6 ms·

The San Francisco Rent Explosion: Part II

djb_hackernews 12y ago
I live in Boston and have visited SF a few times, definitely not connected to the SF rental market like I am to Boston. What I am curious about is how new and how large these 1 bedroom apartments are in SF. My hunch is your dollar probably goes further in SF than it does in Boston. A 1 bedroom/1 bathroom in the Back Bay (nicer, while not nicest part of the city) will run about $2500/mo. But it'll be 100 years old, 400 sq ft, outdated, no laundry etc. I wonder how that compares to apartments in SOMA, which appear to be newer buildings at least.
- spigoon 12y ago
  When I moved to SF in 2012 I rented a new apartment in SOMA/South Beach (Carmel Rincon). My rent was $3300/mo for ~600sqft w/ no laundry. When I moved out they were increasing the rent past $3400/mo.
  - baddox 12y ago
    That seems a bit steep. In 2012 I paid $3200/mo (split between two people) for a ~950sqft one bedroom with laundry in a really nice building.
- alexmayyasi 12y ago
  I've had this conversation with a friend from Paris who made the same point. The stats show that SF rents are as high as places like Paris and NYC, but it may be a comparison between a nice, new studio in SF and an ancient, tiny room that used to house a servant in Paris. It's another layer on top of the stats. (Or we need more stats for a full picture.)
  - autism_hurts 12y ago
    In my experience, in San Francisco, there's no premium for new construction. You either get a place or you don't. The 60 year old victorian split into apartments is still $3,200 just like the modern construction 1 bedroom in SOMA.
    - snide 12y ago
      The big difference of course is that buildings built before 1979 are rent controlled. Had a friend have his rent go from $1800 to $3200 after his first year. This place is insane. I moved to sleepy Petaluma an hour north and have no regrets.
- birken 12y ago
  I'm sure they could pull this data from the craig^H^H^H^H^H mysterious data source if they wanted. For reference, I've lived in 2 1BR apartments which were around the median prices listed here and both were newer buildings, 600-700 sqft with laundry.
  - yincrash 12y ago
    If you've ever searched for an apartment in these high rent locations, you would know that the data presented from the listings is super super dirty. Often they are lower than actual rent or not the actual apartment (bait and switch tactics).
- sbisker 12y ago
  At least anecdotally, having moved here from Boston, no question that you're correct. You definitely get more space for your dollar in SF than in Boston. The reason is simple - they simply didn't build things as small in SF. People from the East Coast would probably be willing to live in smaller units for less...if they existed - but they really don't, at least not as part of the traditional housing inventory. (Some fancy new apartment buildings are experimenting with them, but needless to say, they're pricey, and at that price/size combination many would prefer to commute from Oakland.) Even the concept of "Boston" is much smaller than the concept of "San Francisco". If you walk across Boston from any of its edges for an hour, you'll wind up in another town entirely (Allston? Cambridge? Maybe even Somerville). If you walk from an edge of San Francisco for an hour, you'll be smack in the middle of San Francisco, with a lot more walking to go.
  - ghaff 12y ago
    I think you're right. Even though, say, Allston is actually part of Boston the residents don't really think of it that way for the most part--certainly not in the same way that (my impression is) San Francisco neighborhoods think of themselves. And Cambridge and Somerville both are and feel like different cities which, at least these days, are more like each other than they are Boston.
- reportingsjr 12y ago
  I'm not sure why they didn't do $/sqft at least. That should be a relatively easy way to normalize the data.
- quest88 12y ago
  A quick glance looks like average would be around $3200/mo. The lowest I saw was ~$2800 up to ~$5000 for a 1 bed room. The majority of them were around the $3500 mark. http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sfc/apa?bathrooms=1&bedrooms=1&nh=1&sale_date=- http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sfc/apa?bathrooms=1&bedro...
- icedog 12y ago
  I have a friend paying $2200 for a 230 sqft micro-apartment in SOMA. It's like having your bed in a tiny kitchen.
  - baddox 12y ago
