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> The figures underscore how the pandemic has roiled property markets and changed renter preferences. With companies allowing employees to work from home, peopl

> The figures underscore how the pandemic has roiled property markets and changed renter preferences. With companies allowing employees to work from home, people have fled cramped and costly urban areas in droves, seeking extra room in the suburbs or cheaper cities. I am skeptical. Yes a lot of Bay Area companies are allowing work from home for now, but are people really weighing that so heavily that they’re moving? If we’re blaming the pandemic, maybe it’s that fewer people want to move to the city because they can’t enjoy it (bars, restaurants, etc)

jeffbee 6y ago
Bay Area demographic process involves a pretty large net influx of people from abroad and an almost equally large domestic net outflow of people to other states. If you stop the former but the latter continues, housing pressure suddenly disappears.
issa 6y ago
I would counter that proximity to work is a huge influence on where people decide to live. There are (or will be) bars and restaurants everywhere, which means if you can work from home, there is significantly less incentive to live in a small, overpriced apartment.
- gfxgirl 6y ago
  The bars are restaurants available in most cities in the USA do not compare to the bars and restaurants in cities like SF, Los Angeles, NYC, Tokyo, Paris, etc..... I mean places like Flagstaff Arizona, or Temecula California, etc.... In the cities listed in the first paragraph there are, unique bars (not sure what word to use) and interesting restaurants. In most cites there are just places like AppleBess and the local versions of same. If that makes me a bar/food snob okay but what's available in many cities is just not comparable in random small city.
  - gkop 6y ago
    Flagstaff is a decent sized mountain town. Decent sized mountain towns have pretty good food and bars, including unique establishments. Of course they won’t please a true snob looking for a new home, but they plenty suit low key snobs like me. Last time I made a pit stop in Flagstaff it took 30 seconds on Yelp to find a great independent Cajun-creole joint with a pleasant patio, friendly staff, and delicious food and craft beer. And frankly, let’s not let SF off the hook for its large proportion of mediocre restaurants and bars. IMO they are a another sad consequence of Prop 13: old businesses with low property taxes don’t need to be much good to survive, but the cost of starting a new business is spectacularly high.
    - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
      Do most old restaurants in SF own their property rather than rent? If they are renting, why are landlords passing down prop 13 property tax savings to them especially?
      - gkop 6y ago
        Most probably rent, but are part of an "ecosystem" which encourages keeping around old things.
  - v77 6y ago
    This was maybe true twenty years ago, but not anymore. In addition the variety of food available at grocery stores or online is vast and with an actual kitchen you can make food you like at home.
  - almost_usual 6y ago
    Most of the interesting bars and restaurants in SF are closing as we speak. As the pandemic drags on expect it will continue. Who do you think will have the money to replace these places?
    - asdff 6y ago
      Investors, like always. Do you think its mom and pop opening a bar with smoke infused cocktails in SF, or anywhere else for that matter where commercial rent has been astoundingly high for decades now? Investors will buy back in once it makes sense economically. Restaurant turnover is typical.
      - almost_usual 6y ago
        Right investors who open cookie cutter hipster bars that exist in every other city. The unique bars and restaurants in SF that have been there for decades are dying and they won’t come back. SF culture was on life support, now it’s dead.
  - issa 6y ago
    I don't think it makes you a snob to say that there is better food in certain cities. If you have any special requirements, like being vegan, you aren't going to find anywhere near the same options in smaller cities. But I think for most people, access to quality restaurants is fairly low on the list. Certainly far below proximity to work. Put another way, would you pay an extra $2k a month to be able to eat at certain restaurants? You might! But most people wouldn't.
rsync 6y ago
"I am skeptical. Yes a lot of Bay Area companies are allowing work from home for now, but are people really weighing that so heavily that they’re moving?" It is the marginal buyer, not the entire population, that swings the price. It's the last few properties for sale that swing the price. Someone downthread explained it very nicely: "Rent is like a traffic jam. The market collapses on the margin. You don't need to remove 30% of the cars to reduce freeway congestion by 30%, and you don't need to remove 30% of the residents to lower asking rents by 30%, either."
- etrautmann 6y ago
  yep - rent is the quintessential example of inelastic supply. A tiny shortage of housing can cause a huge jump in price.
  - sitkack 6y ago
    Sounds like for things that are inelastic, we should find ways (on both sides) to maintain a buffer if we want to have stable systems.
    - komali2 6y ago
      Both sides?
      - cameronbrown 6y ago
        Supply and demand, I'm guessing.
