not responsible for such a broad international failure.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#547

Post by innagadadavida » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 1:52 AM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #232

innagadadavida wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, but will never ever happen thanks to commercial RE mafia errrr lobby... Most of the commercial RE is vacant but still somehow get tax breaks and they also keep the rents very inflated. I don't buy this argument of "this is not fit to be a home" - neither are the streets, parks and sidewalks. The commercial RE mafia err the lobby is very powerful and they will protect their interests no matter what. These space…

> I don't buy this argument of "this is not fit to be a home" - neither are the streets, parks and sidewalks. Are you proposing that the city rent out licenses to live in the streets, parks and sidewalks, or are you just pooh-poohing the entire idea of housing standards? How do you feel about food standards?

I’m proposing new standards to house the homeless who sleep on the streets. Specifically if a building is empty and already fit for humans to occupy, it should be ok to put some beds there and allow people to be moved from the streets.

This post is not about food.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#548

Post by gumby » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 1:56 AM UTC

acchow wrote: post #514

gumby wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to me the main constraint would be floor/window ratios. Apartment buildings often have windows just along one wall, and that works. So I don't see why 100% of class A office space couldn't be converted, not that I'm any kind of expert. Actually that's extra optimistic. Perhaps most skyscraper office buildings, but not the "strip mall style" office buildings common in the Valley. Other commercial space (retail,…

> Seems to me the main constraint would be floor/window ratios Also the location of plumbing. The buildings with smaller floors can convert fine (for example, see 100 Van Ness). The ones with larger floors much harder

Good point — few people want to leave their apartment and use a communal facility! I can imagine you could easily retrofit the water supply, but the drains sound harder. Still, these projects in NYC think they can pull it off — will be interesting to see. There is a precedent: many of the lower Manhattan residences (LES, SOHO etc) were factories.

I just did a quick DDG search for “commercial to residential conversion” and to my (unjustified surprise) there were a lot of links from architects and contractors.

NYT article from a few months ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/realestate/10posting-fina...

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#549

Post by fmajid » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 2:26 AM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #505

cjbgkagh wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally have the same rule of thumb; not a crash until down 50% from peak. But housing is leveraged. It’s not like stock where few people have margin accounts, a 20% reversion sends most people who bought recently underwater. Plus the size of the real estate market is much bigger than the stock market. The flow-on reverse wealth effect will feel like a stock crash to many people.

>a 20% reversion sends most people who bought recently underwater. Does this matter as long as the owners can pay the mortgage?

Most Americans move every 7 years. Being locked into a home means fewer economic opportunities.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#550

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 2:32 AM UTC

fmajid wrote: post #549

lotsofpulp wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a 20% reversion sends most people who bought recently underwater. Does this matter as long as the owners can pay the mortgage?

Most Americans move every 7 years. Being locked into a home means fewer economic opportunities.

> Most Americans move every 7 years

No, most don't. That’s the average, not the mode (and even moreso not a fact about the majority.)

Particularly, poor and socially disadvantaged people are forced to move a lot more, and average income and, even moreso, rich people, especially from advantaged backgrounds, move significantly less.