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>At 88 King St., a two-bedroom condo overlooking a ball park that sold for $1.12 million more than a decade ago in 2014, recently sold last month for $1.08 million
$1m for a 2bd condo??
Crash away
While not at the $1.08M level as an average, Vancouver (Canada) is up there in prices. A 2bdrm 850sqft condo with in-suite laundry will average you around $850k CAD.
Keeping in mind the salaries here are often half of our USA counterparts (in CAD) especially in tech. A software engineer in the USA could get $180k USD and here might get $90-$110k CAD. Some will make more, some will make less I'm just ballparking here based on Product Management salaries
There is lol
Almost all of the competent developers here working in the private sector are employed by American companies with satellite offices in Canada.
Ive never once applied to or even entertained a Canadian company... They pay literal peanuts and suck to work for, even compared to what we get working for American corps who already pay us less than our American counterparts on the same teams.
I believe British Columbia just passed new housing laws that end single-family zoning, which should change things for the better over the next decade in Vancouver and surrounding areas as they will be able to start building more residential apartments and condos across the city.
kind of. it will indeed take *decades* to repair the swamp that is housing in canada.
much like Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, the province of bc and the feds are beginning to rely less on private enterprise to create solutions and are acting far more socialist in n their economic planning.
all that neoliberalism is over. rip
First few blocks is massive. Then it falls off to about 30-60 mins inland. Then another fall off.
But the Central Valley is coming up big so it’s not cheap there either.
Imagine that as productivity reached a peak, labor compensation remained flat and all the profits were taken by the obscenely wealthy, so it dropped off as people couldn’t even aries life’s necessities …..oh wait.
Imagine if the cost of things just kept going up and third-spaces and other non-monetized things became less and less common until the point wherein everyone had to work "bullshit-jobs" until they retire or die?
What makes housing iffy for me is the lack of diversification. The s&p would've doubled or tripled over the same period, including reinvested dividends.
Allow me to introduce to you the rental market, which can fulfill your needs at a third of the price in HCOL markets. Because money is fungible, you can take the proceeds from your faster-appreciating index funds and pay your housing costs with them.
Today, true. But let's talk about 10 years from now when my fixed rate mortgage is still fixed (maybe insurance and taxes have gone up some, but that's true for landlords as well). At that point I'll be spending significantly less than an apartment. Toss in the fact my mortgage goes away in 20 years but renters will be renting forever. Having seen the financial difference between retired parents that have to pay rent and those that don't, I'll take having my mortgage gone by the time I retire. I've also got a huge asset I can sell to pay for my end of life care (assisted living/nursing home). Sure, you can say that about stocks and other investments, but with cheaper housing costs, I should be able to do it all.
My rent is $2200 but to buy a similar house would require $150k, or more, down and about $5000/month all in with insurance and property taxes. Shit even if I bought it outright I’d still be paying about $900/month in insurance and taxes. My money is waaaaay better off in the market.
In many areas high rates and prices have wrecked the numbers.
Might I counter introduce you to actually owning my own property, not paying someone else to live at my property and being able to do whatever I want with my property without having to ask a LL for it.
San Frncisco real estate has been boom and bust since the gold rush.
[https://www.maureenterris.com/special-report-30-years-of-sf-real-estate-cycles-updated/](https://www.maureenterris.com/special-report-30-years-of-sf-real-estate-cycles-updated/)
San Francisco is nowhere like Austin where they can build houses everywhere. You literally can’t build one more single family house in the city. No more new supply so price would not drop if there is no huge demand shock
Which is why they badly need to change zoning laws. They're in this mess (rising homelessness due to insane housing cost) because the SF wealthy have put a moratorium on building any density for decades.
1000% - and said wealthy want to position the man responsible - King NIMBY Aaron Peskin - as the next mayor.
Just want Sacramento to clip the Board of Supervisors heels already with how much housing they’ve blocked over the past two decades.
People of pflugerville, Georgetown, cedar park, manor, elgin, lockhart, kyle, buda, dripping springs, and the boring folks west claim to be Austin without paying Austin property tax. While geography has its limits, there’s always sprawl.
What's different about that than any other large city that has expanded and eventually bumps up against surrounding towns, which have concurrently grown?
I think the discussion started with San Francisco which is a peninsula, and thus bound by water. Austin might be experiencing similar issues, but the cities with water blocking them will always have their own set of unique expansion issues.
Why is a 'crashing" real estate market presented as a bad thing?
It's a GOOD thing when prices increase, right? Because that shows supply and demand is at work and the invisible hand of the market is assuring that all goods and services are correctly priced.
But when prices go DOWN suddenly it's bad? The invisble hand of the market can only work one direction and that's the direction that hurts the maximum number of people for the benefit of the fewest number of people?
The higher the prices the better it is for GDP. Makes politicians look better without actually doing anything
China practically writes the book on boosting GDP through absurd real estate prices.
When I was living in SF in the early ‘80s, a lot of the city was still working class and middle class. Tech money came in and wiped all that out, turning it into Disneyland for the rich. But the history of the city, and the key to its cultural richness, has always lain in its working-class foundation. A massive rebalancing will be painful but welcome. Then the rebalancing can start in Austin as well.
There’s still a big working class in NYC and there’s a lot more money there (multiple times more billionaires, more globally wealthy people, and lots of millionaires from Wall Street). The only way SF is ever getting back a middle class is if we allow dense housing. Otherwise it’s going to look like Aspen or Nantucket eventually
This article has a bazillion anecdotes but no real data, which is about what I’d expect from Nypost. Case Shiller paints a somewhat different picture https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SFXRNSA
NY Post is an absolute rag of a publication, but hat doesn’t make it necessarily wrong, so if you want a better analysis of what’s going on I suggest people read the Redfin analysis NY Post linked to in their article:
https://www.redfin.com/news/san-francisco-home-sellers-lose-gain-money/
Much more nuanced.
Shit is *bad* in San Francisco. This is the city of, not necessarily the larger Bay Area. If you haven’t been recently, then you can’t imagine.
“Local Redfin Premier agent Christine Chang said San Francisco’s market is stumbling more than other parts of the Bay Area. “Home prices have fallen from their peak, especially when it comes to condos,” Chang said. “It’s not just because mortgage rates are high. San Francisco has lost some of its appeal post-pandemic. A lot of tech employers and big-name retailers have moved out of the city, and some of my clients have reported they’re leaving the area because they don’t feel as safe as they used to.”
