10 ms·

Downtown SF office building sells for 66% below assessed value

50 points by ren_engineer 3y ago

idopmstuff 3y ago
I don't see how SF doesn't end up in a doom loop. The only positive news of late seems to be around AI companies taking up space, but that's just not that many employees. Office to residential conversions are good in theory but difficult to execute and certainly not something that SF will make easy, because SF doesn't make anything related to housing easy.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  There won't be a "doom loop", just a market correction to relatively normal levels. Free market at work - everyone speculating on real estate professionally knows the risk (or should have known after the 2008ff subprime crisis). Bailing out morons should not be a thing - if no one suffers this time, it's just an invitation for an even worse bubble. The problem is that instead of eating their loss like they fucking should, it seems like the uber rich are funding endless "return to office" campaigns in media, and once again try to let the 99% suffer from worse employment conditions and onerous commutes to the office instead. The only people I actually feel sorry for are regular homeowners who bought way overpriced properties because they had no alternative.
  - echelon 3y ago
    > The only people I actually feel sorry for are regular homeowners who bought way overpriced properties because they had no alternative. Many markets in other states are still going up. The condos in my building are selling for $100 - $150k more than they did in 2022. Lower inventory and volume, but the demand is red hot.
  - idopmstuff 3y ago
    > There won't be a "doom loop", just a market correction to relatively normal levels. Free market at work - everyone speculating on real estate professionally knows the risk (or should have known after the 2008ff subprime crisis). Bailing out morons should not be a thing - if no one suffers this time, it's just an invitation for an even worse bubble. The difference is the doom loop leads to things going below "normal" levels (and "normal" is not really a useful term here). Also, I don't think it's fair to say elevated office building prices in SF were the result of wild speculation - it was one of the most booming employment markets in the US with an incredible dearth of supply. High prices are just economic principles at work. Then something totally unexpected came and upended how we work, and that changed the market entirely - it was an external force, not people paying prices that weren't supported by the rents.
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      > Then something totally unexpected came and upended how we work, and that changed the market entirely - it was an external force, not people paying prices that weren't supported by the rents. The thing is, if one is investing money, one should also take into account risk. Remote work has been a thing for years now, with ever faster adoption of broadband Internet. But it seems like a lot of people have either put way too much money into one single asset class or preferred to distribute money to shareholders instead of building some buffer for when tides start to turn. Either of these mistakes is completely avoidable and part of virtually any economics class, it's not rocket science - it's just plain old greed all around.
      - idopmstuff 3y ago
        > The thing is, if one is investing money, one should also take into account risk. This is true, but I think the idea that people should have priced in a black swan like a pandemic (and not only a pandemic, but a pandemic that changes the way we work) is not a reasonable one. > Remote work has been a thing for years now, with ever faster adoption of broadband Internet. This makes exactly the opposite point that you intend - despite the fact that people, especially those in tech, have had the infrastructure to work remotely for many years, SF's market still continued to go up in value and have incredibly high occupancy rates. If the condition existed for remote work for years and yet it had no appreciable impact on the use of office space, it wouldn't make any sense to assume that there will be a sudden change to cause everyone to work remotely and the market for office space to crash.
        mschuster91 3y ago
        > This is true, but I think the idea that people should have priced in a black swan like a pandemic (and not only a pandemic, but a pandemic that changes the way we work) is not a reasonable one. The world has become ever more chaotic the last years. Natural disasters, general political instability, even geopolitical instability has been on the table for a long LONG time now. Acting like a "black swan" event is unthinkable has been beyond foolish.
  - readthenotes1 3y ago
    "The only people I actually feel sorry for are regular homeowners who bought way overpriced properties because they had no alternative. " No alternative? Highly doubtful. More like they were just the "greater fool". I can feel sorry for them in that because someday I may be in their shoes. But they did have alternatives.
  - paraboli 3y ago
    The worry about the doom loop is not that rich people lose money but that the current budget is tied to high tax receipts and when assessments go down tax revenue will plunge. Services will have to be cut to balance the budget.
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      > Services will have to be cut to balance the budget. No. The US could also go and fix their tax code for once - start taxing the uber rich. Warren f..ing Buffet complained years ago he has to pay less tax than his secretary. A lot of the issues that cripple many Western countries relate to stupid tax breaks for the rich and mega corporations who have bought out politics.
      - anonuser123456 3y ago