    I'm paying $1800 for a ~250 sq. ft. microstudio in Soma. It's very much like having my bed in a tiny kitchen, but it's by far the cheapest place within a 15 minute walk of work (FiDi) by myself with somewhat reasonable facilities.
  - ceras 12y ago
    Wow. I pay $2750 for a 2br in a hip neighborhood in Manhattan and I already find that hard to swallow. It's amazing that people can move to NYC (Manhattan no less!) to save money on rent.
- gphil 12y ago
  My company makes a rent per sqft map that somewhat answers this question: https://kwelia.com/maps/cbsa_census_tract/Boston-Cambridge-Quincy,%20MA-NH https://kwelia.com/maps/cbsa_census_tract/Boston-Cambridge-Q... https://kwelia.com/maps/cbsa_census_tract/San%20Francisco-Oakland-Fremont,%20CA https://kwelia.com/maps/cbsa_census_tract/San%20Francisco-Oa... Looking quickly, rents per sqft seem a shade higher in SF but not by a wide margin.
  - djb_hackernews 12y ago
    Nice. (What's up Startup Chile!)
- baddox 12y ago
  The thing to note is that the "one bedroom" statistic is a little misleading, at least for myself and my peers in technology. They definitely cost $3000-$3500, but I don't know anyone who lives in one by themselves. Last year I shared a huge (~950 sq. ft.) $3200 one bedroom Soma apartment with a colleague. For comparison, I now live by myself in an $1800 ~250 sq. ft. Soma microstudio.
genwin 12y ago
Do coders (like at Twitter) typically make over $200K/yr? Or do they just eat ramen every day?
- johnrob 12y ago
  With rent prices like these, food is no longer a significant part of living costs.
- potatolicious 12y ago
  Some. Most do not. San Francisco's economy relies on young people not realizing the importance of saving, and the consequent willingness to spend to the bone. In some cases the importance of saving is realized, but offset by the certainty that they're going to cash out huge Any Day Now(tm).
  - sixQuarks 12y ago
    Also, I would think they are sharing 2-3 bedrooms with other co-workers.
- scarmig 12y ago
  Not most, but not unheard of. I know one guy (not at Twitter) making around $180k. But his real brilliance was getting in around 2007 and staying in the same place. Right now he's paying around $1500/month for a really nice one bedroom on Valencia. It's great that we have laws to protect him from predatory rent increases.
- baddox 12y ago
  More likely, they earn closer to $100K/yr, live in a studio or share a house/apartment with multiple people, and pay closer to $2000 a month, which leaves plenty of money leftover for food (especially after at least one free meal at work) and luxuries.
  - genwin 12y ago
    Geez. Hard to believe that SFO experience trumps making $70K/yr in a middle-tier city, living in your own house and paying less for its mortgage.
cesarbs 12y ago
This is crazy. I pay $2300 for a large-ish 2 bedroom loft in an expensive place in the Seattle area (Downtown Bellevue). I hope prices here don't get to what they are in SF.
- genwin 12y ago
  If you plan to stay in Bellevue long term, buy as soon as possible. The Seattle area's population is growing rapidly (mostly immigration it seems) and the cranes aren't keeping up.
  - theatraine 12y ago
    Seattle is the fastest growing large American city, according to estimates from the Census bureau: http://blogs.seattletimes.com/fyi-guy/2014/05/22/census-seattle-is-the-fastest-growing-big-city-in-the-u-s/ http://blogs.seattletimes.com/fyi-guy/2014/05/22/census-seat... Seattle seems to have much better planning than SF though. There's a large amount of high density housing being built, and there's not the same restrictions on rent, or prohibitions against micro-apartments.
  - cylinder 12y ago
    I can definitely see the Chinese diaspora becoming obsessed with Seattle in the same way they have with Vancouver, Sydney, Melbourne, etc ...
    - genwin 12y ago
      I stopped short of mentioning that. It's harder for them to get into Vancouver now, with a change in immigration law there. I think the ones who would've picked Vancouver now tend to settle on Seattle, willing to pay the same $million in cash for a house.
monkey_slap 12y ago
I'm currently interviewing for a position in SF that will likely be a dream job, but as a midwesterner, the rent situation terrifies me. Salaries certainly seem to be inflated because of this, which is fine, but could anyone offer some insight or precautions about moving to SF at this time?
- Jemaclus 12y ago