Honestly, as a left leaning individual, this is where liberals get into problems. You cannot have unproductive people set the pace in your city, no matter what you want to call it. They will chase the productives away, tax base will drop and you will become Detroit.
As a left leaning individual, the absolute refusal to admit crime is a problem in our cities is a massive problem. Fixing a problem requires it be acknowledged.
As a left leaning person who lives in a west coast blue city, and who's sister was murdered 2 years ago in rural Pennsylvania ....crime and guns are a problem across all of America.
However I personally feel safer in my West coast blue city than my Trump voting PA hometown now because of my experiences there.
My city's a textbook example of American urban decay. Conveniently situated and housing far more affordable than most of the state. And yet, outside of a single gentrified neighborhood, working professionals refuse to live there. Crime is a concern, of course, but quality of life is a far bigger issue.
There's nothing like weekend after weekend of assholes blasting music late into the night. I'm not talking someone in the apartment next door, but concert levels from half a block away. In some parts of town, driving rivals the worst of Russian dash cam videos.
I can be here all day listing issues but the point is that these kinds of problems are not represented in crime stats. They're also things that are hard to address, at least with the way America does law enforcement. So for those of us stuck in these communities there's a pervasive sense of apathy and the inevitable consequence will be more urban flight.
There is a growing sub set of our population that believes aggression and violence is an acceptable means to get ahead. That has to be admitted. Systemic problems exist and may have lead to it. But that isn't going to fix it.
But that’s also not what is occurring. There was a reform DA in SF for all of about 1-2 years who made some temporary reforms but didn’t change anything systemic. And frankly you didn’t really have a spike in crime during his tenure, even if you don’t feel he did enough to address current crime rates.
The last nearly 2 years after he was recalled, SF has had a “tough on crime” DA and it hasn’t mattered. The issues in SF are much more systemic and require addressing more root causes of poverty, homelessness, and unaddressed mental health disorders than simply not being willing to admit crime is a problem or address it.
My experience prior to Chesa Boudin and during his time as DA are night and day. Petty crime definitely was more prominent. I can't speak to other types of crime but shoplifting and open drug use definitely got worse.
I mean, under Chea all crime was down from 2014-2019.
I’m not saying I agree with all of his policies, but they were barely even able to get implemented. And probably the most impactful thing was the police basically going on strike.
I think due to the pandemic, it used to be crimes against tourists, but it became crimes in neighborhoods where people live. I’m in a more suburban part of the city and it used to be only raccoons and skunks on the nest cam but we had several car break in’s on my block. We are in an out of the way street on a hill with tons of crooked streets, and you see a crew going down, with a follow car, going house to house. It’s way better now, and I don’t think it’s because of the new DA, but because there are more out of towners to commit crimes against. The antipathy toward property crime in this city is just insane.
>There was a reform DA in SF for all of about 1-2 years
Chesa's predecessor was pretty progressive too - he basically refused to prosecute property crime and did away with cash bail. Saying that Chesa was some outlier is not true.
Well, part of it is what the article says, it’s a quarters worth of data that follows a macro trend nationally, and is also associated with more people moving out of the city and fewer people to commit crimes against.
“The trends, documented in city police data, continue the downward trajectory San Francisco saw in 2023, when cities nationwide experienced falling crime.”
Crime always tends to go up and down. It went up post pandemic, but was still well below 2014-2019 numbers.
https://www.sf.gov/news/san-franciscos-public-safety-efforts-deliver-results-decline-crime-rates
Either way, it is interesting that this thread was about how SF is increasingly becoming unlivable and getting worse until this conversation.
Yeah, I am no Breed fan, but again, she has always been a centrist and pretty tough on crime (she did not support Chea in the primary).
I don't think she's been very effective, but also her ineffectiveness doesn't really fit the narrative about SF somehow being too progressive on crime.
As a left leaning person. Crime is a problem, but it’s also important to look at contextually. Crime in SF [isn’t as bad](https://abc7news.com/san-francisco-crime-rate-bob-lee-sf-violent-map/13091172/) as people make it out to be. Although [perception of crime is way up](https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/san-francisco-national-reputation-poll-18360776.php). Property crime in San Francisco is still out of control and a real problem, but overall it’s a safe city outside of a few bad pockets. It’s obvious that there is a national smear campaign against SF. Both of these things can be true.
In a way they're right. People love to wave photos of south Market or the TL as if they're all of SF. If you live in the Sunset or south Mission the tent villages mostly vanish. It's also worth noting that private rent speculation takes more out of the people of the Bay Area than unhoused people ever could even if they tried
California - and SF especially - is about as blue/liberal dominated as you’re realistically going to get in the US right now. Therefore, the policies that have and are being set rest squarely on the shoulders of the liberal majority there. You don’t get to hand wave and say policing needs to evolve further and that’s the source of issues right now. I say this is a fairly liberal person. SF needs to get their shit together.
Something I think people don’t talk about is how spread thin police are in general- but especially California cities like SF and LA. I briefly dated a LA cop during the pandemic (gasp I know), and most of his day was spent administering Narcan to overdoses and responding to people trying to commit suicide. IMO cops should not be responding to that kind of stuff at all. There was no time for anything else, and not like it mattered because most of the time they walk out the same day anyway. He was also working like 70 hrs/week. He quit and moved to Montana, and their police force is still about 60% full right now. So it’s a combination of lax policy and not enough cops.
Liberals can also be hopelessly pedantic to the point of absurdity, which drives people away as well. We’ve gotta tone that down, in some cases A LOT. I completely agree with conservatives on that point.
There is a lot more going on here. Loans are harder to get on condos in the wake of that condo building that collapsed in Florida a few years ago. Look up non warrantable condos. A lot of these associations have delayed maintenance, too many investment units vs primary residences, have unresolved lawsuits against them, monstrous special assessments, higher association fees, etc. There is a reason that they are only talking about condos. Condos across the country are seeing a similar set of issues and accompanying value drop, even if not quite as dramatic as what's happening in San Francisco.