        Not everyone believes taking Bill Gates’ money and sending it to random drug addicts in SF is very good policy.
        ipaddr 3y ago
        Bad example as his foundations probably does this through outreach programs
        Tyrek 3y ago
        Foundations that are probably better run than local government.
        mschuster91 3y ago
        Which is true but extremely problematic in itself. The poor and destitute should not depend on the graces of billionaires (or, worse, churches) for their basic needs, society should take care of them.
      - GenerWork 3y ago
  - Manuel_D 3y ago
    The apartment I used to rent for $3,600 is now renting for $3,300 on Craigslist. I don't think the massive collapse of office building rents will be reflected in residential real estate. People still want to live in SF, it's companies that have realized that an office is a waste of money. Or maybe just rent an office with a few conference rooms to host meetings with business partners, let the bulk of your workforce WFH.
  - mistrial9 3y ago
    > regular homeowners for years there have been fewer and fewer of those "regular homeowners" and increase in offshore money speculation, purchase-to-AirBNB, and other non-obvious transactions. A recent examination of US Tax filings (posted on YNews IIR) show that +1 million adults in the USA have the financial ability to purchase a home, and have not done so.
    - HumblyTossed 3y ago
      > A recent examination of US Tax filings (posted on YNews IIR) show that +1 million adults in the USA have the financial ability to purchase a home, and have not done so. That doesn't seem like a good measure. There are a lot of people with means who would rather rent a space downtown that own a SFH in the suburbs. Those people would/should not be considered "regular homeowners".
  - ren_engineer 3y ago
    if remote work stays SF will be in a similar situation to Detroit, although they will be somewhat better off just due to the climate and location of SF making it a desirable place to live. But SF will still lose a ton of tax revenue if fewer tech workers are living in the area
- echelon 3y ago
  > AI companies taking up space I'm going to hire for AI roles remotely. 100% of our ML hires have been outside of California.
- jrpt 3y ago
  To their credit, they are apparently helping with conversions: https://sf.gov/news/san-francisco-announces-new-initiative-spur-conversions-underutilized-office-buildings https://sf.gov/news/san-francisco-announces-new-initiative-s... Unless you know something specific that is getting in the way.
  - idopmstuff 3y ago
    > The Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD) and the San Francisco Planning Department have partnered together to announce a Request For Interest (RFI) from City stakeholders to provide information on existing and future downtown development projects as a critical component of the City’s economic recovery efforts. I won't hold my breath until there's some actual action - I don't count taking requests for information from people as action. I definitely hope they move quickly (and FWIW I like Breed and I think she's done as good of a job as anybody could expect in what is an impossibly hard job), but years of living in SF have taught me that pessimism about the city getting things done is the right frame of mind.
- samstave 3y ago
  Park 55 and the Hilton, owned by Park Resorts which owns a bunch of hotels in SF, are shutting down on a quick sale. The CEO was in SF and said that SF properties have lost as much as 52% of business, where NYC (where they own a bunch of properties as well) will lose ~2-4% of bookings business... He stated that after evaling SF - he said it will be back to normal after FIVE TO SEVEN YEARS. Maybe longer. So, SF - is going to be a billionaire realestate cluster as hedgies swoop in for depressed prices.
  - sagarm 3y ago
    I'm unclear on what the problem is here. People with lots of capital owning real estate seems like the status quo.
    - samstave 3y ago
      No, I am talking about the near-term viability of the San Francisco tech/commercial/residential space - where hotels with ~1,000 rooms are being fire-sold because the hedgies are losing ~52% of their bookings [0] So, the overall "slurped up" (as opposed to 'trickle-down') economy is really weak currently, and they are not seeing a positive return for a while, thus - Market street is going to suffer. Let make Zuck and Ellison and Benioff (the largest land owners in Hawaii) convert/rebuild Lahaina - but provide some housing in SF for refugees... :-) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/park-hotels-leaving-san-francisco-clouded-recovery/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/park-hotels-leaving-san-francis...
- Gibbon1 3y ago
  Amusing thing I remember in the aftermath of the Savings and Loan crisis. They over built commercial real estate in the South Bay. And after prices per sqft dropped dramatically. You could rent small office space for 60 cents/sqft. Good time to be a small business. Bad time to be a landlord. Landlords don't create value, small/medial/large businesses create value. And excess rents are a real impediment to actual productive businesses. So rents in SF/Bay Area dropping would be very beneficial to San Francisco.
  - RestlessMind 3y ago
    > Landlords don't create value, Please explain your logic because it doesn't seem to match reality. From what I see, there can be 3 types of landlords: those who built a house from scratch (obvious value creation), those purchased the house from someone else (value transfer; but that needs the buyer to hold alternate value in the first place) or inheritance (yeah, one just got lucky with right parents). Only the 3rd category seem to match your statement and I agree that inheritance should be heavily taxed. But the first 2 categories? Landlords have literally created value or exchanged their created value for a house.
    - Gibbon1 3y ago
