4 ms·

This says more about the arbitrary nature of using city boundaries for studying home pricing than anything else. San Francisco certainly has high prices, but it

This says more about the arbitrary nature of using city boundaries for studying home pricing than anything else. San Francisco certainly has high prices, but it also has one of the smallest footprints of any major city, and has lots of nearly-indistinguishable residential areas that are adjacent but fall outside its boundaries, particularly to the South and East. If you look just at pricing within the city boundary, it's going to be inflated by the fact that such a large percentage of that area is still relatively close to the "city center" and benefitting from the value that creates. Meanwhile, "New York City" (which ranked lower on median price) includes large residential expanses that are much further away from the city center, including Staten Island. (Not to mention Los Angeles, which is what, 50X the size of SF proper?) I'd like to see this comparison done for say, Manhattan island vs. San Francisco - that would be a much more apples-to-apples compare.

defilade 12y ago
That's absolutely right, and in the few articles I've seen that break out Manhattan, it's still significantly more expensive than SF. Of course, that's old news, right? And being old news, "Manhattan is the most expensive place to live" doesn't fit into the current tech boom, linkbait narrative that all the blogs and news outlets are exploting.
rscale 12y ago
The study did not use city boundaries, it used MSA boundaries, which include the outlying areas. Here's a map of the area in question: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:San_Jose-San_Francisco-Oakland_CSA_2010_Census.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:San_Jose-San_Francisco-Oak...
bane 12y ago
One of the interesting bits then is the differences between the common meaning of a city and the statutory boundaries. What people mean when they say "New York City" and what it actually is are more or less the same thing (though most people are surprised at how big and diverse the 5 boroughs actually are). People don't really count the NYC Metro area in the equation. Nobody who visit Trenton or New Haven comes back home and says "I went to New York". When people say lots of other cities, they really mean the metro area. "Washington D.C." refers colloquially to the 7th largest urban area in the country. People can make regular repeated visits to Arlington, or Fairfax or wherever and still go back home and say "I just went to D.C.". I suspect SF is the same. People can visit anywhere in the Bay Area and go back home and credibly say "I visited San Francisco" even if they never actually stepped foot in the city proper. edit I notice everybody who disagrees with this premise lives or is from the Bay Area where these things matter. On the other side of the country, all of California north of Monterrey is basically "San Francisco", most people think Oakland is part of L.A. and nobody could pick out SV on a map if their life depended on it.
- coolsunglasses 12y ago
  >I suspect SF is the same. People can visit anywhere in the Bay Area and go back home and credibly say "I visited San Francisco" even if they never actually stepped foot in the city proper. No, no they couldn't. Residents of SF are quite prickly about what is and isn't the city. You'd say you visited the bay area or possibly silicon valley not SF. --- Ex-resident of SF
  - msandford 12y ago
    I've visited that part of the country before. I tell people I visited SF. I have no clue if I was actually inside the city proper. The problem with the "these people are prickly" notion is that THEY'RE NOT WITH ME BACK HOME TO CORRECT ME and thus I don't really have to give a shit if I stepped inside the city boundaries or not.
    - pound 12y ago
      [nothing personal] by that logic (no one is around to correct you and also you don't give a shit) you can start making plenty of things up. Oh what a stories you should have about your travels and adventures!
      - msandford 12y ago
        Yes of course, I completely agree. You're 100% right that I can make up any lie I care to and it's even easier if there's nobody to call me out on it. And I don't take it personally, it's not offensive. My point, though, is that the notion that the residents of SF have any ability to sway the visitors to SF as to what they tell people back home is bogus. >>I suspect SF is the same. People can visit anywhere in the Bay Area and go back home and credibly say "I visited San Francisco" even if they never actually stepped foot in the city proper. >No, no they couldn't. Residents of SF are quite prickly about what is and isn't the city. You'd say you visited the bay area or possibly silicon valley not SF. This second statement one I take issue with, made by coolsunglasses. What mechanism does coolsunglasses have to force me to know the difference between "bay area" and "san francisco" and "silicon valley"? How does he propose to regulate my speech such that I don't offend his (or others) sense of which areas are which? I get that people who live in SF proper might get upset if someone said that. That is their right. But for the vast majority of the population (think "flyover states" and probably a good bit of the east coast) visiting anywhere in the bay area is just as good as the "real" san francisco. At least from a communicating-the-idea-of-what-happened perspective. And the folks in SF or the bay area not liking it doesn't do anything to make it impossible to say. Inaccurate? Perhaps. But uninformative? Not at all.
scythe 12y ago
This was the metropolitan area, though. If you look at the chart, the top-left column states "Top 25 metropolitan areas, by population". After all, everywhere in Silicon Valley is expensive, not just SF proper. San Jose is not itself cheap.
- tomkarlo 12y ago
  SF isn't in Silicon Valley. San Jose is one of 10 largest cities in the county and Oakland's pretty big too. I'm guessing that "San Francisco metro area" probably can't include either of those two larger cities, nor would it include Silicon Valley (which is 15-20 miles from SF and closer to San Jose.)
jonnycat 12y ago
That's funny, because I often make the opposite point about SF. Living in the Boston area, there are areas of Boston that are as expensive as SF (Back Bay, South End), but I can go a very short distance out of the city (Somerville, Medford) and find considerably cheaper housing.
diziet 12y ago
The Sunset or Richmond or any other 'far' neighborhood is not Manhattan-like.
- tomkarlo 12y ago
  It's not that different, depending how far north you get in Manhattan. The distribution of housing types might be different, but things get pretty residential in the northern end of Manhattan, and you're as far away from "midtown" than those places are from downtown SF.
  - diziet 12y ago
    It's as far away geographically (even further for the north in terms of miles), but even if you get to harlem/university heights the types of buildings and the way the streets feel is different from the sunset/outer richmond. There is just some sort of gloom and emptiness because of the density of people & climate in those neighborhoods compared to manhattan. You'd hardly find a street in manhattan that has the feel of this : http://foundsf.org/images/2/23/Photo9Ungaretti.jpg http://foundsf.org/images/2/23/Photo9Ungaretti.jpg Maybe the light colors in San Francisco's outlying neighborhood's architecture make them look just even more distant and quiet / abandoned? Also, the ease of getting into the heart of manhattan (say Union Square for both cities) from north Manhattan just feels different than taking the Muni/Bus in SF. You're inside the subway, enclosed and underground. The neighborhoods that have that distant feeling in NYC are ones like Flushing, Gravesend & Jamaica. Or Canarsie. Canarsie is so far away... Also, Hi Tom - This is Alex from the first Stuy meetup :)
ceras 12y ago
I think the exact boundaries to use for comparison are really difficult to pick, and vary on an individual level. For instance, the superb connectivity of the public transportation makes me feel as if Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx (sorry Staten Island) are very much a part of NYC. I did not feel this way living in Mountain View; SF felt like a major chore to get to and a different world of its own. Plus it helps that the boroughs have the urban amenities I associate with a city that the suburban Bay Area towns like Mountain View lack. So, while you might personally want to compare SF to Manhattan (which is totally fine based on what you value), when I think of my own quality of life metrics, I consider the NYC boroughs (excluding Staten Island) a cohesive unit that the SF Bay Area is not.