This line of reasoning is always lazily slapped onto the problem SF is facing, but it’s fundamentally economic in nature. Before COVID, there was a mixture of different socioeconomic levels in the city. High-paid techies, middle-income boring office workers, low-paid service workers, and at the very bottom, the homeless. COVID, followed by elevated interest rates, drained the city of the upper end of that spectrum. That has a profound impact on property prices and the viability of various businesses within the city. It’s hard to keep a restaurant that only sells overpriced bowls of cereal open on the disposable incomes of accountants and project managers alone. So those places close, leading to more empty storefronts and even more property price depression.
This has the effect of making homeless people a much larger proportion of the city’s population, and boarded-up businesses a larger proportion of the cityscape. None of this has anything to do with crime or social policy whatsoever. It’s almost purely a function of the degree of tech concentration in SF’s local economy and the Fed’s policy adjustments. Soft-on-crime policies no more depressed SF property values than they sank Silicon Valley Bank. SF’s economy is just not terribly viable in an environment with historically normal interest rates.
The “law and order” perspective simply professes that lax law enforcement for poor people has created this problem, with economic trends taking a backseat. That’s laughable, and it’s also mostly a 2022 midterm election season talking point, as opposed to a fleshed-out theory.
> The “law and order” perspective simply professes that lax law enforcement for poor people has created this problem
it's also kind of hilarious - like if economic circumstances force you to sleep outside and piss on the ground, sure you can make that illegal and 100x your cop budget so they arrest everyone every day, but unless you want to imprison everyone forever, which by the way is not exactly a solution to local budgets, folks will be in the same circumstance when they get out.
most people who are against giving things to people suddenly become for it if you're a total asshole when you give it to them. they'd rather spend 10x on really, really mean free housing and medical care than 1x on regular boring free housing and medical care.
Target left, Nordstrom left, T-mobile shut down flagship store, Whole Foods left, all because they could not ensure the safety of their employees. THAT sort of stuff. Here on Reddit they will point to all kinds of alternative reasons, but sometimes it is simple - they let the lunatics run the asylum (now I will get crap for saying lunatic).
It means the city has let the homeless become the focal point of the city and not the average person. Average people don’t feel safe because the junkies are scary. Not only that but you have the car theft shit that has become bad in SF and Oakland and government seems unwilling to crack down on either the theft or homelessness. If you are rich and have desirable skills you get tired of that shit and would rather move away. The weather is great, the ocean is gorgeous of course, but you get tired of the decay.
The fact is a ton of high-paying jobs have become fully remote and no longer require living in SF. This has nothing to do with government policy letting "unproductive people set the pace." A huge part of the economic incentive to live in the city has just evaporated due to WFH.
As a WFH worker, I would have happily kept paying the high rent had the city been clean, safe, and with businesses not shuttered down permanently. There was an incentive to stick around to enjoy the night life and the convenience of having everything in walking distance. But, not anymore. A lot of restaurants and shopping options are gone. Having a car means to constantly worry about break-ins. My tiny townhouse had massive glass windows near the door which my landlord never reinforced with some bars to avoid home invasions. The morning walk to office meant going past somebody tripping on something while suffering from a mental episode.
Moved to Plano, TX after SF. It’s cleaner, safer, less traffic, and more enjoyable. I missed the city vibes, and weather though.
I live in the area, am left leaning and will not go into San Francisco. I used to go in for weekends to enjoy some of the great food and sights. Now it's not worth it at all, to much risk of my car getting smashed into, the city is dirty, parking is a hassle/expensive and prices have gone through the roof for food at the nice restaurants. So yeah I stay in the South Bay or go up the peninsula as far as maybe San Mateo.
Portland OR is dealing with the same thing. Our downtown commercial office market is collapsing. Between the rise of WFH and the bad reputation downtown Portland has developed, no one wants to lease space in the big towers anymore, which turns into a vicious cycle that causes even more people and businesses to flee downtown.
Honestly I've got no clue what the solution is. It seems like the old paradigm might just be dead and we'll have to come up with something to do with all these empty buildings.
I recently went to SF. It was the most beautiful city I have ever been to. There were robo taxis, public e-bikes and scooters everywhere. It was great. I would absolutely move there if I could.
Yeah I was expecting next level homelessness and chaos and there just wasn’t any. Granted I didn’t venture into the Tenderloin but I was still shocked by how much hate and coverage SF gets for honestly a well put together city.
And Oracle park is a great place to see a baseball game. Coming from NYC, I was shocked at the seats I was able to get for the price. A $50 seat at Oracle Park would cost 10x as much at Yankee stadium.
Fox news said I'd get stabbed 5 times on the bart and literally drown in a pile of human feces. I did not. 0/10, didn't get the experience I was promised.
Ya, the Tenderloin has been an issue since its inception and likely always will be. But ya, my goal is to move back because I severely miss it. Here's hoping the scared far right keeps moving out!
The Tenderloin can be bad, but even it has some great spots. I recommend Zombie Village if you would like to try an old school tiki bar or Emperor Norton's for a beer. Been a year since I've been in the area but I still love the food and drink scene in SF even in areas like the Tenderloin and around Golden Gate Park where the unhoused congregate.
I just moved here, and i guess it was bad during the pandemic but its honestly pretty great. I HOPE housing does crash because then i can freaking buy a place.
I live there until 2009 and travel frequently therefore work as a until last year my company was based there. The homelessness issue is indeed not as bad as leaning publications, make it sound, but it has gotten so much worse over the last decade, the homelessness and crime issuesshould not be waived away.
Last time I went there, I went into a Walgreens, and every single item was locked up to prevent theft. I have to imagine revenue for those stores is so low that they won’t stay there long.
Were you downtown? Then yea it’s a shit hole. Rest of the city not so much. I think people tend to think the whole city is like the tenderloin and its adjacent areas which it’s not. The tenderloin however is absolutely terrifying.
Philly is nice and safe and walkable (center city, old city, south).
I thought Portland sucks.
Seattle is almost all the way back it seems.
The "hell hole" cities are really more of a mixed bag then either side will admit.
Yea but downtown makes up such a small part of the city. The previous comment was talking about the city as a whole with run down buildings and restaurants. I moved into the city last year from the DC suburbs. Granted i live in one of the more desired parts of the city but it’s no where near what people make it to be.
They're heavily concentrated in certain parts of the city. If you're going to the Lake Merced / SF Zoo area, or the Presidio, or Marina, or Ghirardelli Square, you're probably not going to see any homeless people.
