San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents
1–10 of 542 posts
Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents
#2Portland resident here. What this article doesn't cover, is now locals are victim of gentrification. Rent prices are almost 2x, out of state buyers are throwing all cash offers on houses, and overall housing supply is low... I'm sure the commercial market is just as bad.
Interesting times.
Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents
#3Portland resident here. What this article doesn't cover, is now locals are victim of gentrification. Rent prices are almost 2x, out of state buyers are throwing all cash offers on houses, and overall housing supply is low... I'm sure the commercial market is just as bad. Interesting times.
Having grown up in Portland, it's remarkable how quickly the housing prices have skyrocketed in less than 5 years.
Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents
#4Portland resident here. What this article doesn't cover, is now locals are victim of gentrification. Rent prices are almost 2x, out of state buyers are throwing all cash offers on houses, and overall housing supply is low... I'm sure the commercial market is just as bad. Interesting times.
Exactly. They cover one side of the coin ("we could never have afforded this in San Francisco!") but not the other side, the person actually LIVING in Portland at the time of the purchase, saying "we can't afford this!"
Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents
#5Many problems with this article.
"A software engineer in Austin earning $110,000 would need to make $195,000 in San Francisco to maintain the same quality of life"
Would they? They point out the median in the bay area is $118k, but there's no indication that the median in Austin is $110k; maybe they just pulled that number out of thin air?
They cite slowing tech employment growth in SF, but it seems clear that it's a result of near-0 tech unemployment.
They talk about the exodus "in the past year" as if it suddenly started happening; people have been bitching about the most recent cycle for years, but it's been going on for decades.
"They've become tech hubs in their own right in a way they weren't three to five years ago"
What?
"We bought a beautiful Craftsman home in an awesome neighborhood and that just would not have been possible in San Francisco."
I have no problem with people moving and displacing others, but you have to be clear that the reason you can afford that is bringing the fruits of a higher-cost-of-living area to a lower-cost-of-living one, not because it's inherently more affordable for people who actually (already) live there. In this case, he's .. moving his company? So I guess he's able to keep his pay the same (??).
Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents
#6Lots of people want to live in an urban setting. Build more urban neighborhoods, everywhere.
Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents
#7Portland resident here. What this article doesn't cover, is now locals are victim of gentrification. Rent prices are almost 2x, out of state buyers are throwing all cash offers on houses, and overall housing supply is low... I'm sure the commercial market is just as bad. Interesting times.
Having grown up in Portland, it's remarkable how quickly the housing prices have skyrocketed in less than 5 years.
When did San Francisco become the hot property? I know that the last time I was out there, about 2005, tech was still in the valley and SF proper was relatively low rent, bad neighborhoods, and no tech presence.
Does this industry (to the extent that you can call AirBNB, Uber, and Twitter the same industry) really act like a flock of grackles or starlings, descending on a place, eating everything, and moving on?
Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents
#8Lots of people want to live in an urban setting. Build more urban neighborhoods, everywhere.
There's a lot of urban neighborhoods, even. Fund and found more startups in preexisting cities, all you VCs and entrepreneurs.
Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents
#9"They’ve increased 38 percent in Seattle, 12 percent in Austin and 6 percent in Phoenix."
The article names the usual suspects for engineer emigrants (Austin, Portland, strangely no mention of NYC or Raleigh RTP), but why are people moving to Phoenix? Isn't living in the less sexy areas of South Bay (Sunnyvale, Milpitas, South San Jose) pretty much on par with urban life in Phoenix?
Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents
#10Portland resident here. What this article doesn't cover, is now locals are victim of gentrification. Rent prices are almost 2x, out of state buyers are throwing all cash offers on houses, and overall housing supply is low... I'm sure the commercial market is just as bad. Interesting times.
Same in Denver. Realtor told me 1/4 of properties don't make the MLS, they're bought with cash before they can get listed.