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      how would this work? the only way I can think of is for the government to buy above market when prices are going down and then unload them when prices go up. it's hard to see how the public would actually benefit from this. it's a little insane to use government funds to take perfectly good housing stock off the market and prevent people from living in it. seems like the cure would be worse than the disease. imo, it's best for cities not to try to influence the price of housing in the first place. but if you really want to bring down prices in a tight market, the best solution is to make it easier to build new (and especially denser) stuff. many cities could achieve this "simply" by relaxing zoning restrictions, but if necessary, they could go so far as to subsidize high-density developments. in the much more rare case that prices are collapsing, a city could be more aggressive in condemning dangerous structures.
tenaciousDaniel 6y ago
While I don't want to live in a super urban place like SF, I will always live near a downtown. The draw for me is that I hate depending on cars, so I want everything (mail/barber/grocery/work/restaurants/etc) within walking distance. The lifestyle advantage to walking around as your primary source of commute is so significant that I couldn't imagine ever going back.
- derptron 6y ago
  What exactly is the lifestyle advantage of having to walk everywhere?
thethethethe 6y ago
Yes. I live in SF and I see people loading up moving vans in my neighborhood all of the time now, my neighbors in my row house moved to auburn, multiple houses are now up for sale, it used to be impossible to get a parking space but now it is not a problem anymore. Things have definitely changed
- asdfman123 6y ago
  If I were living in SF and gone fully remote for the foreseeable future, I'd absolutely get out of my expensive apartment and (literally) head for the hills.
  - derwiki 6y ago
    Why the hills? What about the hills in SF?
  - thethethethe 6y ago
    Some of my coworkers have done this. One of them has moved to Santa Cruz and another is staying with their parents. I would have moved if it wasn’t for immigration complications and laziness. Depending on how things work out from here, I might just go back to live with my parents until things blow over. If not, I am going to upgrade to a nicer apartment as a compromise
baskire 6y ago
Saw friends of friends leave sf and together rent a mansion in Hawaii. If the bars, clubs, gyms, and even beaches shut down why stay if you are renting at market rate. It’s literally cheaper to move your belongings into storage and move into a vacation home with friends. Also most sf apartments don’t have office space for all the tenants.
- cft 6y ago
  If there was no rent control, prices would drop even more. Firstly landlords are afraid to permanently lock down at a lower price, offering free months of rent instead. Secondly rent controlled tenants are afraid to lose their apartments, that are still below the market rates.
  - ahoy 6y ago
    If there were no landlords prices would drop further still!
    - colinmhayes 6y ago
      If there were no landlords there would be no price because there would be no rentals.
    - mancerayder 6y ago
      Who would do the maintenance?
  - joosters 6y ago
    That makes no sense. Rent controls don't specify a minimum rent, all your reasons apply equally to rent controlled and uncontrolled rentals.
    - zests 6y ago
      Rent controls do sometimes specify how much rent can be raised year over year. Drop it too low one year, be stuck with relatively low prices in the short term.
conductr 6y ago
> are people really weighing that so heavily that they’re moving? Given region as a large portion of young/single professionals, I believe it. What you pay to move/break a lease is a fraction of what you’d save after a few months of “normal” rent. Or no rent if you’re going to stay with your parents. It will be relatively easy to move back when they need to, and prices will be better. This group has no deep local community dependancies (eg family, childcare, ete). and is still probably rather nomadic from their college days. I personally live in Texas, lower COL, but I am tied into my local community due to family, owning my home, and general entrenchment type stuff that comes with age. Otherwise I’d have bailed in April for a rural or expat setting.
MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
Some SF podcasters I've listened to for a while started talking about moving out soon so it's definitely at a conscious level for most people.
Spooky23 6y ago
Bay Area is insane. I pay $850/mo for a 4B/2BA house in upstate NY. I work locally and telecommute now, but I used to commute regularly to the Boston and NYC metro areas with commute times similar to what I hear about from some colleagues in the Bay area. 2 hours on Amtrak (+10m drive) is much more pleasant than 90 minutes in the car to me. The haul to Boston was truly awful, but the pay was too good to pass up.
- legerdemain 6y ago
  Wow! My mom lives in a small, dated apartment in an unexciting suburb of Rochester away from colleges, with paper-thin walls and ceilings, and pays about $1000 in rent. That seems standard for the area. About 20 years ago we paid $650 a month for a tiny two-bedroom. How does your upstate New York cost less than one fourth of that?
  - Spooky23 6y ago