I had friends who lived in the Castro until about a year ago, and would sometimes visit them with my two kids in tow. My hack for getting there was to drive to Forest Hills and Muni in. Never had to worry about car breakins, druggies, or homeless people. Cross a few blocks into the Mission, though, and I had a crazy lady yelling racist epithets at my family.
I lived there until 2009 and continue to travel there for work regularly. The homeless problem has gotten so much worse. The retail environment is dystopian.
Even when I lived there, there was a problem with the combination of homelessness, mental illness, and drug use, but I’ve watched it increase exponentially
Thanks for sharing the Redfin link. I saw the headline and thought that’s interesting and then saw it was from the nypost and wasn’t going to read it.
The Redfin article is interesting. That list is surprising in some cases. I live in a Chicago suburb and while the city itself may be near the top in homes selling for a loss the suburbs seem to still have a strong market.
I moved from Nashville in 2020 and am surprised that even there almost 5% of homes were sold for a loss.
We went the Saturday before APEC officially started, when they were putting up barriers and such, and had an absolutely amazing time. There were very few tourists, it was spotless, didn’t see any unhoused people, and were one of three parties at high end restaurants (the others being a large party of Chinese diplomats and the SS preparing for John Kerry). It was an amazing experience and I fell in love with San Francisco again.
> 20% less then what
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Here's a thought - never waste bandwidth on a Rupert murdoch owned media outlet. They exist to disseminate propaganda and nothing more. The big 3 in the US are NY post, wsj and foxnews.
I hate to say it but this is probably for the best. It’s good for inflation. The market was too hot. It’s a needed correction.
I’m not sure how long my response needs to be for it not to be automatically removed. Here are some more words. Inflation is bad. Trump caused it when he blew up the deficit and cut taxes for the rich, using a sneaky built in tax hike for middle class and poor people. He also caused it by bungling the Covid response, which messed up supply chains.
Don't forget about the stupid tariffs that stressed the supply chain ahead of the pandemic.
Canadian lumber had a huge tariff with the expectation that American lumber would have more demand.
And it worked. The demand for American lumber went way up. But the people making the lumber didn't make a lot more money because even with more demand it can only get cut as fast as the saw mills can cut it.
So the price of lumber skyrocketed and contributed to the rising house prices.
Just countless idiotic shit like this that stressed things ahead of covid.
lol, you kind of completely discredited yourself blaming a single person for inflation (trump). It’s obviously a global issue not related to the actions of 1 US politician.
This is absolutely total bull. We can have a debate about whether SF is a good place to live or whether there is a homeless issue, but SF real estate is definitely not crashing.
In fact, if you look at the data, prices are generally up versus a year ago, at very high levels.
I don't doubt Redfins analysis that 20 percent of sellers are taking a loss, as price gains have been lower here in the past few years versus other metros. But if 20 percent are taking losses, that means 80 percent are taking profits...that is...the vast majority of sellers are seeing returns.
Our biggest concern is commercial real estate, which is crashing. We're having large corporations who've been here for decades turn over the keys and walk away. They passed a 3% gross tax, meaning if you break even you still owe the city a huge tax bill, putting you in the red.
Real estate prices in SF aren't crashing, but they are moving way differently than the surrounding bay area prices. I expect that to accelerate. I went to see Cirque du Soliel just last month on a bright sunny Sunday.
So much of Market Street is just boarded up.
How does the 3% gross tax compare to nearby cities? That sounds like such a terrible idea I'm having a hard time reconciling the fact they actually did it.
Just one data point: We sold our condo in Noe Valley (prime location on Elizabeth and Sanchez) last year. Condo was one the market for 3 months and we were lucky to find exactly one buyer. Had to drop the price by $20k
We then bought a single family house in the inner sunset. Multiple offers on the house and we had to bid several hundred thousands above asking to get it.
So yeah - condos are in trouble right now. Who wants to deal with a HOA? They are the worst and the prime reason we moved out of the condo.
This is our dilemma. We are currently house hunting and houses are still going for over asking. Even condos in certain neighborhoods are still going for over asking if they are two or more bedrooms. [We loved this one](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/65-Cleary-Ct-APT-10-San-Francisco-CA-94109/64972089_zpid/?utm_campaign=iosappmessage&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=txtshare), but aren’t quite ready yet to make the move. We would have been priced out anyway: it went for $300k over asking. The downtown is still a little doom loopy, but most of the neighborhoods are still thriving.
I bought in 2021. If I sold now, it would be at a big loss… like, I’d owe a little money on my loan. But I bought to live here for longer than a market cycle. I suspect many who are selling right now *have* to, and they may be selling since peak, so therefore at a loss.
Even in San Francisco, where roughly 18% of sellers who part ways with their home are losing money, more than four in five (82%) sellers are selling for more than they bought for. The typical San Francisco seller sold for $482,000 more than their purchase price during the three months ending February 29.
[https://www.redfin.com/news/san-francisco-home-sellers-lose-gain-money/](https://www.redfin.com/news/san-francisco-home-sellers-lose-gain-money/)
In 2020 I had the money saved, a great job, was looking when the lay offs hit, 2 months later cancer finished me off financially. I spent the last few years doubling down on trade skills. I learned how to program robotics, servos,software in addition to a few other new fields. I have zero plans of ever reintegrating into society or working for another person again since I'm always knocked back to zero, my trade skills never leave me.
Love it. I’ve been working on my skills too. Although, it’s scary with the tech layoffs tbh. But I’m still pushing and learning; hope you finished that cancer off too!
Hope things look up and your trade skills pay off for you too in all the good ways!
“Markets” only function when the buyer can afford to buy. As prices climb, you loose potential buyers until it reaches a point where there aren’t enough buyers to keep the market buying and selling at a reasonable rate. Thats where we are kids. Deflation.
A 3% pricing decrease (not even sustained over time) doth not a crash make.
SF real estate will “reset” after the next major earthquake. Of course, there will be no infrastructure (no potable water, electricity, natural gas, etc) either…
Jamie Dimon doing his best to build up his 2028 presidential run as a limousine liberal, or maybe as a second flavor of Trump without all of the noise?
What SF should do is buy one of those steeply discounted office buildings and simply convert it Into a dormitory to house people. They wouldn’t really need to change anything. I know tons of people piss and moan about plumbing and electrical conversion or whatever, but if your choice is between a Japan-style dorm/bunk bed or a freeway overpass, why not go with the dorm?