      > those who built a house from scratch That's called a developer not a landlord. > those purchased the house from someone else Transfer of ownership doesn't create anything.
      - RestlessMind 3y ago
        Yes but you need to have some value of your own to transfer to the party selling the house in return.
- opportune 3y ago
  SF residential rents have stayed relatively flat vs NYC and it’s frankly a place many people prefer to live in over other major corporate nexuses like Chicago and Seattle. Eventually the pendulum will swing the other direction and SF will be the hip and hot place to be vs NYC. Of course both have been popular for early career/recent college grads for a long time, but anecdotally NYC has “just” began to attract more 20s people away from the Bay Area since 2020, and it’s getting expensive. Once the cost of living difference between SF and NYC becomes large and well known enough, companies will start hiring more, or choose to start, in SF vs the current trend of picking NYC because talent will begin to prefer it.
  - rhaway84773 3y ago
    That’s a huge risk for SF to take, and it also assumes someone who doesn’t want to live in NYC because of the rents will choose SF instead and not a 3rd city.
    - opportune 3y ago
      I think the type of young professional that lives in NYC mostly would prefer SF over a 3rd place, ignoring costs, or at least enough of them would that SF would get a leg up in attracting talent.
  - lyapunova 3y ago
    I have stayed in SF for almost a decade and have no plans to leave. Many of my younger friends have moved to NYC (or elsewhere) and they have told me they don't like the overwhelming tech culture that permeate the bay drowning out the rest of the culture. I could see that happening to Seattle as well, but probably not NYC. I can kind of understand it being like competing colonies of bacteria (each sub-culture). I think its pretty valid, but I don't mind all tech all the time ;D.
    - opportune 3y ago
      I also don’t mind tech all the time, and I also see it as competition among cities for young talent. I guess my line of thinking is that young professionals will eventually find SF trendy again once NYC becomes passé for being too expensive, overhyped, attracting too many of the charlatans and clout chasers. People love different parts of the country for many reasons but I think in aggregate SF is generally a number 2 choice after NYC for many young professionals if cost is not a (big) factor. Which is why I think if the trend continues and NYC gets more and more expensive vs SF, 23 year olds will start picking SF over NYC
binarymax 3y ago
Saved you some math: $235/sqft. The assessed value was $711/sqft which is outrageous.
- samstave 3y ago
  I've built out literally millions of square feet of commercial and healthcare sqft. (SFGH, El Camino, UCSF, Salesforce, Namco, Lucas, Gene, FB, Goog) (those are on my personal CV -- but the design firms I worked for built out pretty much every single tech site in SF, and the other cities for thes companies (LA, NYC,SF, CHI, and international sites) I have ALWAYS been dumbfounded by how much per sf $ This scenario should be the posterchild for real-estate greed - NONE of these properties should cost this much - even if your lobby desks are built from 85,000$ Koa Wood Desks from hawaii that is illegal to harvest - and you have one of these in most of your reception lobbies on your MANY MANY floors (Salesforce)... but here is the thing - all the businesses that died on Market and FiDi in SF - where high-end condos are all around, and other apartment buildings - there will be no walkability score for many of the apartments in those areas, and thus their prices should come down. However, you'll notice that the building dropped 66% -- but any commercial (or residential) rental rates will certainly not decrease by that much (hedgies want to dump buildings (hence Park 55 and Hilton... with more to come) - Walkability is based on the ability to walk from residence to commercial, retail, grocery, entertainment, work, etc... So if the first two levels of entire blocks of san francisco's market steet are all shuttered, non-interesting/iconic - why would you want to live anywhere near such an area. Look at how lame the TwiXXXter building is now - all the shops that would have supported the employees are shuttered. crappy vid, but informative of the number of shuttered places along market that just shows how depressing it is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UWIyGDnHmk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UWIyGDnHmk
  - TMWNN 3y ago
    > but here is the thing - all the businesses that died on Market and FiDi in SF - where high-end condos are all around, and other apartment buildings - there will be no walkability score for many of the apartments in those areas, and thus their prices should come down. Why wouldn't they have (very high) walkability scores? Or do you mean that as commercial buildings they don't have walkability scores until some time passes, and prices will be lower than possible until the locations are scored?
PopAlongKid 3y ago
I wonder if the prior owners can retroactively challenge the property tax assessment prior to sale as too high. Even if not, seems like a big hit to city & county revenue.
- dr-detroit 3y ago
  [dead]
HumblyTossed 3y ago
> transform it into a Class-A trophy office building with exceptional design and hospitality-driven amenities. What is a trophy office? "Come look at this office I'm renting out because it makes me feel special!"
- taftster 3y ago
  Right? Much like a "trophy wife", I guess. Come looks at this artificial hottie I'm dating because it makes me feel special.
infamouscow 3y ago
A completely foreseeable outcome when bad policies are perpetuated by moral narcissists.
friend_and_foe 3y ago
Hopefully we start seeing this phenomenon spread nationwide.

