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Yeah, but let's be clear though: the problem is bad zoning, not zoning itself. The fact that SF prohibits apartments in 76% of the city, according to the artic
by pmiller2 6y ago
Yeah, but let's be clear though: the problem is bad zoning, not zoning itself. The fact that SF prohibits apartments in 76% of the city, according to the article (which, I'm assuming, excludes places like Golden Gate Park) is an abomination in itself. Literally just allow more apartment buildings, let buildings get built higher, and make a couple other tweaks for higher density housing, and zoning becomes a non-problem.
After that, all you have to deal with are the NIMBYs. Le sigh.
- Animats 6y agoWhy? After the current bubble collapses, this will no longer be a problem.
- forgotmysn 6y agothats what they said when the dotcoms busted in 02 though
- Analemma_ 6y agoI've been reading about the "imminent" collapse of the SF housing bubble for essentially my entire adult life. Even the actual housing bubble implosion in '07 barely put a dent in it.
- trimbo 6y agoPeople have been complaining about SF real estate prices since at least 1846. [1] [1] - https://books.google.com/books?id=GiAa8pLrSTIC&lpg=PA45&lr&pg=PA62#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=GiAa8pLrSTIC&lpg=PA45&lr&p...
- HPsquared 6y agoI guess the prices could collapse a fair bit and still be overpriced.
- pmiller2 6y agoYeah, especially when you consider that prices just 30 minutes away from SF in any direction are anywhere from 20-60% lower than in SF.
- refurb 6y agoWhere? 30 mins is still in Napa to the North, Oakland to the East and San Mateo to the South. 20%? Maybe in a few pockets. 60%? Never seen it. Even the crummy parts of Daly City the homes are $1M now.
- pmiller2 6y agoCurrent median home price in SF is $1.3M. 60% of that is $780k. You can definitely buy for that in Albany, Richmond, or El Cerrito. The nice neighborhoods in Richmond are basically in the south part of the city, anyway, which cuts down the distance. Unless you're talking about 30 minutes out in hardcore rush hour traffic, these cities will definitely fit the bill. Daly City fits, since $1M is 77% of $1.3M -- not that I'd particularly like living in Daly City, but it is 23% less than buying in SF. San Mateo median price is the same as SF, so, obviously, you don't look there for home bargains. Seriously, just troll Redfin or Realtor.com sometime. Edit: my bad re: 60%. I should be looking at $520k homes. There are definitely places in worthwhile neighborhoods in that range in Richmond. I've seen them. But, if you revise that number down to 40%, a lot of stuff opens up. So, 20-40% is a better range than 20-60%.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- baybal2 6y agoA more extreme example: 1/5 of all housing stock in China are vacant concrete boxes, and people are still complaining about apartment prices reaching to the sky. Imagine cities both 20 times the size of SF, and being one fifth vacant.
- ladberg 6y agoVacant != on the market. I know a few people living in china, all of whom own more apartments than they can use (in the same neighborhoods no less, so it's not even vacation homes). They do it because it's the best way to invest their savings, so new apartments are usually spoken for before they're even built and often unoccupied until they're sold again.
- pmiller2 6y agoIs it legal for private citizens to rent out vacant housing units in China? If so, that doesn't surprise me very much. Every landlord has more housing units than they can use.
- ladberg 6y agoYes it's legal but the people I've talked to don't do it. There's a stigma of renting over buying so the rent/home value ratio is way off compared to the US. Renting out the homes wouldn't really net much profit overall and they don't want to deal with being a landlord anyway, so they let the apartments sit empty.
- ricardobayes 6y agoIt is impossible to get married in China if the bride doesn't own property. The family won't allow it.
- BobbyJo 6y agoTo be fair, housing in China is used as a savings vehicle. They have few, if any, social safety nets available to them, and don't trust the stock market. Housing in the US doesn't have nearly the same speculative force behind it.
- refurb 6y agoSF homes dropped 30% in 2008. Edit: Actually 44% to be precise. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SFXRSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SFXRSA
- bananabreakfast 6y agoWhat bubble? People will never leave San Francisco en masse. The "exodus" during the pandemic will be the greatest outflow of people from the city for the next decade. San Francisco can build more housing to accommodate a higher population or let its poorest citizens get priced out. Either way people will not stop coming.
- refurb 6y agoNever leave? SF lost 20%+ of its population in the 50-70’s.
- sidlls 6y agoWhat collapse? In all but the most deplorable areas houses will have multiple offers within days of listing, starting even before any marketing effort. In many cases we're talking cash over the asking price. This isn't coming mainly/only from the tech sector. The number of people with FAANG salaries simply isn't sufficient to support the large number of multi-million dollar homes here. A lot of it is absentee (foreign) investors (for example, just under 20% of purchases in San Mateo as recently as 2019). At best we might see a slight cooling in the rise in already absurd prices for property out here.
- imtringued 6y agoIt won't collapse (over the long term [0]) because the underlying reason is a savings glut. There are dozens of factors that contribute to the savings glut and I don't see any signs of them going away for the next 15 years. Of those dozen factors at least one third would have to go away all at once for there to be a sustained housing crash. [0] The 2008 recovery happened within 3 quarters...
- r00fus 6y agoYou do realize that the problem is NIMBYs all the way down tho, right? How do you think zoning laws came into place?
- pmiller2 6y agoI'm literally saying it doesn't matter how they came into place. Zoning per se is irrelevant. It's inflexible and out of date zoning that's the problem. You don't have to go full on Houston and eliminate all zoning to solve this particular aspect of the problem.
- whimsicalism 6y agoBut it becomes a problem if it's entirely up to local voters. Let the state have a say in the zoning process.
- wahern 6y agoZoning originally was driven by legitimate fears of tuberculosis and other diseases, and it emerged as an extension of building and safety codes which had developed in response to innumerable deadly tragedies. Though, some of the more famous court cases that later secured broad zoning powers evinced mixed motivations clearly implicating class tensions. I once took a Land Use seminar in law school. My professor, as well as numerous authors on the subject, always seemed incredulous and even cynical about professed concerns w/ tuberculosis and similar health concerns. But over the years since I've lost count the number of times I've come across non-legal historical writing directly or indirectly reflecting fears about tuberculosis, the prevalence of miasma theory, etc, so I no longer second guess the earnestness of those early regulations and court cases. The powerful will always coopt laws and institutions to their advantage. That's almost the definition of power--the capability to do that. It's unavoidable. That dynamic doesn't by itself negate, post hoc, the original legitimacy of those laws and institutions. Of course, earnestness alone doesn't justify them at inception, either.
- xiphias2 6y agoWhy would the current house owners do that? The renters suffer, who don't have voting rights, so I don't see why this would change in the future.
- ahepp 6y agoWhat do you mean "renters don't have voting rights"?
- dragonwriter 6y agoThe renters suffering aren’t actual current renters so much as the would-be renters who can’t actually become renters in the City because there are no units available for them to rent. Those people have no voting rights in the City.
- ahepp 6y agoI can't tell if you're serious or not... How can someone say with a straight face that it's unjust people who don't live in a jurisdiction have no say in how it's run?
- dragonwriter 6y ago> How can someone say with a straight face that it's unjust people who don't live in a jurisdiction have no say in how it's run? AFAICT, no one said it was unjust that nonresidents don’t vote in city elections. It was raised as a reason the policy was unlikely to be changed at the city level, because the people adversely effected aren’t voters in the city.
- jonny_eh 6y agoHow can the thousands of future renters of a new high rise vote before it's been built? The few current home owners have all the power.