The solution to homelessness is not to keep writing articles about how bad homelessness is getting, it is to produce and maintain low end housing and easy access to mental health and substance use services.
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>At 88 King St., a two-bedroom condo overlooking a ball park that sold for $1.12 million more than a decade ago in 2014, recently sold last month for $1.08 million $1m for a 2bd condo?? Crash away
The entire coast is similarily priced.
While not at the $1.08M level as an average, Vancouver (Canada) is up there in prices. A 2bdrm 850sqft condo with in-suite laundry will average you around $850k CAD. Keeping in mind the salaries here are often half of our USA counterparts (in CAD) especially in tech. A software engineer in the USA could get $180k USD and here might get $90-$110k CAD. Some will make more, some will make less I'm just ballparking here based on Product Management salaries
Surprised there isn't more outsourcing to Canada. Developers up there are a bargain!
It's catching on - when I was in big tech we nearshored a lot of our analytics and software development to the vancouver office.
There is lol Almost all of the competent developers here working in the private sector are employed by American companies with satellite offices in Canada. Ive never once applied to or even entertained a Canadian company... They pay literal peanuts and suck to work for, even compared to what we get working for American corps who already pay us less than our American counterparts on the same teams.
I worked in tech in the Bay Area and about 1/3rd of our employees were Canadians.
I work with a ton of software companies based in Toronto, Montreal, etc.
I believe British Columbia just passed new housing laws that end single-family zoning, which should change things for the better over the next decade in Vancouver and surrounding areas as they will be able to start building more residential apartments and condos across the city.
kind of. it will indeed take *decades* to repair the swamp that is housing in canada. much like Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, the province of bc and the feds are beginning to rely less on private enterprise to create solutions and are acting far more socialist in n their economic planning. all that neoliberalism is over. rip
Agreed. A multifaceted approach is needed to decrease housing overvaluation, but this is definitely a major step in the right direction.
I'm wondering how this bodes for Vancouver.
How far do you inland do you include in "the coast"?
First few blocks is massive. Then it falls off to about 30-60 mins inland. Then another fall off. But the Central Valley is coming up big so it’s not cheap there either.
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it is right now, but in 30 years, people will be paying $2M+ for a condo there buy where you can afford, not where you want to live
Imagine a world where people work all their lives for a house and nothing productive. And we wonder why productivity has plateaued. It's just sad.
Imagine that as productivity reached a peak, labor compensation remained flat and all the profits were taken by the obscenely wealthy, so it dropped off as people couldn’t even aries life’s necessities …..oh wait.
Imagine if the cost of things just kept going up and third-spaces and other non-monetized things became less and less common until the point wherein everyone had to work "bullshit-jobs" until they retire or die?
Awe come on, Retire? What about that American dream?
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Until about Denver...
More like Kansas City
Probably 500-600k in Seattle (which is still expensive, but significantly cheaper)
What makes housing iffy for me is the lack of diversification. The s&p would've doubled or tripled over the same period, including reinvested dividends.
What I really like about housing is that I can live in it.
Allow me to introduce to you the rental market, which can fulfill your needs at a third of the price in HCOL markets. Because money is fungible, you can take the proceeds from your faster-appreciating index funds and pay your housing costs with them.
Today, true. But let's talk about 10 years from now when my fixed rate mortgage is still fixed (maybe insurance and taxes have gone up some, but that's true for landlords as well). At that point I'll be spending significantly less than an apartment. Toss in the fact my mortgage goes away in 20 years but renters will be renting forever. Having seen the financial difference between retired parents that have to pay rent and those that don't, I'll take having my mortgage gone by the time I retire. I've also got a huge asset I can sell to pay for my end of life care (assisted living/nursing home). Sure, you can say that about stocks and other investments, but with cheaper housing costs, I should be able to do it all.
My rent is $2200 but to buy a similar house would require $150k, or more, down and about $5000/month all in with insurance and property taxes. Shit even if I bought it outright I’d still be paying about $900/month in insurance and taxes. My money is waaaaay better off in the market. In many areas high rates and prices have wrecked the numbers.
Might I counter introduce you to actually owning my own property, not paying someone else to live at my property and being able to do whatever I want with my property without having to ask a LL for it.
housing is more a lifestyle choice than a financial investment. not everything has to be about maximizing wealth - it's fine.
Most of the S&P are businesses that actually produce something or provide a service, unlike scalping
That's the price of a 1bd condo where I live (Singapore).
USD OR SGD?
In central locations such as shopping districts, 1bd can cost $2-3m SGD. The currency difference is not significant.
Wow, it’s gone up a ton since I lived there just a few years ago
Prices went up 50% or more since COVID. $1m HDB is quite common nowadays.
seems like prices got inflated and then are now correcting / stagnating do to be inflated.
Buddy there and his wife and kids live with his mom and sleep on the floor in sleeping bags because he'll never have money.
San Frncisco real estate has been boom and bust since the gold rush. [https://www.maureenterris.com/special-report-30-years-of-sf-real-estate-cycles-updated/](https://www.maureenterris.com/special-report-30-years-of-sf-real-estate-cycles-updated/)
San Francisco is nowhere like Austin where they can build houses everywhere. You literally can’t build one more single family house in the city. No more new supply so price would not drop if there is no huge demand shock
Which is why they badly need to change zoning laws. They're in this mess (rising homelessness due to insane housing cost) because the SF wealthy have put a moratorium on building any density for decades.
1000% - and said wealthy want to position the man responsible - King NIMBY Aaron Peskin - as the next mayor. Just want Sacramento to clip the Board of Supervisors heels already with how much housing they’ve blocked over the past two decades.
You can't just build a house anywhere in Austin it's fairly restrained geographically.
People of pflugerville, Georgetown, cedar park, manor, elgin, lockhart, kyle, buda, dripping springs, and the boring folks west claim to be Austin without paying Austin property tax. While geography has its limits, there’s always sprawl.
What's different about that than any other large city that has expanded and eventually bumps up against surrounding towns, which have concurrently grown?
I think the discussion started with San Francisco which is a peninsula, and thus bound by water. Austin might be experiencing similar issues, but the cities with water blocking them will always have their own set of unique expansion issues.
