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> 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

• NineStarPoint 6y ago
  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 pretty sweet paycheck before those come to bite you.
  • metalliqaz 6y ago
    i imagine the people fighting hardest are the people who bought in /after/ the rents went up to absurd prices, and thus didn't profit hugely but will take a hit if the prices fall. (see taxi medallion investors in NYC)
    • whakim 6y ago
      In my experience (which is admitttedly mostly anecdotal, but comes from having attended a number of public forums/planning meetings etc.) another huge group of people fighting hard against new development are the ultra-left wing of SF local politics. These people aren't against new housing per se, they are just rabidly anti-developer. They spend so much time delaying projects by trying to get developers to increase the amount of below-market rate housing in their new developments that the developer eventually just gives up because the whole process takes so long and the potential profits dwindle down to nothing.
  • SllX 6y ago
    Both. I spent the last decade having these conversations with people who also grew up here and can’t afford to remain here without staying with their parents, with some of the stranger conversations devolving into my counter parties brainstorming ways to kick tech people out of the City and stop new people from moving in altogether, as if freedom of movement in the United States wasn’t really a thing. It’s not “supply and demand”, it’s “selfish rich techies and landlords”. I mean you can read that as supply and demand restated, until you get to next steps like solving the supply problem, and apparently building one more apartment building will irrevocably ruin the character of the City.
    • FreakyT 6y ago
      Exactly -- there's a pervasive belief in the bay area that high rents are solely due to the evil cabal of landlords who meet every week in a dimly lit room and agree to charge sky-high rents while cackling maniacally and twirling their perfectly-waxed moustaches. The sudden COVID-related rent price drop indicates that this theory is nonsense, and that the high rents are solely a function of supply and demand, but I'm sure that won't stop anyone from believing in it.
      • ashtonkem 6y ago
        I’m not sure why, but a surprising number of people seem to have convinced themselves that supply and demand doesn’t apply to housing.
        • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
          I think most people doubt supply and demand to some degree. How often have you seen someone argue we should secure the supply of food to disaster zones by repealing price gouging laws? Rent control is popular because many people believe, wrongly but wholeheartedly, that landlords are just price gougers and everyone could get cheap adequate housing if they weren’t manipulating it.
          • ashtonkem 6y ago
  • kelnos 6y ago
    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.
• momokoko 6y ago
  Stop it. Do you live in San Francisco? I don’t mean the Bay Area. Do you actually live in San Francisco? Why did Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland see very similar percentage based increases at the same time? Why has the entire Bay Area? Foreign investment. As soon as Vancouver passed legislation to curb foreign investment their real estate moved back to normal. 1 in 4 housing purchases in California are all cash. That number is even higher in SF. I’m so tired of this uninformed nonsense getting peddled by people who have no idea what they are talking about. Stop it. Edit: This being flagged means it’s time to type in a random password and end this account. Finally had enough listening to uninformed idiots and even more jerks that silently flag things to hide my comment because they are a jerk and a coward.
  • graeme 6y ago
    What? Vancouver’s prices are still rising. Foreign investment is demand. A rise in demand is much more impactful if supply is static.
    • momokoko 6y ago
      Stop it.
      • ashtonkem 6y ago
        This is incredibly unhelpful and un-persuasive.
        • duxup 6y ago
          On a semi related note, I've seen a lot more 'stop' and 'stop it' on the internet lately. Arguably the various forms of saying the same thing come and go in terms of what is commonly used, but I've been surprised to see such empty words suddenly so common. Personally I would be a bit embarrassed to just tell people to 'stop it' as to me it seems sort of childish, but apparently not everyone. It's strange.
          • 6y ago
• ashtonkem 6y ago
  Over the years I’ve come to the realization that a number of “kitchens” in luxury apartments are clearly designed for making at most breakfast and otherwise looking pretty. It’s not all luxury apartments, not by a long shot, but a surprising number were unusable due to layout mistakes or a complete lack of equipment (on the owners side). The conclusion I came to is that the people who rented these units valued a pretty kitchen as an aesthetic item, not as a usable thing. I presume they must have mostly eaten out for all their meals. Perhaps there’s a similar process at play here. If land is incredibly expensive and one intends to eat most of their meals out, it doesn’t actually make sense to rent a full kitchen. Might as well either cut rent and get a half kitchen, or save that space for activities you’ll actually do.