    Rents always suck upstate. A two bedroom in a nice development in a suburban town near me is about $1400/mo. Ownership is always cheaper. As for the costs -- I cheat a bit. I've been able to build more equity over the years and refinanced into lower LTVs as time and rates went down. I bought my first house as a student at a SUNY school -- my mortgage was about the same as a "student ghetto" apartment. This house I bought about 15 years ago. In my urban neighborhood, houses sell for about $135 sqft today. In the suburbs, it's about 30% more, and you are basically paying for better schools. You can get a small, nice house in a place like Fairport, NY for $150k. I don't know that area super well, but you might find lower costs in an adjacent county without the tax/infrastructure burden of Rochester.
eagsalazar2 6y ago
SF is great (really, just stop it haters!) and there will always be people who want to live there and prices will always be relatively high. However, for a long time SF has been a place of extreme price distortion because of low (~no) new construction and huge concentration of high paying jobs. The result is many many people feeling trapped there way beyond where it makes sense for their lives. If you are single and living with roommates, making $200K at Twitter, then great! SF is awesome! But when you have two little kids, and/or you just aren't making that much, in a place where small houses are > $2M things are very different. That's me BTW. We hung on for 6 years after having kids and in that time almost all couples with kids we were friends with left. The people we knew who stayed were either much wealthier (had nice exit from previous company) or were really trapped and talked constantly about leaving. So honestly it does make sense to me. Somewhat anecdotally, I personally know about 15 people who have left since April (including me, SLC is freaking awesome!). For comparison, I personally know exactly 2 people who've had covid. So yeah lots of people really are leaving and the closed bars are just a small factor (IMO), being able to finally move is the much bigger change driving this migration. I don't think SF will die but rents and home prices coming back down to earth will be a very good thing for the city (my landlord bought the building in 1981 and was charging us $4K/mo for our 900sqft 2br flat, I won't feel bad for him if that deflates to $2500/mo where it should be). The ultra high prices have slowly gutted large parts of the city of anyone but the young or wealthy, mostly tech people. Maybe in a few years SF will be more affordable and consequently a much more diverse city again. That would be great IMO.
- bumby 6y ago
  I’m curious as someone who has never lived in SV (only visited for work) but do you feel like there are certain areas that displaced SV gravitate towards and would eventually cause property in those areas to rise as well?
  - CalRobert 6y ago
    I haven't lived in the bay area in 9 years (used to live in Berkeley), but so far my old SFBA friends have moved overwhelmingly to Portland, with one going to Colorado, another to Seattle, and two staying. One is a wealthy engineer, and the other (who has a kid in Marin) an incredibly fortunate person who was curious about this bitcoin thing 10 years ago.. I don't know of any "regular" people who stayed in the bay, except for a relative who's stuck there because of shared custody over kids with an ex and can't practically move. She'd like to though.
baby 6y ago
I’m one of these people who just moved out of SF. AMA.
- kirubakaran 6y ago
  Where did you move to? What was your rent and what is it now? Do you plan to move back?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
MikeTheGreat 6y ago
It also seems like renting is the most optimal way to take advantage of a long term, temporary WFH situation. A major advantage of renting (over owning) is being able to move when your lease is up. If the WFH thing blows over you can always move back at that point but at least you'll have saved yourself X months of expensive rent.
xivzgrev 6y ago
You’d be surprised. There is a surge of demand away from metro areas eg upstate NY, Tahoe, etc. I don’t get it. The pandemic will get under control, and people will go back to offices. Will employers require 5x per week in office, or 2-3x per week, or perm WFH?
- ghaff 6y ago
  Depends on the company and the person. There are companies that were already heavily remote where it's reasonable to expect even more flexibility. Personally I'm already out in an exurb and had given up a permanent desk. But I don't expect to ever be in a permanent office again.
- sizzle 6y ago
  I'm never going back, my employer be damned it's too convenient not having an open office distraction when coding is a game changer for me.
ajcodez 6y ago
My friends are leaving for cities like LA where they expect to enjoy it more. In my experience the majority of new SF residents move in to start a new job - not for the food, nightlife, or culture. If the jobs are remote, that segment will not come back, and will not move to SF in the first place. It’s a good thing, fewer people having to make trade offs for better careers.
throwduh12 6y ago
I know this is an unpopular opinion, but SF is like an open air homeless shelter and getting worse. Crime is also getting worse. People put too much focus on cost of living. Many people have plenty of money to afford to live there, but it's increasingly difficult to justify that cost compared to the quality of life.