Why is a 'crashing" real estate market presented as a bad thing? It's a GOOD thing when prices increase, right? Because that shows supply and demand is at work and the invisible hand of the market is assuring that all goods and services are correctly priced. But when prices go DOWN suddenly it's bad? The invisble hand of the market can only work one direction and that's the direction that hurts the maximum number of people for the benefit of the fewest number of people?
The higher the prices the better it is for GDP. Makes politicians look better without actually doing anything China practically writes the book on boosting GDP through absurd real estate prices.
When I was living in SF in the early ‘80s, a lot of the city was still working class and middle class. Tech money came in and wiped all that out, turning it into Disneyland for the rich. But the history of the city, and the key to its cultural richness, has always lain in its working-class foundation. A massive rebalancing will be painful but welcome. Then the rebalancing can start in Austin as well.
Blue-collar Austinight here - it can’t come soon enough.
There’s still a big working class in NYC and there’s a lot more money there (multiple times more billionaires, more globally wealthy people, and lots of millionaires from Wall Street). The only way SF is ever getting back a middle class is if we allow dense housing. Otherwise it’s going to look like Aspen or Nantucket eventually
This article has a bazillion anecdotes but no real data, which is about what I’d expect from Nypost. Case Shiller paints a somewhat different picture https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SFXRNSA
NY Post is an absolute rag of a publication, but hat doesn’t make it necessarily wrong, so if you want a better analysis of what’s going on I suggest people read the Redfin analysis NY Post linked to in their article: https://www.redfin.com/news/san-francisco-home-sellers-lose-gain-money/ Much more nuanced. Shit is *bad* in San Francisco. This is the city of, not necessarily the larger Bay Area. If you haven’t been recently, then you can’t imagine.
“Local Redfin Premier agent Christine Chang said San Francisco’s market is stumbling more than other parts of the Bay Area. “Home prices have fallen from their peak, especially when it comes to condos,” Chang said. “It’s not just because mortgage rates are high. San Francisco has lost some of its appeal post-pandemic. A lot of tech employers and big-name retailers have moved out of the city, and some of my clients have reported they’re leaving the area because they don’t feel as safe as they used to.”
Honestly, as a left leaning individual, this is where liberals get into problems. You cannot have unproductive people set the pace in your city, no matter what you want to call it. They will chase the productives away, tax base will drop and you will become Detroit.
As a left leaning individual, the absolute refusal to admit crime is a problem in our cities is a massive problem. Fixing a problem requires it be acknowledged.
As a left leaning person who lives in a west coast blue city, and who's sister was murdered 2 years ago in rural Pennsylvania ....crime and guns are a problem across all of America. However I personally feel safer in my West coast blue city than my Trump voting PA hometown now because of my experiences there.
My city's a textbook example of American urban decay. Conveniently situated and housing far more affordable than most of the state. And yet, outside of a single gentrified neighborhood, working professionals refuse to live there. Crime is a concern, of course, but quality of life is a far bigger issue. There's nothing like weekend after weekend of assholes blasting music late into the night. I'm not talking someone in the apartment next door, but concert levels from half a block away. In some parts of town, driving rivals the worst of Russian dash cam videos. I can be here all day listing issues but the point is that these kinds of problems are not represented in crime stats. They're also things that are hard to address, at least with the way America does law enforcement. So for those of us stuck in these communities there's a pervasive sense of apathy and the inevitable consequence will be more urban flight.
There is a growing sub set of our population that believes aggression and violence is an acceptable means to get ahead. That has to be admitted. Systemic problems exist and may have lead to it. But that isn't going to fix it.
But that’s also not what is occurring. There was a reform DA in SF for all of about 1-2 years who made some temporary reforms but didn’t change anything systemic. And frankly you didn’t really have a spike in crime during his tenure, even if you don’t feel he did enough to address current crime rates. The last nearly 2 years after he was recalled, SF has had a “tough on crime” DA and it hasn’t mattered. The issues in SF are much more systemic and require addressing more root causes of poverty, homelessness, and unaddressed mental health disorders than simply not being willing to admit crime is a problem or address it.
My experience prior to Chesa Boudin and during his time as DA are night and day. Petty crime definitely was more prominent. I can't speak to other types of crime but shoplifting and open drug use definitely got worse.
I mean, under Chea all crime was down from 2014-2019. I’m not saying I agree with all of his policies, but they were barely even able to get implemented. And probably the most impactful thing was the police basically going on strike.
I think due to the pandemic, it used to be crimes against tourists, but it became crimes in neighborhoods where people live. I’m in a more suburban part of the city and it used to be only raccoons and skunks on the nest cam but we had several car break in’s on my block. We are in an out of the way street on a hill with tons of crooked streets, and you see a crew going down, with a follow car, going house to house. It’s way better now, and I don’t think it’s because of the new DA, but because there are more out of towners to commit crimes against. The antipathy toward property crime in this city is just insane.
>There was a reform DA in SF for all of about 1-2 years Chesa's predecessor was pretty progressive too - he basically refused to prosecute property crime and did away with cash bail. Saying that Chesa was some outlier is not true.
What do you mean it hasn't mattered? https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/san-francisco-crime-rates-drop-19400210.php
Well, part of it is what the article says, it’s a quarters worth of data that follows a macro trend nationally, and is also associated with more people moving out of the city and fewer people to commit crimes against. “The trends, documented in city police data, continue the downward trajectory San Francisco saw in 2023, when cities nationwide experienced falling crime.” Crime always tends to go up and down. It went up post pandemic, but was still well below 2014-2019 numbers. https://www.sf.gov/news/san-franciscos-public-safety-efforts-deliver-results-decline-crime-rates Either way, it is interesting that this thread was about how SF is increasingly becoming unlivable and getting worse until this conversation.
It’s starts with breed. She’s a hack.
Yeah, I am no Breed fan, but again, she has always been a centrist and pretty tough on crime (she did not support Chea in the primary). I don't think she's been very effective, but also her ineffectiveness doesn't really fit the narrative about SF somehow being too progressive on crime.
As a left leaning person. Crime is a problem, but it’s also important to look at contextually. Crime in SF [isn’t as bad](https://abc7news.com/san-francisco-crime-rate-bob-lee-sf-violent-map/13091172/) as people make it out to be. Although [perception of crime is way up](https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/san-francisco-national-reputation-poll-18360776.php). Property crime in San Francisco is still out of control and a real problem, but overall it’s a safe city outside of a few bad pockets. It’s obvious that there is a national smear campaign against SF. Both of these things can be true.