50 points by ren_engineer 3y ago

I don't see how SF doesn't end up in a doom loop. The only positive news of late seems to be around AI companies taking up space, but that's just not that many employees. Office to residential conversions are good in theory but difficult to execute and certainly not something that SF will make easy, because SF doesn't make anything related to housing easy.

mschuster91 3y ago
There won't be a "doom loop", just a market correction to relatively normal levels. Free market at work - everyone speculating on real estate professionally knows the risk (or should have known after the 2008ff subprime crisis). Bailing out morons should not be a thing - if no one suffers this time, it's just an invitation for an even worse bubble. The problem is that instead of eating their loss like they fucking should, it seems like the uber rich are funding endless "return to office" campaigns in media, and once again try to let the 99% suffer from worse employment conditions and onerous commutes to the office instead. The only people I actually feel sorry for are regular homeowners who bought way overpriced properties because they had no alternative.
- echelon 3y ago
  > The only people I actually feel sorry for are regular homeowners who bought way overpriced properties because they had no alternative. Many markets in other states are still going up. The condos in my building are selling for $100 - $150k more than they did in 2022. Lower inventory and volume, but the demand is red hot.
- idopmstuff 3y ago
  > There won't be a "doom loop", just a market correction to relatively normal levels. Free market at work - everyone speculating on real estate professionally knows the risk (or should have known after the 2008ff subprime crisis). Bailing out morons should not be a thing - if no one suffers this time, it's just an invitation for an even worse bubble. The difference is the doom loop leads to things going below "normal" levels (and "normal" is not really a useful term here). Also, I don't think it's fair to say elevated office building prices in SF were the result of wild speculation - it was one of the most booming employment markets in the US with an incredible dearth of supply. High prices are just economic principles at work. Then something totally unexpected came and upended how we work, and that changed the market entirely - it was an external force, not people paying prices that weren't supported by the rents.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    > Then something totally unexpected came and upended how we work, and that changed the market entirely - it was an external force, not people paying prices that weren't supported by the rents. The thing is, if one is investing money, one should also take into account risk. Remote work has been a thing for years now, with ever faster adoption of broadband Internet. But it seems like a lot of people have either put way too much money into one single asset class or preferred to distribute money to shareholders instead of building some buffer for when tides start to turn. Either of these mistakes is completely avoidable and part of virtually any economics class, it's not rocket science - it's just plain old greed all around.
    - idopmstuff 3y ago
      > The thing is, if one is investing money, one should also take into account risk. This is true, but I think the idea that people should have priced in a black swan like a pandemic (and not only a pandemic, but a pandemic that changes the way we work) is not a reasonable one. > Remote work has been a thing for years now, with ever faster adoption of broadband Internet. This makes exactly the opposite point that you intend - despite the fact that people, especially those in tech, have had the infrastructure to work remotely for many years, SF's market still continued to go up in value and have incredibly high occupancy rates. If the condition existed for remote work for years and yet it had no appreciable impact on the use of office space, it wouldn't make any sense to assume that there will be a sudden change to cause everyone to work remotely and the market for office space to crash.
      - mschuster91 3y ago
        > This is true, but I think the idea that people should have priced in a black swan like a pandemic (and not only a pandemic, but a pandemic that changes the way we work) is not a reasonable one. The world has become ever more chaotic the last years. Natural disasters, general political instability, even geopolitical instability has been on the table for a long LONG time now. Acting like a "black swan" event is unthinkable has been beyond foolish.
- readthenotes1 3y ago