  The only thing I can say is that the salary makes up for it. The pay rate here is enough to survive, at a minimum. If you're making less than 80K and want to be more than paycheck to paycheck, you may want to think about living in the East Bay instead.
  - djb_hackernews 12y ago
    This is an interesting attitude. It basically sounds like "Come work at your dream job, where you competed in a global talent pool to get, for employers that conspire to suppress wages, where you can't actually buy any real estate, and we will pay you just enough to survive"
    - monkey_slap 12y ago
      That's an interesting way to look at it..
- cesarbs 12y ago
  I have a friend who recently moved to SF. The tip someone gave him was basically to not take anything less than $150K for a salary.
  - genwin 12y ago
    And be sure to get a big raise every year, to cover your 25% annual rent increase.
  - falsestprophet 12y ago
    Only 28 out of 638 startups on AngelList in San Francisco list software engineering jobs at over $150k. https://angel.co/jobs?utm_source=home_gs#find/f!%7B%22locations%22%3A%5B%22San%20Francisco%22%5D%2C%22types%22%3A%5B%22full-time%22%5D%2C%22roles%22%3A%5B%22Software%20Engineer%22%5D%2C%22salary%22%3A%7B%22min%22%3A150%2C%22max%22%3A200%7D%7D https://angel.co/jobs?utm_source=home_gs#find/f!%7B%22locati...
nostromo 12y ago
I'm surprised that the Tenderloin has resisted gentrification for so long. Why is that neighborhood so impenetrable?
- jonnathanson 12y ago
  My guess would be housing or building regulations. That said, developers are starting to build, what else, high-end luxury condos in the Tenderloin or close to it. I've heard the word "Trenderloin" bandied about unironically. So there's that.
- forrestthewoods 12y ago
  This article talks about it a bit. http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2014/01/15/123502/san-francisco-tenderloin-resists-change http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2014/01/15/123502/san-francisc...
- simonw 12y ago
  http://www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/arise-tenderloin http://www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/arise-tender... is a fascinating article explaining the unique circumstances of the Tenderloin.
- twic 12y ago
  According to their numbers, rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the Tenderloin actually fell 12% last year. What's going on there?
  - samstave 12y ago
    >* What's going on there?* ghetto
twic 12y ago
There is a special hell for people who present tabular data as images.
- calbear81 12y ago
  I sometimes do this in emails because for some reason Gmail hates CUT AND PASTE from an Excel table into an email and none of the work I did to format padding, widths, etc. in cells are preserved.
- samstave 12y ago
  But that's what they sell! It says so right in the first paragraph
Shivetya 12y ago
one reason for sky high rents, with the rules so bent towards renters the higher rents and deposits filter the majority of those people out. Its akin to renting homes, rent below 1k and your more than likely to get a bad renter.
throwaway3333 12y ago
One question I'm not seeing asked is, other than the wealth of interesting jobs for those in tech, is SF even worth the price of admission as a city? My experience here so far says "no fucking way".
- ghaff 12y ago
  As someone who has never lived there but has probably spent close to a year of his life collectively visiting there, I'd say it's a mixed bag--even though it's clearly on my list of favorite cities. Pretty good climate (though not as much so as the South Bay), great recreational opportunities in the area, great food, pretty walkable although public transportation is a mixed bag, and certainly some areas are nicer than others (I'll leave the last point at that). As an urban experience (as opposed to the Bay area more broadly, there are probably other cities I prefer. But I definitely see the attraction even if I've never succumbed to it, or indeed living in a city, myself.
- genwin 12y ago
  Seems people tend to conflate the price of admission with desirability. There are plenty of reasons why rents can rise much faster than inflation, other than desirability increasing.
  - muzz 12y ago
    Yes, things like economic opportunity
    - genwin 12y ago
      Current biggest reason is likely that mortgage interest rates are being minimized by gov't so that banks can unload the houses they're holding at higher prices. When house prices rise, rents tend to as well.