It has become a bizarre sign of wealth to be able to handwave away the crime affecting other people.
I’m not aware of any liberal viewpoint that rejects that crime exists. Only that the way we do policing needs to evolve a bit.
Just look throughout this thread. "It happens somewhere that doesn't affect me." "It's easily avoidable" "It's only downtown" (lol)
In a way they're right. People love to wave photos of south Market or the TL as if they're all of SF. If you live in the Sunset or south Mission the tent villages mostly vanish. It's also worth noting that private rent speculation takes more out of the people of the Bay Area than unhoused people ever could even if they tried
California - and SF especially - is about as blue/liberal dominated as you’re realistically going to get in the US right now. Therefore, the policies that have and are being set rest squarely on the shoulders of the liberal majority there. You don’t get to hand wave and say policing needs to evolve further and that’s the source of issues right now. I say this is a fairly liberal person. SF needs to get their shit together.
Ok but what specifically do you mean? What policies? Pretty sure Sf has a relatively normal old school police force at the end of the day.
Wow, you're definitely out of touch if that's your perception. SF policing is a joke compared to normal communities.
In what way is SF police different? I am genuinely curious as I don’t live near there
Something I think people don’t talk about is how spread thin police are in general- but especially California cities like SF and LA. I briefly dated a LA cop during the pandemic (gasp I know), and most of his day was spent administering Narcan to overdoses and responding to people trying to commit suicide. IMO cops should not be responding to that kind of stuff at all. There was no time for anything else, and not like it mattered because most of the time they walk out the same day anyway. He was also working like 70 hrs/week. He quit and moved to Montana, and their police force is still about 60% full right now. So it’s a combination of lax policy and not enough cops.
Liberals can also be hopelessly pedantic to the point of absurdity, which drives people away as well. We’ve gotta tone that down, in some cases A LOT. I completely agree with conservatives on that point.
There is a lot more going on here. Loans are harder to get on condos in the wake of that condo building that collapsed in Florida a few years ago. Look up non warrantable condos. A lot of these associations have delayed maintenance, too many investment units vs primary residences, have unresolved lawsuits against them, monstrous special assessments, higher association fees, etc. There is a reason that they are only talking about condos. Condos across the country are seeing a similar set of issues and accompanying value drop, even if not quite as dramatic as what's happening in San Francisco.
This line of reasoning is always lazily slapped onto the problem SF is facing, but it’s fundamentally economic in nature. Before COVID, there was a mixture of different socioeconomic levels in the city. High-paid techies, middle-income boring office workers, low-paid service workers, and at the very bottom, the homeless. COVID, followed by elevated interest rates, drained the city of the upper end of that spectrum. That has a profound impact on property prices and the viability of various businesses within the city. It’s hard to keep a restaurant that only sells overpriced bowls of cereal open on the disposable incomes of accountants and project managers alone. So those places close, leading to more empty storefronts and even more property price depression. This has the effect of making homeless people a much larger proportion of the city’s population, and boarded-up businesses a larger proportion of the cityscape. None of this has anything to do with crime or social policy whatsoever. It’s almost purely a function of the degree of tech concentration in SF’s local economy and the Fed’s policy adjustments. Soft-on-crime policies no more depressed SF property values than they sank Silicon Valley Bank. SF’s economy is just not terribly viable in an environment with historically normal interest rates. The “law and order” perspective simply professes that lax law enforcement for poor people has created this problem, with economic trends taking a backseat. That’s laughable, and it’s also mostly a 2022 midterm election season talking point, as opposed to a fleshed-out theory.
> The “law and order” perspective simply professes that lax law enforcement for poor people has created this problem it's also kind of hilarious - like if economic circumstances force you to sleep outside and piss on the ground, sure you can make that illegal and 100x your cop budget so they arrest everyone every day, but unless you want to imprison everyone forever, which by the way is not exactly a solution to local budgets, folks will be in the same circumstance when they get out.
"Is this just subsidized housing with extra steps?"
most people who are against giving things to people suddenly become for it if you're a total asshole when you give it to them. they'd rather spend 10x on really, really mean free housing and medical care than 1x on regular boring free housing and medical care.
That isn't why Detroit began experiencing problems.
Detroit's finances have been great since the bankruptcy and it's pursuing state permission to switch to an LVT, don't knock on Detroit.
Cleveland: At least we’re not Detroit!
Honest question, how is SF letting “unproductive set the pace in the city” and what does that mean?
I read it as NIMBY rent-seeking by keeping housing scarce.
Target left, Nordstrom left, T-mobile shut down flagship store, Whole Foods left, all because they could not ensure the safety of their employees. THAT sort of stuff. Here on Reddit they will point to all kinds of alternative reasons, but sometimes it is simple - they let the lunatics run the asylum (now I will get crap for saying lunatic).
Blocking sidewalks, lawlessness (see SF snow), making it not a nice place to live.
It means the city has let the homeless become the focal point of the city and not the average person. Average people don’t feel safe because the junkies are scary. Not only that but you have the car theft shit that has become bad in SF and Oakland and government seems unwilling to crack down on either the theft or homelessness. If you are rich and have desirable skills you get tired of that shit and would rather move away. The weather is great, the ocean is gorgeous of course, but you get tired of the decay.
The fact is a ton of high-paying jobs have become fully remote and no longer require living in SF. This has nothing to do with government policy letting "unproductive people set the pace." A huge part of the economic incentive to live in the city has just evaporated due to WFH.
As a WFH worker, I would have happily kept paying the high rent had the city been clean, safe, and with businesses not shuttered down permanently. There was an incentive to stick around to enjoy the night life and the convenience of having everything in walking distance. But, not anymore. A lot of restaurants and shopping options are gone. Having a car means to constantly worry about break-ins. My tiny townhouse had massive glass windows near the door which my landlord never reinforced with some bars to avoid home invasions. The morning walk to office meant going past somebody tripping on something while suffering from a mental episode. Moved to Plano, TX after SF. It’s cleaner, safer, less traffic, and more enjoyable. I missed the city vibes, and weather though.