jeffbee 6y ago

Bay Area demographic process involves a pretty large net influx of people from abroad and an almost equally large domestic net outflow of people to other states. If you stop the former but the latter continues, housing pressure suddenly disappears.

issa 6y ago

I would counter that proximity to work is a huge influence on where people decide to live. There are (or will be) bars and restaurants everywhere, which means if you can work from home, there is significantly less incentive to live in a small, overpriced apartment.

gfxgirl 6y ago
The bars are restaurants available in most cities in the USA do not compare to the bars and restaurants in cities like SF, Los Angeles, NYC, Tokyo, Paris, etc..... I mean places like Flagstaff Arizona, or Temecula California, etc.... In the cities listed in the first paragraph there are, unique bars (not sure what word to use) and interesting restaurants. In most cites there are just places like AppleBess and the local versions of same. If that makes me a bar/food snob okay but what's available in many cities is just not comparable in random small city.
- gkop 6y ago
  Flagstaff is a decent sized mountain town. Decent sized mountain towns have pretty good food and bars, including unique establishments. Of course they won’t please a true snob looking for a new home, but they plenty suit low key snobs like me. Last time I made a pit stop in Flagstaff it took 30 seconds on Yelp to find a great independent Cajun-creole joint with a pleasant patio, friendly staff, and delicious food and craft beer. And frankly, let’s not let SF off the hook for its large proportion of mediocre restaurants and bars. IMO they are a another sad consequence of Prop 13: old businesses with low property taxes don’t need to be much good to survive, but the cost of starting a new business is spectacularly high.
  - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
    Do most old restaurants in SF own their property rather than rent? If they are renting, why are landlords passing down prop 13 property tax savings to them especially?
    - gkop 6y ago
      Most probably rent, but are part of an "ecosystem" which encourages keeping around old things.
- v77 6y ago
  This was maybe true twenty years ago, but not anymore. In addition the variety of food available at grocery stores or online is vast and with an actual kitchen you can make food you like at home.
- almost_usual 6y ago
  Most of the interesting bars and restaurants in SF are closing as we speak. As the pandemic drags on expect it will continue. Who do you think will have the money to replace these places?
  - asdff 6y ago
    Investors, like always. Do you think its mom and pop opening a bar with smoke infused cocktails in SF, or anywhere else for that matter where commercial rent has been astoundingly high for decades now? Investors will buy back in once it makes sense economically. Restaurant turnover is typical.
    - almost_usual 6y ago
      Right investors who open cookie cutter hipster bars that exist in every other city. The unique bars and restaurants in SF that have been there for decades are dying and they won’t come back. SF culture was on life support, now it’s dead.
- issa 6y ago
  I don't think it makes you a snob to say that there is better food in certain cities. If you have any special requirements, like being vegan, you aren't going to find anywhere near the same options in smaller cities. But I think for most people, access to quality restaurants is fairly low on the list. Certainly far below proximity to work. Put another way, would you pay an extra $2k a month to be able to eat at certain restaurants? You might! But most people wouldn't.

rsync 6y ago

"I am skeptical. Yes a lot of Bay Area companies are allowing work from home for now, but are people really weighing that so heavily that they’re moving?" It is the marginal buyer, not the entire population, that swings the price. It's the last few properties for sale that swing the price. Someone downthread explained it very nicely: "Rent is like a traffic jam. The market collapses on the margin. You don't need to remove 30% of the cars to reduce freeway congestion by 30%, and you don't need to remove 30% of the residents to lower asking rents by 30%, either."

etrautmann 6y ago
yep - rent is the quintessential example of inelastic supply. A tiny shortage of housing can cause a huge jump in price.
- sitkack 6y ago
  Sounds like for things that are inelastic, we should find ways (on both sides) to maintain a buffer if we want to have stable systems.
  - komali2 6y ago
    Both sides?
    - cameronbrown 6y ago
      Supply and demand, I'm guessing.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    how would this work? the only way I can think of is for the government to buy above market when prices are going down and then unload them when prices go up. it's hard to see how the public would actually benefit from this. it's a little insane to use government funds to take perfectly good housing stock off the market and prevent people from living in it. seems like the cure would be worse than the disease. imo, it's best for cities not to try to influence the price of housing in the first place. but if you really want to bring down prices in a tight market, the best solution is to make it easier to build new (and especially denser) stuff. many cities could achieve this "simply" by relaxing zoning restrictions, but if necessary, they could go so far as to subsidize high-density developments. in the much more rare case that prices are collapsing, a city could be more aggressive in condemning dangerous structures.