I live in Boston and have visited SF a few times, definitely not connected to the SF rental market like I am to Boston. What I am curious about is how new and how large these 1 bedroom apartments are in SF. My hunch is your dollar probably goes further in SF than it does in Boston. A 1 bedroom/1 bathroom in the Back Bay (nicer, while not nicest part of the city) will run about $2500/mo. But it'll be 100 years old, 400 sq ft, outdated, no laundry etc. I wonder how that compares to apartments in SOMA, which appear to be newer buildings at least.

spigoon 12y ago
When I moved to SF in 2012 I rented a new apartment in SOMA/South Beach (Carmel Rincon). My rent was $3300/mo for ~600sqft w/ no laundry. When I moved out they were increasing the rent past $3400/mo.
- baddox 12y ago
  That seems a bit steep. In 2012 I paid $3200/mo (split between two people) for a ~950sqft one bedroom with laundry in a really nice building.
alexmayyasi 12y ago
I've had this conversation with a friend from Paris who made the same point. The stats show that SF rents are as high as places like Paris and NYC, but it may be a comparison between a nice, new studio in SF and an ancient, tiny room that used to house a servant in Paris. It's another layer on top of the stats. (Or we need more stats for a full picture.)
- autism_hurts 12y ago
  In my experience, in San Francisco, there's no premium for new construction. You either get a place or you don't. The 60 year old victorian split into apartments is still $3,200 just like the modern construction 1 bedroom in SOMA.
  - snide 12y ago
    The big difference of course is that buildings built before 1979 are rent controlled. Had a friend have his rent go from $1800 to $3200 after his first year. This place is insane. I moved to sleepy Petaluma an hour north and have no regrets.
birken 12y ago
I'm sure they could pull this data from the craig^H^H^H^H^H mysterious data source if they wanted. For reference, I've lived in 2 1BR apartments which were around the median prices listed here and both were newer buildings, 600-700 sqft with laundry.
- yincrash 12y ago
  If you've ever searched for an apartment in these high rent locations, you would know that the data presented from the listings is super super dirty. Often they are lower than actual rent or not the actual apartment (bait and switch tactics).
sbisker 12y ago
At least anecdotally, having moved here from Boston, no question that you're correct. You definitely get more space for your dollar in SF than in Boston. The reason is simple - they simply didn't build things as small in SF. People from the East Coast would probably be willing to live in smaller units for less...if they existed - but they really don't, at least not as part of the traditional housing inventory. (Some fancy new apartment buildings are experimenting with them, but needless to say, they're pricey, and at that price/size combination many would prefer to commute from Oakland.) Even the concept of "Boston" is much smaller than the concept of "San Francisco". If you walk across Boston from any of its edges for an hour, you'll wind up in another town entirely (Allston? Cambridge? Maybe even Somerville). If you walk from an edge of San Francisco for an hour, you'll be smack in the middle of San Francisco, with a lot more walking to go.
- ghaff 12y ago
  I think you're right. Even though, say, Allston is actually part of Boston the residents don't really think of it that way for the most part--certainly not in the same way that (my impression is) San Francisco neighborhoods think of themselves. And Cambridge and Somerville both are and feel like different cities which, at least these days, are more like each other than they are Boston.
reportingsjr 12y ago
I'm not sure why they didn't do $/sqft at least. That should be a relatively easy way to normalize the data.
quest88 12y ago
A quick glance looks like average would be around $3200/mo. The lowest I saw was ~$2800 up to ~$5000 for a 1 bed room. The majority of them were around the $3500 mark. http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sfc/apa?bathrooms=1&bedrooms=1&nh=1&sale_date=- http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sfc/apa?bathrooms=1&bedro...
icedog 12y ago
I have a friend paying $2200 for a 230 sqft micro-apartment in SOMA. It's like having your bed in a tiny kitchen.
- baddox 12y ago
  I'm paying $1800 for a ~250 sq. ft. microstudio in Soma. It's very much like having my bed in a tiny kitchen, but it's by far the cheapest place within a 15 minute walk of work (FiDi) by myself with somewhat reasonable facilities.
- ceras 12y ago
  Wow. I pay $2750 for a 2br in a hip neighborhood in Manhattan and I already find that hard to swallow. It's amazing that people can move to NYC (Manhattan no less!) to save money on rent.
gphil 12y ago
My company makes a rent per sqft map that somewhat answers this question: https://kwelia.com/maps/cbsa_census_tract/Boston-Cambridge-Quincy,%20MA-NH https://kwelia.com/maps/cbsa_census_tract/Boston-Cambridge-Q... https://kwelia.com/maps/cbsa_census_tract/San%20Francisco-Oakland-Fremont,%20CA https://kwelia.com/maps/cbsa_census_tract/San%20Francisco-Oa... Looking quickly, rents per sqft seem a shade higher in SF but not by a wide margin.
- djb_hackernews 12y ago
  Nice. (What's up Startup Chile!)
baddox 12y ago
The thing to note is that the "one bedroom" statistic is a little misleading, at least for myself and my peers in technology. They definitely cost $3000-$3500, but I don't know anyone who lives in one by themselves. Last year I shared a huge (~950 sq. ft.) $3200 one bedroom Soma apartment with a colleague. For comparison, I now live by myself in an $1800 ~250 sq. ft. Soma microstudio.

