"Tech boom causing rising SF rents" (San Francisco, Oakland: low income, for sale)

[mayorhaggar]

Tech boom causing rising SF rents : On The Block
Yaaaay...

So we're seeing rising rents in SF, especially in SOMA and South Bay...I bet around Potrero Hill too.

It might not be so bad if unemployment as a whole in the city was doing a lot better, but these specialized tech firms really don't hire that many people compared to the Bay Area's economy as a whole, but they're driving up rents for everyone.

[CaryPrincess]

Yup, actually I am moving there and can't seem to find a decent one bedroom under $1500 even in the peninsula or towards south bay.

[CAVA1990]

Originally Posted by mayorhaggar

It might not be so bad if unemployment as a whole in the city was doing a lot better, but these specialized tech firms really don't hire that many people compared to the Bay Area's economy as a whole, but they're driving up rents for everyone.

So they don't hire many people but they drive up rents by these few hires presumably taking up apartment space? I don't get that. Couldn't you also make the reverse argument that all these unemployed and underemployed folks are driving down rents?

[80skeys]

Originally Posted by mayorhaggar

Tech boom causing rising SF rents : On The Block
Yaaaay...

So we're seeing rising rents in SF, especially in SOMA and South Bay...I bet around Potrero Hill too.

It might not be so bad if unemployment as a whole in the city was doing a lot better, but these specialized tech firms really don't hire that many people compared to the Bay Area's economy as a whole, but they're driving up rents for everyone.

Yes that's the crappy thing about it.

[CAVA1990]

Originally Posted by 80skeys

Yes that's the crappy thing about it.

Not if you're a landlord apparently.

[mayorhaggar]

Originally Posted by CAVA1990

So they don't hire many people but they drive up rents by these few hires presumably taking up apartment space? I don't get that. Couldn't you also make the reverse argument that all these unemployed and underemployed folks are driving down rents?

Rents are going up pretty much everywhere in the US because people can't get cheap n' crappy loans like they used to, or they've been pushed out of their homes, so there's a lot of people in the rental market who would otherwise be homeowners:

Apartment rents increase as vacancies fall - SFGate

But things like tech hiring boomlets in downtown SF and Silicon Valley are another factor causing rents to rise locally. There aren't huge numbers of people making big tech money but there's enough of them making enough money that it puts the squeeze on everyone else. It means wages in general are pretty high here but nobody is getting a raise unless you count kids right out of Stanford's computer science program getting 80k+ jobs at 22. Hopefully at some point non-tech employers will start handing out raises to deal with the rising cost of living but I'm not holding my breath.

[Isebiel]

I wonder why developers don't build more apartment buildings? Seems like it'd make good money. I realize San Francisco is geographically small but the majority of current buildings hardly use their footprint efficiently, which surprised me. The supply of rental units is a lot lower than it could be.

Probably some tax or regulatory reason, I imagine.

[mayorhaggar]

a) SF residents are pretty anti-development and something about SF or California law makes it easy for outside groups to slow down any major project, so anything happens at a glacial pace if it gets done at all.

b) pretty much the whole city has already been built on.

c) the one part of the city that has potential is the eastern shore which has a lot of crappy industrial yards and abandoned factories and warehouses, but for whatever reason nobody's bought it and developed it, I imagine it has a lot of toxins like around the old Hunter's Point Shipyards. The SE corner of the city is pretty blighted and supposedly development has puttered along (I'm not sure how much is on paper and how much has already been done) but it's a poor and black area so a lot of neighborhood groups have fought against what would surely be a lot of gentrification and displacement.

d) there actually are quite a few new developments, like around Lake Merced or around South Bay. Around South Bay it's a lot of sterile, expensive condos--lots of techies who ride Caltrain to SV or wealthy empty-nesters moving back to the city. Oakland has quite a lot of very new condo developments as do some other cities like Emeryville, and you see some sprinkled around the northern Peninsula. It's just not enough to meet demand, though from what I've seen some of the condos for sale around downtown Oakland are going at decent rates, like $150,000 for a 1br, compared to more like $500,000 for a small condo in SF.

[gnomatic]

Originally Posted by mayorhaggar

a) SF residents are pretty anti-development and something about SF or California law makes it easy for outside groups to slow down any major project, so anything happens at a glacial pace if it gets done at all.

That is not necessarily a bad thing, especially in a city like SF where much of the economy is dependent on tourism. It's required to preserve the character of a city that attract the tourists. The requirements for modifications to existing structures in SF is similar, if not easier then cities like Edinburgh.

Else it will just turned into...well Vancouver (Canada)...which is exactly what Mission Bay looks like.

Add to that, it is VERY expensive to build tall buildings in a densely populated, hilly AND earthquake prone city. And some of the flat land is actually landfill, and not stable/suitable for tall structures). Developers are also required to set aside a percentage of "low income" units. It's probably not a very good return on investment from a developer point of view.

[mayorhaggar]

Yeah Vancouver's architecture just doesn't have much character, it has a nice feel as a city on the ground but when you look up it's just a bunch of identical chilly condos. And I bet in 50 years or so they'll look really dated especially if they aren't maintained well, there's a lot of condo-style buildings there built in the 60's and 70's that are just hideous now.

I just saw this article today about the demand for tall buildings in Japan going down because people don't like to be so high up in an earthquake...made me think of the Bay Area and how developers here perenially want to build up:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/20/bu...es-plunge.html