tenaciousDaniel 6y ago

While I don't want to live in a super urban place like SF, I will always live near a downtown. The draw for me is that I hate depending on cars, so I want everything (mail/barber/grocery/work/restaurants/etc) within walking distance. The lifestyle advantage to walking around as your primary source of commute is so significant that I couldn't imagine ever going back.

derptron 6y ago
What exactly is the lifestyle advantage of having to walk everywhere?

thethethethe 6y ago

Yes. I live in SF and I see people loading up moving vans in my neighborhood all of the time now, my neighbors in my row house moved to auburn, multiple houses are now up for sale, it used to be impossible to get a parking space but now it is not a problem anymore. Things have definitely changed

asdfman123 6y ago
If I were living in SF and gone fully remote for the foreseeable future, I'd absolutely get out of my expensive apartment and (literally) head for the hills.
- derwiki 6y ago
  Why the hills? What about the hills in SF?
- thethethethe 6y ago
  Some of my coworkers have done this. One of them has moved to Santa Cruz and another is staying with their parents. I would have moved if it wasn’t for immigration complications and laziness. Depending on how things work out from here, I might just go back to live with my parents until things blow over. If not, I am going to upgrade to a nicer apartment as a compromise

baskire 6y ago

Saw friends of friends leave sf and together rent a mansion in Hawaii. If the bars, clubs, gyms, and even beaches shut down why stay if you are renting at market rate. It’s literally cheaper to move your belongings into storage and move into a vacation home with friends. Also most sf apartments don’t have office space for all the tenants.

cft 6y ago
If there was no rent control, prices would drop even more. Firstly landlords are afraid to permanently lock down at a lower price, offering free months of rent instead. Secondly rent controlled tenants are afraid to lose their apartments, that are still below the market rates.
- ahoy 6y ago
  If there were no landlords prices would drop further still!
  - colinmhayes 6y ago
    If there were no landlords there would be no price because there would be no rentals.
  - mancerayder 6y ago
    Who would do the maintenance?
- joosters 6y ago
  That makes no sense. Rent controls don't specify a minimum rent, all your reasons apply equally to rent controlled and uncontrolled rentals.
  - zests 6y ago
    Rent controls do sometimes specify how much rent can be raised year over year. Drop it too low one year, be stuck with relatively low prices in the short term.

conductr 6y ago

> are people really weighing that so heavily that they’re moving? Given region as a large portion of young/single professionals, I believe it. What you pay to move/break a lease is a fraction of what you’d save after a few months of “normal” rent. Or no rent if you’re going to stay with your parents. It will be relatively easy to move back when they need to, and prices will be better. This group has no deep local community dependancies (eg family, childcare, ete). and is still probably rather nomadic from their college days. I personally live in Texas, lower COL, but I am tied into my local community due to family, owning my home, and general entrenchment type stuff that comes with age. Otherwise I’d have bailed in April for a rural or expat setting.

MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago

Some SF podcasters I've listened to for a while started talking about moving out soon so it's definitely at a conscious level for most people.

Spooky23 6y ago

Bay Area is insane. I pay $850/mo for a 4B/2BA house in upstate NY. I work locally and telecommute now, but I used to commute regularly to the Boston and NYC metro areas with commute times similar to what I hear about from some colleagues in the Bay area. 2 hours on Amtrak (+10m drive) is much more pleasant than 90 minutes in the car to me. The haul to Boston was truly awful, but the pay was too good to pass up.