defilade 12y ago

That's absolutely right, and in the few articles I've seen that break out Manhattan, it's still significantly more expensive than SF. Of course, that's old news, right? And being old news, "Manhattan is the most expensive place to live" doesn't fit into the current tech boom, linkbait narrative that all the blogs and news outlets are exploting.

rscale 12y ago

The study did not use city boundaries, it used MSA boundaries, which include the outlying areas. Here's a map of the area in question: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:San_Jose-San_Francisco-Oakland_CSA_2010_Census.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:San_Jose-San_Francisco-Oak...

bane 12y ago

One of the interesting bits then is the differences between the common meaning of a city and the statutory boundaries. What people mean when they say "New York City" and what it actually is are more or less the same thing (though most people are surprised at how big and diverse the 5 boroughs actually are). People don't really count the NYC Metro area in the equation. Nobody who visit Trenton or New Haven comes back home and says "I went to New York". When people say lots of other cities, they really mean the metro area. "Washington D.C." refers colloquially to the 7th largest urban area in the country. People can make regular repeated visits to Arlington, or Fairfax or wherever and still go back home and say "I just went to D.C.". I suspect SF is the same. People can visit anywhere in the Bay Area and go back home and credibly say "I visited San Francisco" even if they never actually stepped foot in the city proper. edit I notice everybody who disagrees with this premise lives or is from the Bay Area where these things matter. On the other side of the country, all of California north of Monterrey is basically "San Francisco", most people think Oakland is part of L.A. and nobody could pick out SV on a map if their life depended on it.