  • randomdata 6y ago
    > If land is incredibly expensive and one intends to eat most of their meals out, it doesn’t actually make sense to rent a full kitchen. It is hard to beat the economies of scale of a restaurant, as much as the "you only need to factor the cost of raw food" camp like to tell otherwise. From a purely economic perspective, a kitchen at home, when other sources of food are widely available, is tough to justify. From a wider point of view, a kitchen is easier to justify as a nice luxury, being that cooking at home is something that people enjoy doing. When land is cheap, it is a luxury that can be afforded. When land is expensive, it is not surprising that it's the first thing to go. Similar to why people are likely to maintain a garden at home when land is cheap, but not when land is expensive.
    • sofixa 6y ago
      > It is hard to beat the economies of scale of a restaurant, as much as the "you only need to factor the cost of raw food" camp like to tell otherwise I'd be interested in seeing your math on the subject, and it probably depends on location and at what rate do you "bill" your time, but restaurants have a lot of overhead ( property, staff, taxes) that offsets economies of scale. Even without going all-in with cheap foods ( like rice or potatoes), I can't imagine eating out in similar quality and quantity being cheaper than cooking it yourself ( again, depending on how you count your time spent). Of course McDonald's cheapest items will be cheaper than making yourself lobsters, but that's not really a fair comparison.
• flyGuyOnTheSly 6y ago
  >will try and sell you on a “kitchen” that is a mini-fridge, tiny sink, microwave and a hot plate whilst still charging you full rent. To be fair, that is a Kitchen to a great number of people on this planet. I shared a mini fridge, tiny sink, and a hot plate with 2 other roommates when I lived in Paris for a few months and the rent was not cheap their either. Was about 2,000 Euros/mo 15 years ago iirc.
  • ChuckNorris89 6y ago
    Yeah, Paris aint cheap. Most big European cities have huge rents as well but no Bay Area salaries to make up for it.
    • sofixa 6y ago
      The difference is that usually ( certainly in the case of Paris) there's plenty of very affordable housing available in the suburbs with good transport connections to the city and some other suburbs.
    • thatfrenchguy 6y ago
      Yeah but you can buy an apartment 25 miles / 30 min from the city center with a minimum wage salary (I know, I have friends who did it). Try doing that in the Bay.
      • ChuckNorris89 6y ago
        Do you have any more details on that? I'd like to know more. Either apartments outside of Paris are dirt cheap or minimum wage in France is really high. A dev from Paris I met in Germany said he left due to how unaffordable housing was so something doesn't add up.
        • Leherenn 6y ago
          I assume it's just that some places are quite cheap, if you're fine with living in council flat from the 60s in a poor neighborhood. From what I can find, minimum wage is around €1500/m, before taxes.
• mym1990 6y ago
  Those landlords don't try to sell that small kitchen, they DO sell that small kitchen. When I was shopping for an apartment in SF 2 years ago there was no spot that did not have at least 2 other parties looking at it. There was no room for negotiation or to even take a day to think it over, if you walked away from it, there were 2 people right behind you to take it.
  • SllX 6y ago
    You raise a good point. I shouldn’t have understated.
  • oconnor663 6y ago
    > There was no room for negotiation or to even take a day to think it over, if you walked away from it, there were 2 people right behind you to take it. Naive question maybe, but if demand is that high, why don't prices rise even higher to balance it out a bit? Presumably most landlords would prefer another hundred or two a month at the cost of a few extra days on the market?
    • SllX 6y ago
      They do. At some point the landlord makes the decision that this is good enough and accepts an offer using whatever factors are in play, maybe some personal circumstances like needing the money sooner rather than later or just liking one of the applicants more, but the next landlord is now informed by what his neighbors charged a month or two ago for a similar space and uses that as the floor for what they should ask for. On and on it goes and suddenly prices trend up and a space that went for $X two years ago now goes for $X+$500 today, or as we see in the original article, $X-$1K versus a year ago.
    • daniellarusso 6y ago
      Time is money. Why hold out and continuously interview potential tenants, when multiple people are literally asking you to take their money? Cash today is better than cash in a few days.
      • 6y ago
• kyleblarson 6y ago
  To the BOS's credit, they are too busy trying to remove Zuck's name from the hospital he donated 70 million to rather than to focus on actual problems.
• dheera 6y ago
  It's also surprising considering how high crime is in San Francisco. In terms of real estate you should be getting a discount to take on the risk of living there, not the other way around.
• HeadsUpHigh 6y ago
  For comparison I was paying €330 for a brand new 35 sqft apartment with 2 separate rooms, a small balcony, amazing heat and noise insulation, 5 minutes from a bus stop and ample parking, all in a nice area without very dense buildings. And this was considered expensive. The reduced price here is still x10...