genwin 12y ago

Do coders (like at Twitter) typically make over $200K/yr? Or do they just eat ramen every day?

johnrob 12y ago
With rent prices like these, food is no longer a significant part of living costs.
potatolicious 12y ago
Some. Most do not. San Francisco's economy relies on young people not realizing the importance of saving, and the consequent willingness to spend to the bone. In some cases the importance of saving is realized, but offset by the certainty that they're going to cash out huge Any Day Now(tm).
- sixQuarks 12y ago
  Also, I would think they are sharing 2-3 bedrooms with other co-workers.
scarmig 12y ago
Not most, but not unheard of. I know one guy (not at Twitter) making around $180k. But his real brilliance was getting in around 2007 and staying in the same place. Right now he's paying around $1500/month for a really nice one bedroom on Valencia. It's great that we have laws to protect him from predatory rent increases.
baddox 12y ago
More likely, they earn closer to $100K/yr, live in a studio or share a house/apartment with multiple people, and pay closer to $2000 a month, which leaves plenty of money leftover for food (especially after at least one free meal at work) and luxuries.
- genwin 12y ago
  Geez. Hard to believe that SFO experience trumps making $70K/yr in a middle-tier city, living in your own house and paying less for its mortgage.

cesarbs 12y ago

This is crazy. I pay $2300 for a large-ish 2 bedroom loft in an expensive place in the Seattle area (Downtown Bellevue). I hope prices here don't get to what they are in SF.

genwin 12y ago
If you plan to stay in Bellevue long term, buy as soon as possible. The Seattle area's population is growing rapidly (mostly immigration it seems) and the cranes aren't keeping up.
- theatraine 12y ago
  Seattle is the fastest growing large American city, according to estimates from the Census bureau: http://blogs.seattletimes.com/fyi-guy/2014/05/22/census-seattle-is-the-fastest-growing-big-city-in-the-u-s/ http://blogs.seattletimes.com/fyi-guy/2014/05/22/census-seat... Seattle seems to have much better planning than SF though. There's a large amount of high density housing being built, and there's not the same restrictions on rent, or prohibitions against micro-apartments.
- cylinder 12y ago
  I can definitely see the Chinese diaspora becoming obsessed with Seattle in the same way they have with Vancouver, Sydney, Melbourne, etc ...
  - genwin 12y ago
    I stopped short of mentioning that. It's harder for them to get into Vancouver now, with a change in immigration law there. I think the ones who would've picked Vancouver now tend to settle on Seattle, willing to pay the same $million in cash for a house.

monkey_slap 12y ago

I'm currently interviewing for a position in SF that will likely be a dream job, but as a midwesterner, the rent situation terrifies me. Salaries certainly seem to be inflated because of this, which is fine, but could anyone offer some insight or precautions about moving to SF at this time?

