6 ms·

Actually office space is not bad for residential retrofits. Why? For one, the heights of those floors are 10 plus feet. You can easyliy hide the plumbing unde

Actually office space is not bad for residential retrofits. Why? For one, the heights of those floors are 10 plus feet. You can easyliy hide the plumbing under the subfloor, and end up with 8 plus unit heights. I didn't know about the window requirement. That could be changed overnight. I would happily pay a few hundred less because of a lack of window. Many old SF buildings used to be converted to residential apartments. Now--it's more financially advantageous to demolish the building, and put up residential condos. (Condos are not rent controlled.) We need to get rid of the residential condo Rent Control exemption. Most people will never make enough to afford one, even you tech guys. I worked on many luxury condo projects in SF. As union tradesman, we all knew we could never afford one. They are nice though. If SF applied Rent Control to Condos, we might see more apartments being built? (I don't want to get into a debate on Rent Control. It has helped out many dear friends over the years. SF only has so much land to build on before going farther into the bay.)

seanmcdirmid 5y ago
Rent control doesn’t apply if the condo is never rented. Rent control just makes it less likely they will be rented out at all, the market will always go where the money is.
- imtringued 5y ago
  It's not like that is surprising. Rent control tells landlords that they should make less of their money from renting out. Just because the government doesn't understand what it is saying doesn't mean it is unfair. When you have options X,Y,Z and the government says stop X then you stop doing X. The fact that you still do Y and Z isn't a loophole, it's what the government told you to do.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    Ya. I’m not understanding why someone would think a condo needed to be rented out at all if someone couldn’t afford to buy it outright? Condos aren’t usually rented where I live, just apartment complexes that are managed blanket as rental properties.
babesh 5y ago
Chicago seems to have many high rise condominiums. I think it would be wonderful if San Francisco could convert some of its office buildings into condominiums. Perhaps some should be converted to apartments with some low cost. I think there is a broader question of how much office space the Bay Area as a whole has/will have empty.
- pm90 5y ago
  It seems kinda weird to build a lot of office space in a city with fantastic views and climate. Most of this square footage is probably just vacant most of the time. Just repurpose office to residential en-masse and build office blocks in eg Oakland or neighboring burbs (which could really use the revenue).
sokoloff 5y ago
> If SF applied Rent Control to Condos, we might see more apartments being built? Rather than extending rent control to condos, perhaps removing rent control from apartments would be another valid way to achieve the result of more apartment construction? As you say, there’s only so much land.
csomar 5y ago
Rent control will reduce construction, since investors become anxious about the prospects of their return on investment. > We need to get rid of the residential condo Rent Control exemption. Most people will never make enough to afford one, even you tech guys. That's a myth. The price is high because "some" people can afford it. By limiting the price using Rent Control, these "some" people become "lucky first renters" instead of the people who "got the most cash".
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- imtringued 5y ago
  The lucky first renter often are those with the most cash. Now they get to pay even less. It's like people advocating rent control know that they are throwing money into the throat of the richest people in the neighborhood. Well... in Berlin that was pretty much the case. They wanted rent control for the most expensive parts of Berlin. You know, the places where the richest Berlin residents live in...
Kalium 5y ago
> I would happily pay a few hundred less because of a lack of window. Windows are emergency fire escapes, which is a big part of why they are required. How much are you willing to pay to live in a literal deathtrap? How many dear friends struggling to afford to live in the city they love should live in deathtraps with poor fire safety? Has the Bay not learned its lesson about fire codes yet? > If SF applied Rent Control to Condos, we might see more apartments being built? Can you help me understand why you think extending rent control would increase construction? Maybe step me through the math of it? I genuinely and sincerely do not follow your logic. To my mind, condos get built in SF because it's possible to come out in the black. Building rent controlled apartments and coming out in the black would seem to be impossible given how high costs are in SF. How would rent controlling condos change this?
- sampo 5y ago
  > > If SF applied Rent Control to Condos, we might see more apartments being built? > Can you help me understand why you think extending rent control would increase construction? If SF applied rent control to both condos and rental apartments, it might change the balance so that relatively more rental apartments would be build, and less condos. If the numbers now were 80 (condos) and 20 (rental apartments), the new numbers might be 40 and 40.
  - Kalium 5y ago
    If the problem is that apartments are difficult to turn a profit on and condos are comparatively easy, is there a reason to think we'd get 40 and 40 instead of 20 and 20? Or worse, maybe just the 20 apartments that were already going to be built? None of which are rent controlled at all, mind you. If this seems counterintuitive - and it did to me at first - consider that the money being spent to develop that housing has plenty of alternatives. Not all of which are SF housing. SF isn't guaranteed some level of privately-funded construction each year, after all. Trying to shift the mix runs the risk of adjusting the size of the mixture too, exactly as your suggested model does.
- evancox100 5y ago
  A window on a 1000 ft tall building is definitively not a fire escape. Large buildings like this, whether residential or commercial, have purpose built interior fire escape paths. I couldn't say whether the commercial version of this is 1:1 substitutable for the residential one, but come on, the fire plan for any modern building over ~10 floors does not rely on windows. Edit: Also, the fact that a non-operable window, or even a window too small for a person to fit through, will usually suffice to meet the bedroom/window requirement gives the lie to this "fire escape" idea. Edit 2: Correcting myself here, for residences without automatic sprinkler systems, two means of egress (could be a window or doorway to the outside, could be a doorway to another part of house) is a requirement for a bedroom in the International Residential Code. There is a separate requirement for certain levels of light (natural or artificial) that can be satisfied by an inoperable/small window, which is what I was thinking about. In any case, all the commercial buildings in question would have automatic sprinkler systems, these fire escape requirements just wouldn't apply.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago

Rent control doesn’t apply if the condo is never rented. Rent control just makes it less likely they will be rented out at all, the market will always go where the money is.

imtringued 5y ago
It's not like that is surprising. Rent control tells landlords that they should make less of their money from renting out. Just because the government doesn't understand what it is saying doesn't mean it is unfair. When you have options X,Y,Z and the government says stop X then you stop doing X. The fact that you still do Y and Z isn't a loophole, it's what the government told you to do.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  Ya. I’m not understanding why someone would think a condo needed to be rented out at all if someone couldn’t afford to buy it outright? Condos aren’t usually rented where I live, just apartment complexes that are managed blanket as rental properties.

babesh 5y ago

Chicago seems to have many high rise condominiums. I think it would be wonderful if San Francisco could convert some of its office buildings into condominiums. Perhaps some should be converted to apartments with some low cost. I think there is a broader question of how much office space the Bay Area as a whole has/will have empty.

pm90 5y ago
It seems kinda weird to build a lot of office space in a city with fantastic views and climate. Most of this square footage is probably just vacant most of the time. Just repurpose office to residential en-masse and build office blocks in eg Oakland or neighboring burbs (which could really use the revenue).

sokoloff 5y ago

> If SF applied Rent Control to Condos, we might see more apartments being built? Rather than extending rent control to condos, perhaps removing rent control from apartments would be another valid way to achieve the result of more apartment construction? As you say, there’s only so much land.

csomar 5y ago

Rent control will reduce construction, since investors become anxious about the prospects of their return on investment. > We need to get rid of the residential condo Rent Control exemption. Most people will never make enough to afford one, even you tech guys. That's a myth. The price is high because "some" people can afford it. By limiting the price using Rent Control, these "some" people become "lucky first renters" instead of the people who "got the most cash".

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
imtringued 5y ago
The lucky first renter often are those with the most cash. Now they get to pay even less. It's like people advocating rent control know that they are throwing money into the throat of the richest people in the neighborhood. Well... in Berlin that was pretty much the case. They wanted rent control for the most expensive parts of Berlin. You know, the places where the richest Berlin residents live in...

Kalium 5y ago

> I would happily pay a few hundred less because of a lack of window. Windows are emergency fire escapes, which is a big part of why they are required. How much are you willing to pay to live in a literal deathtrap? How many dear friends struggling to afford to live in the city they love should live in deathtraps with poor fire safety? Has the Bay not learned its lesson about fire codes yet? > If SF applied Rent Control to Condos, we might see more apartments being built? Can you help me understand why you think extending rent control would increase construction? Maybe step me through the math of it? I genuinely and sincerely do not follow your logic. To my mind, condos get built in SF because it's possible to come out in the black. Building rent controlled apartments and coming out in the black would seem to be impossible given how high costs are in SF. How would rent controlling condos change this?

sampo 5y ago
> > If SF applied Rent Control to Condos, we might see more apartments being built? > Can you help me understand why you think extending rent control would increase construction? If SF applied rent control to both condos and rental apartments, it might change the balance so that relatively more rental apartments would be build, and less condos. If the numbers now were 80 (condos) and 20 (rental apartments), the new numbers might be 40 and 40.
- Kalium 5y ago
  If the problem is that apartments are difficult to turn a profit on and condos are comparatively easy, is there a reason to think we'd get 40 and 40 instead of 20 and 20? Or worse, maybe just the 20 apartments that were already going to be built? None of which are rent controlled at all, mind you. If this seems counterintuitive - and it did to me at first - consider that the money being spent to develop that housing has plenty of alternatives. Not all of which are SF housing. SF isn't guaranteed some level of privately-funded construction each year, after all. Trying to shift the mix runs the risk of adjusting the size of the mixture too, exactly as your suggested model does.
evancox100 5y ago
A window on a 1000 ft tall building is definitively not a fire escape. Large buildings like this, whether residential or commercial, have purpose built interior fire escape paths. I couldn't say whether the commercial version of this is 1:1 substitutable for the residential one, but come on, the fire plan for any modern building over ~10 floors does not rely on windows. Edit: Also, the fact that a non-operable window, or even a window too small for a person to fit through, will usually suffice to meet the bedroom/window requirement gives the lie to this "fire escape" idea. Edit 2: Correcting myself here, for residences without automatic sprinkler systems, two means of egress (could be a window or doorway to the outside, could be a doorway to another part of house) is a requirement for a bedroom in the International Residential Code. There is a separate requirement for certain levels of light (natural or artificial) that can be satisfied by an inoperable/small window, which is what I was thinking about. In any case, all the commercial buildings in question would have automatic sprinkler systems, these fire escape requirements just wouldn't apply.