  "The only people I actually feel sorry for are regular homeowners who bought way overpriced properties because they had no alternative. " No alternative? Highly doubtful. More like they were just the "greater fool". I can feel sorry for them in that because someday I may be in their shoes. But they did have alternatives.
- paraboli 3y ago
  The worry about the doom loop is not that rich people lose money but that the current budget is tied to high tax receipts and when assessments go down tax revenue will plunge. Services will have to be cut to balance the budget.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    > Services will have to be cut to balance the budget. No. The US could also go and fix their tax code for once - start taxing the uber rich. Warren f..ing Buffet complained years ago he has to pay less tax than his secretary. A lot of the issues that cripple many Western countries relate to stupid tax breaks for the rich and mega corporations who have bought out politics.
    - anonuser123456 3y ago
      Not everyone believes taking Bill Gates’ money and sending it to random drug addicts in SF is very good policy.
      - ipaddr 3y ago
        Bad example as his foundations probably does this through outreach programs
        Tyrek 3y ago
        Foundations that are probably better run than local government.
        mschuster91 3y ago
        Which is true but extremely problematic in itself. The poor and destitute should not depend on the graces of billionaires (or, worse, churches) for their basic needs, society should take care of them.
    - GenerWork 3y ago
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  The apartment I used to rent for $3,600 is now renting for $3,300 on Craigslist. I don't think the massive collapse of office building rents will be reflected in residential real estate. People still want to live in SF, it's companies that have realized that an office is a waste of money. Or maybe just rent an office with a few conference rooms to host meetings with business partners, let the bulk of your workforce WFH.
- mistrial9 3y ago
  > regular homeowners for years there have been fewer and fewer of those "regular homeowners" and increase in offshore money speculation, purchase-to-AirBNB, and other non-obvious transactions. A recent examination of US Tax filings (posted on YNews IIR) show that +1 million adults in the USA have the financial ability to purchase a home, and have not done so.
  - HumblyTossed 3y ago
    > A recent examination of US Tax filings (posted on YNews IIR) show that +1 million adults in the USA have the financial ability to purchase a home, and have not done so. That doesn't seem like a good measure. There are a lot of people with means who would rather rent a space downtown that own a SFH in the suburbs. Those people would/should not be considered "regular homeowners".
- ren_engineer 3y ago
  if remote work stays SF will be in a similar situation to Detroit, although they will be somewhat better off just due to the climate and location of SF making it a desirable place to live. But SF will still lose a ton of tax revenue if fewer tech workers are living in the area
echelon 3y ago
> AI companies taking up space I'm going to hire for AI roles remotely. 100% of our ML hires have been outside of California.
jrpt 3y ago
To their credit, they are apparently helping with conversions: https://sf.gov/news/san-francisco-announces-new-initiative-spur-conversions-underutilized-office-buildings https://sf.gov/news/san-francisco-announces-new-initiative-s... Unless you know something specific that is getting in the way.
- idopmstuff 3y ago
  > The Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD) and the San Francisco Planning Department have partnered together to announce a Request For Interest (RFI) from City stakeholders to provide information on existing and future downtown development projects as a critical component of the City’s economic recovery efforts. I won't hold my breath until there's some actual action - I don't count taking requests for information from people as action. I definitely hope they move quickly (and FWIW I like Breed and I think she's done as good of a job as anybody could expect in what is an impossibly hard job), but years of living in SF have taught me that pessimism about the city getting things done is the right frame of mind.
samstave 3y ago
Park 55 and the Hilton, owned by Park Resorts which owns a bunch of hotels in SF, are shutting down on a quick sale. The CEO was in SF and said that SF properties have lost as much as 52% of business, where NYC (where they own a bunch of properties as well) will lose ~2-4% of bookings business... He stated that after evaling SF - he said it will be back to normal after FIVE TO SEVEN YEARS. Maybe longer. So, SF - is going to be a billionaire realestate cluster as hedgies swoop in for depressed prices.