Jemaclus 12y ago
The only thing I can say is that the salary makes up for it. The pay rate here is enough to survive, at a minimum. If you're making less than 80K and want to be more than paycheck to paycheck, you may want to think about living in the East Bay instead.
- djb_hackernews 12y ago
  This is an interesting attitude. It basically sounds like "Come work at your dream job, where you competed in a global talent pool to get, for employers that conspire to suppress wages, where you can't actually buy any real estate, and we will pay you just enough to survive"
  - monkey_slap 12y ago
    That's an interesting way to look at it..
cesarbs 12y ago
I have a friend who recently moved to SF. The tip someone gave him was basically to not take anything less than $150K for a salary.
- genwin 12y ago
  And be sure to get a big raise every year, to cover your 25% annual rent increase.
- falsestprophet 12y ago
  Only 28 out of 638 startups on AngelList in San Francisco list software engineering jobs at over $150k. https://angel.co/jobs?utm_source=home_gs#find/f!%7B%22locations%22%3A%5B%22San%20Francisco%22%5D%2C%22types%22%3A%5B%22full-time%22%5D%2C%22roles%22%3A%5B%22Software%20Engineer%22%5D%2C%22salary%22%3A%7B%22min%22%3A150%2C%22max%22%3A200%7D%7D https://angel.co/jobs?utm_source=home_gs#find/f!%7B%22locati...

nostromo 12y ago

I'm surprised that the Tenderloin has resisted gentrification for so long. Why is that neighborhood so impenetrable?

jonnathanson 12y ago
My guess would be housing or building regulations. That said, developers are starting to build, what else, high-end luxury condos in the Tenderloin or close to it. I've heard the word "Trenderloin" bandied about unironically. So there's that.
forrestthewoods 12y ago
This article talks about it a bit. http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2014/01/15/123502/san-francisco-tenderloin-resists-change http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2014/01/15/123502/san-francisc...
simonw 12y ago
http://www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/arise-tenderloin http://www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/arise-tender... is a fascinating article explaining the unique circumstances of the Tenderloin.
twic 12y ago
According to their numbers, rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the Tenderloin actually fell 12% last year. What's going on there?
- samstave 12y ago
  >* What's going on there?* ghetto

twic 12y ago

There is a special hell for people who present tabular data as images.

calbear81 12y ago
I sometimes do this in emails because for some reason Gmail hates CUT AND PASTE from an Excel table into an email and none of the work I did to format padding, widths, etc. in cells are preserved.
samstave 12y ago
But that's what they sell! It says so right in the first paragraph

Shivetya 12y ago

one reason for sky high rents, with the rules so bent towards renters the higher rents and deposits filter the majority of those people out. Its akin to renting homes, rent below 1k and your more than likely to get a bad renter.

throwaway3333 12y ago

One question I'm not seeing asked is, other than the wealth of interesting jobs for those in tech, is SF even worth the price of admission as a city? My experience here so far says "no fucking way".

ghaff 12y ago
As someone who has never lived there but has probably spent close to a year of his life collectively visiting there, I'd say it's a mixed bag--even though it's clearly on my list of favorite cities. Pretty good climate (though not as much so as the South Bay), great recreational opportunities in the area, great food, pretty walkable although public transportation is a mixed bag, and certainly some areas are nicer than others (I'll leave the last point at that). As an urban experience (as opposed to the Bay area more broadly, there are probably other cities I prefer. But I definitely see the attraction even if I've never succumbed to it, or indeed living in a city, myself.
genwin 12y ago
Seems people tend to conflate the price of admission with desirability. There are plenty of reasons why rents can rise much faster than inflation, other than desirability increasing.
- muzz 12y ago
  Yes, things like economic opportunity
  - genwin 12y ago
    Current biggest reason is likely that mortgage interest rates are being minimized by gov't so that banks can unload the houses they're holding at higher prices. When house prices rise, rents tend to as well.