coolsunglasses 12y ago
>I suspect SF is the same. People can visit anywhere in the Bay Area and go back home and credibly say "I visited San Francisco" even if they never actually stepped foot in the city proper. No, no they couldn't. Residents of SF are quite prickly about what is and isn't the city. You'd say you visited the bay area or possibly silicon valley not SF. --- Ex-resident of SF
- msandford 12y ago
  I've visited that part of the country before. I tell people I visited SF. I have no clue if I was actually inside the city proper. The problem with the "these people are prickly" notion is that THEY'RE NOT WITH ME BACK HOME TO CORRECT ME and thus I don't really have to give a shit if I stepped inside the city boundaries or not.
  - pound 12y ago
    [nothing personal] by that logic (no one is around to correct you and also you don't give a shit) you can start making plenty of things up. Oh what a stories you should have about your travels and adventures!
    - msandford 12y ago
      Yes of course, I completely agree. You're 100% right that I can make up any lie I care to and it's even easier if there's nobody to call me out on it. And I don't take it personally, it's not offensive. My point, though, is that the notion that the residents of SF have any ability to sway the visitors to SF as to what they tell people back home is bogus. >>I suspect SF is the same. People can visit anywhere in the Bay Area and go back home and credibly say "I visited San Francisco" even if they never actually stepped foot in the city proper. >No, no they couldn't. Residents of SF are quite prickly about what is and isn't the city. You'd say you visited the bay area or possibly silicon valley not SF. This second statement one I take issue with, made by coolsunglasses. What mechanism does coolsunglasses have to force me to know the difference between "bay area" and "san francisco" and "silicon valley"? How does he propose to regulate my speech such that I don't offend his (or others) sense of which areas are which? I get that people who live in SF proper might get upset if someone said that. That is their right. But for the vast majority of the population (think "flyover states" and probably a good bit of the east coast) visiting anywhere in the bay area is just as good as the "real" san francisco. At least from a communicating-the-idea-of-what-happened perspective. And the folks in SF or the bay area not liking it doesn't do anything to make it impossible to say. Inaccurate? Perhaps. But uninformative? Not at all.

scythe 12y ago

This was the metropolitan area, though. If you look at the chart, the top-left column states "Top 25 metropolitan areas, by population". After all, everywhere in Silicon Valley is expensive, not just SF proper. San Jose is not itself cheap.

tomkarlo 12y ago
SF isn't in Silicon Valley. San Jose is one of 10 largest cities in the county and Oakland's pretty big too. I'm guessing that "San Francisco metro area" probably can't include either of those two larger cities, nor would it include Silicon Valley (which is 15-20 miles from SF and closer to San Jose.)

jonnycat 12y ago

That's funny, because I often make the opposite point about SF. Living in the Boston area, there are areas of Boston that are as expensive as SF (Back Bay, South End), but I can go a very short distance out of the city (Somerville, Medford) and find considerably cheaper housing.

diziet 12y ago

The Sunset or Richmond or any other 'far' neighborhood is not Manhattan-like.

tomkarlo 12y ago
It's not that different, depending how far north you get in Manhattan. The distribution of housing types might be different, but things get pretty residential in the northern end of Manhattan, and you're as far away from "midtown" than those places are from downtown SF.
- diziet 12y ago
  It's as far away geographically (even further for the north in terms of miles), but even if you get to harlem/university heights the types of buildings and the way the streets feel is different from the sunset/outer richmond. There is just some sort of gloom and emptiness because of the density of people & climate in those neighborhoods compared to manhattan. You'd hardly find a street in manhattan that has the feel of this : http://foundsf.org/images/2/23/Photo9Ungaretti.jpg http://foundsf.org/images/2/23/Photo9Ungaretti.jpg Maybe the light colors in San Francisco's outlying neighborhood's architecture make them look just even more distant and quiet / abandoned? Also, the ease of getting into the heart of manhattan (say Union Square for both cities) from north Manhattan just feels different than taking the Muni/Bus in SF. You're inside the subway, enclosed and underground. The neighborhoods that have that distant feeling in NYC are ones like Flushing, Gravesend & Jamaica. Or Canarsie. Canarsie is so far away... Also, Hi Tom - This is Alex from the first Stuy meetup :)

ceras 12y ago

I think the exact boundaries to use for comparison are really difficult to pick, and vary on an individual level. For instance, the superb connectivity of the public transportation makes me feel as if Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx (sorry Staten Island) are very much a part of NYC. I did not feel this way living in Mountain View; SF felt like a major chore to get to and a different world of its own. Plus it helps that the boroughs have the urban amenities I associate with a city that the suburban Bay Area towns like Mountain View lack. So, while you might personally want to compare SF to Manhattan (which is totally fine based on what you value), when I think of my own quality of life metrics, I consider the NYC boroughs (excluding Staten Island) a cohesive unit that the SF Bay Area is not.