- sagarm 3y ago
  I'm unclear on what the problem is here. People with lots of capital owning real estate seems like the status quo.
  - samstave 3y ago
    No, I am talking about the near-term viability of the San Francisco tech/commercial/residential space - where hotels with ~1,000 rooms are being fire-sold because the hedgies are losing ~52% of their bookings [0] So, the overall "slurped up" (as opposed to 'trickle-down') economy is really weak currently, and they are not seeing a positive return for a while, thus - Market street is going to suffer. Let make Zuck and Ellison and Benioff (the largest land owners in Hawaii) convert/rebuild Lahaina - but provide some housing in SF for refugees... :-) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/park-hotels-leaving-san-francisco-clouded-recovery/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/park-hotels-leaving-san-francis...
Gibbon1 3y ago
Amusing thing I remember in the aftermath of the Savings and Loan crisis. They over built commercial real estate in the South Bay. And after prices per sqft dropped dramatically. You could rent small office space for 60 cents/sqft. Good time to be a small business. Bad time to be a landlord. Landlords don't create value, small/medial/large businesses create value. And excess rents are a real impediment to actual productive businesses. So rents in SF/Bay Area dropping would be very beneficial to San Francisco.
- RestlessMind 3y ago
  > Landlords don't create value, Please explain your logic because it doesn't seem to match reality. From what I see, there can be 3 types of landlords: those who built a house from scratch (obvious value creation), those purchased the house from someone else (value transfer; but that needs the buyer to hold alternate value in the first place) or inheritance (yeah, one just got lucky with right parents). Only the 3rd category seem to match your statement and I agree that inheritance should be heavily taxed. But the first 2 categories? Landlords have literally created value or exchanged their created value for a house.
  - Gibbon1 3y ago
    > those who built a house from scratch That's called a developer not a landlord. > those purchased the house from someone else Transfer of ownership doesn't create anything.
    - RestlessMind 3y ago
      Yes but you need to have some value of your own to transfer to the party selling the house in return.
opportune 3y ago
SF residential rents have stayed relatively flat vs NYC and it’s frankly a place many people prefer to live in over other major corporate nexuses like Chicago and Seattle. Eventually the pendulum will swing the other direction and SF will be the hip and hot place to be vs NYC. Of course both have been popular for early career/recent college grads for a long time, but anecdotally NYC has “just” began to attract more 20s people away from the Bay Area since 2020, and it’s getting expensive. Once the cost of living difference between SF and NYC becomes large and well known enough, companies will start hiring more, or choose to start, in SF vs the current trend of picking NYC because talent will begin to prefer it.
- rhaway84773 3y ago
  That’s a huge risk for SF to take, and it also assumes someone who doesn’t want to live in NYC because of the rents will choose SF instead and not a 3rd city.
  - opportune 3y ago
    I think the type of young professional that lives in NYC mostly would prefer SF over a 3rd place, ignoring costs, or at least enough of them would that SF would get a leg up in attracting talent.
- lyapunova 3y ago
  I have stayed in SF for almost a decade and have no plans to leave. Many of my younger friends have moved to NYC (or elsewhere) and they have told me they don't like the overwhelming tech culture that permeate the bay drowning out the rest of the culture. I could see that happening to Seattle as well, but probably not NYC. I can kind of understand it being like competing colonies of bacteria (each sub-culture). I think its pretty valid, but I don't mind all tech all the time ;D.
  - opportune 3y ago
    I also don’t mind tech all the time, and I also see it as competition among cities for young talent. I guess my line of thinking is that young professionals will eventually find SF trendy again once NYC becomes passé for being too expensive, overhyped, attracting too many of the charlatans and clout chasers. People love different parts of the country for many reasons but I think in aggregate SF is generally a number 2 choice after NYC for many young professionals if cost is not a (big) factor. Which is why I think if the trend continues and NYC gets more and more expensive vs SF, 23 year olds will start picking SF over NYC