legerdemain 6y ago
Wow! My mom lives in a small, dated apartment in an unexciting suburb of Rochester away from colleges, with paper-thin walls and ceilings, and pays about $1000 in rent. That seems standard for the area. About 20 years ago we paid $650 a month for a tiny two-bedroom. How does your upstate New York cost less than one fourth of that?
- Spooky23 6y ago
  Rents always suck upstate. A two bedroom in a nice development in a suburban town near me is about $1400/mo. Ownership is always cheaper. As for the costs -- I cheat a bit. I've been able to build more equity over the years and refinanced into lower LTVs as time and rates went down. I bought my first house as a student at a SUNY school -- my mortgage was about the same as a "student ghetto" apartment. This house I bought about 15 years ago. In my urban neighborhood, houses sell for about $135 sqft today. In the suburbs, it's about 30% more, and you are basically paying for better schools. You can get a small, nice house in a place like Fairport, NY for $150k. I don't know that area super well, but you might find lower costs in an adjacent county without the tax/infrastructure burden of Rochester.

eagsalazar2 6y ago

SF is great (really, just stop it haters!) and there will always be people who want to live there and prices will always be relatively high. However, for a long time SF has been a place of extreme price distortion because of low (~no) new construction and huge concentration of high paying jobs. The result is many many people feeling trapped there way beyond where it makes sense for their lives. If you are single and living with roommates, making $200K at Twitter, then great! SF is awesome! But when you have two little kids, and/or you just aren't making that much, in a place where small houses are > $2M things are very different. That's me BTW. We hung on for 6 years after having kids and in that time almost all couples with kids we were friends with left. The people we knew who stayed were either much wealthier (had nice exit from previous company) or were really trapped and talked constantly about leaving. So honestly it does make sense to me. Somewhat anecdotally, I personally know about 15 people who have left since April (including me, SLC is freaking awesome!). For comparison, I personally know exactly 2 people who've had covid. So yeah lots of people really are leaving and the closed bars are just a small factor (IMO), being able to finally move is the much bigger change driving this migration. I don't think SF will die but rents and home prices coming back down to earth will be a very good thing for the city (my landlord bought the building in 1981 and was charging us $4K/mo for our 900sqft 2br flat, I won't feel bad for him if that deflates to $2500/mo where it should be). The ultra high prices have slowly gutted large parts of the city of anyone but the young or wealthy, mostly tech people. Maybe in a few years SF will be more affordable and consequently a much more diverse city again. That would be great IMO.

bumby 6y ago
I’m curious as someone who has never lived in SV (only visited for work) but do you feel like there are certain areas that displaced SV gravitate towards and would eventually cause property in those areas to rise as well?
- CalRobert 6y ago
  I haven't lived in the bay area in 9 years (used to live in Berkeley), but so far my old SFBA friends have moved overwhelmingly to Portland, with one going to Colorado, another to Seattle, and two staying. One is a wealthy engineer, and the other (who has a kid in Marin) an incredibly fortunate person who was curious about this bitcoin thing 10 years ago.. I don't know of any "regular" people who stayed in the bay, except for a relative who's stuck there because of shared custody over kids with an ex and can't practically move. She'd like to though.

baby 6y ago

I’m one of these people who just moved out of SF. AMA.

kirubakaran 6y ago
Where did you move to? What was your rent and what is it now? Do you plan to move back?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

MikeTheGreat 6y ago

It also seems like renting is the most optimal way to take advantage of a long term, temporary WFH situation. A major advantage of renting (over owning) is being able to move when your lease is up. If the WFH thing blows over you can always move back at that point but at least you'll have saved yourself X months of expensive rent.

xivzgrev 6y ago

You’d be surprised. There is a surge of demand away from metro areas eg upstate NY, Tahoe, etc. I don’t get it. The pandemic will get under control, and people will go back to offices. Will employers require 5x per week in office, or 2-3x per week, or perm WFH?

ghaff 6y ago
Depends on the company and the person. There are companies that were already heavily remote where it's reasonable to expect even more flexibility. Personally I'm already out in an exurb and had given up a permanent desk. But I don't expect to ever be in a permanent office again.
sizzle 6y ago
I'm never going back, my employer be damned it's too convenient not having an open office distraction when coding is a game changer for me.

ajcodez 6y ago

My friends are leaving for cities like LA where they expect to enjoy it more. In my experience the majority of new SF residents move in to start a new job - not for the food, nightlife, or culture. If the jobs are remote, that segment will not come back, and will not move to SF in the first place. It’s a good thing, fewer people having to make trade offs for better careers.

throwduh12 6y ago

I know this is an unpopular opinion, but SF is like an open air homeless shelter and getting worse. Crime is also getting worse. People put too much focus on cost of living. Many people have plenty of money to afford to live there, but it's increasingly difficult to justify that cost compared to the quality of life.