binarymax 3y ago

Saved you some math: $235/sqft. The assessed value was $711/sqft which is outrageous.

samstave 3y ago
I've built out literally millions of square feet of commercial and healthcare sqft. (SFGH, El Camino, UCSF, Salesforce, Namco, Lucas, Gene, FB, Goog) (those are on my personal CV -- but the design firms I worked for built out pretty much every single tech site in SF, and the other cities for thes companies (LA, NYC,SF, CHI, and international sites) I have ALWAYS been dumbfounded by how much per sf $ This scenario should be the posterchild for real-estate greed - NONE of these properties should cost this much - even if your lobby desks are built from 85,000$ Koa Wood Desks from hawaii that is illegal to harvest - and you have one of these in most of your reception lobbies on your MANY MANY floors (Salesforce)... but here is the thing - all the businesses that died on Market and FiDi in SF - where high-end condos are all around, and other apartment buildings - there will be no walkability score for many of the apartments in those areas, and thus their prices should come down. However, you'll notice that the building dropped 66% -- but any commercial (or residential) rental rates will certainly not decrease by that much (hedgies want to dump buildings (hence Park 55 and Hilton... with more to come) - Walkability is based on the ability to walk from residence to commercial, retail, grocery, entertainment, work, etc... So if the first two levels of entire blocks of san francisco's market steet are all shuttered, non-interesting/iconic - why would you want to live anywhere near such an area. Look at how lame the TwiXXXter building is now - all the shops that would have supported the employees are shuttered. crappy vid, but informative of the number of shuttered places along market that just shows how depressing it is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UWIyGDnHmk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UWIyGDnHmk
- TMWNN 3y ago
  > but here is the thing - all the businesses that died on Market and FiDi in SF - where high-end condos are all around, and other apartment buildings - there will be no walkability score for many of the apartments in those areas, and thus their prices should come down. Why wouldn't they have (very high) walkability scores? Or do you mean that as commercial buildings they don't have walkability scores until some time passes, and prices will be lower than possible until the locations are scored?

PopAlongKid 3y ago

I wonder if the prior owners can retroactively challenge the property tax assessment prior to sale as too high. Even if not, seems like a big hit to city & county revenue.

dr-detroit 3y ago
[dead]

HumblyTossed 3y ago

> transform it into a Class-A trophy office building with exceptional design and hospitality-driven amenities. What is a trophy office? "Come look at this office I'm renting out because it makes me feel special!"

taftster 3y ago
Right? Much like a "trophy wife", I guess. Come looks at this artificial hottie I'm dating because it makes me feel special.

infamouscow 3y ago

A completely foreseeable outcome when bad policies are perpetuated by moral narcissists.

friend_and_foe 3y ago

Hopefully we start seeing this phenomenon spread nationwide.