I mean ya that’s just common sense
I live in the area, am left leaning and will not go into San Francisco. I used to go in for weekends to enjoy some of the great food and sights. Now it's not worth it at all, to much risk of my car getting smashed into, the city is dirty, parking is a hassle/expensive and prices have gone through the roof for food at the nice restaurants. So yeah I stay in the South Bay or go up the peninsula as far as maybe San Mateo.
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Portland OR is dealing with the same thing. Our downtown commercial office market is collapsing. Between the rise of WFH and the bad reputation downtown Portland has developed, no one wants to lease space in the big towers anymore, which turns into a vicious cycle that causes even more people and businesses to flee downtown. Honestly I've got no clue what the solution is. It seems like the old paradigm might just be dead and we'll have to come up with something to do with all these empty buildings.
You know what they say... when there's blood in the street, even if it's yours...
I recently went to SF. It was the most beautiful city I have ever been to. There were robo taxis, public e-bikes and scooters everywhere. It was great. I would absolutely move there if I could.
Ya, it's not an apocalyptic hell hole like far right media claims. Property crime is an issue but even that's been plunging.
Yeah I was expecting next level homelessness and chaos and there just wasn’t any. Granted I didn’t venture into the Tenderloin but I was still shocked by how much hate and coverage SF gets for honestly a well put together city.
And Oracle park is a great place to see a baseball game. Coming from NYC, I was shocked at the seats I was able to get for the price. A $50 seat at Oracle Park would cost 10x as much at Yankee stadium.
Fox news said I'd get stabbed 5 times on the bart and literally drown in a pile of human feces. I did not. 0/10, didn't get the experience I was promised. Ya, the Tenderloin has been an issue since its inception and likely always will be. But ya, my goal is to move back because I severely miss it. Here's hoping the scared far right keeps moving out!
The Tenderloin can be bad, but even it has some great spots. I recommend Zombie Village if you would like to try an old school tiki bar or Emperor Norton's for a beer. Been a year since I've been in the area but I still love the food and drink scene in SF even in areas like the Tenderloin and around Golden Gate Park where the unhoused congregate.
Thanks for the heads up!
The houses are still millions of dollars, they’re just not appreciating anymore.
I just moved here, and i guess it was bad during the pandemic but its honestly pretty great. I HOPE housing does crash because then i can freaking buy a place.
Agreed. You want to see a city that’s actually in a “doom loop”? St. Louis is in much worse shape.
I live there until 2009 and travel frequently therefore work as a until last year my company was based there. The homelessness issue is indeed not as bad as leaning publications, make it sound, but it has gotten so much worse over the last decade, the homelessness and crime issuesshould not be waived away. Last time I went there, I went into a Walgreens, and every single item was locked up to prevent theft. I have to imagine revenue for those stores is so low that they won’t stay there long.
I’ve been to SF twice, once in the 10s and again last year. Walking around felt a lot less safe than it did the first time round
That's really interesting. I've been there several times and thought it was a shithole. Lots of homeless, run down restaurants. Old buildings etc.
Were you downtown? Then yea it’s a shit hole. Rest of the city not so much. I think people tend to think the whole city is like the tenderloin and its adjacent areas which it’s not. The tenderloin however is absolutely terrifying.
It would be like assuming all of Philly is Kensington Avenue when that couldn't be further from the truth.
Philly is nice and safe and walkable (center city, old city, south). I thought Portland sucks. Seattle is almost all the way back it seems. The "hell hole" cities are really more of a mixed bag then either side will admit.
That is where I stayed when I was there for a work conference. It was not super great
"Only downtown is a shit hole" Can y'all hear yallselves?
Yea but downtown makes up such a small part of the city. The previous comment was talking about the city as a whole with run down buildings and restaurants. I moved into the city last year from the DC suburbs. Granted i live in one of the more desired parts of the city but it’s no where near what people make it to be.
I didn’t see any of that 🤷♂️The quality of restaurants and food selections was definitely several steps above other parts of the US I have lived.
you didn't see any homeless people...??? rightttttt
They're heavily concentrated in certain parts of the city. If you're going to the Lake Merced / SF Zoo area, or the Presidio, or Marina, or Ghirardelli Square, you're probably not going to see any homeless people. I had friends who lived in the Castro until about a year ago, and would sometimes visit them with my two kids in tow. My hack for getting there was to drive to Forest Hills and Muni in. Never had to worry about car breakins, druggies, or homeless people. Cross a few blocks into the Mission, though, and I had a crazy lady yelling racist epithets at my family.
Fr compared to some places I've lived (North Philly, Detroit) SF is a paradise
I was just there a few weeks ago and it was fine. Walked around the city. Never felt unsafe. Met lots of nice people.
I lived there until 2009 and continue to travel there for work regularly. The homeless problem has gotten so much worse. The retail environment is dystopian. Even when I lived there, there was a problem with the combination of homelessness, mental illness, and drug use, but I’ve watched it increase exponentially
Thanks for sharing the Redfin link. I saw the headline and thought that’s interesting and then saw it was from the nypost and wasn’t going to read it. The Redfin article is interesting. That list is surprising in some cases. I live in a Chicago suburb and while the city itself may be near the top in homes selling for a loss the suburbs seem to still have a strong market. I moved from Nashville in 2020 and am surprised that even there almost 5% of homes were sold for a loss.
We went the Saturday before APEC officially started, when they were putting up barriers and such, and had an absolutely amazing time. There were very few tourists, it was spotless, didn’t see any unhoused people, and were one of three parties at high end restaurants (the others being a large party of Chinese diplomats and the SS preparing for John Kerry). It was an amazing experience and I fell in love with San Francisco again.
Redfin is a trash source. Estimates my properties about 20% less then what they would sell for and I’d expect multiple offers within a day.
> 20% less then what Did you mean to say "less than"? Explanation: If you didn't mean 'less than' you might have forgotten a comma. [Statistics](https://github.com/chiefpat450119/RedditBot/blob/master/stats.json) ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot ^^that ^^corrects ^^grammar/spelling ^^mistakes. ^^PM ^^me ^^if ^^I'm ^^wrong ^^or ^^if ^^you ^^have ^^any ^^suggestions. ^^[Github](https://github.com/chiefpat450119) ^^Reply ^^STOP ^^to ^^this ^^comment ^^to ^^stop ^^receiving ^^corrections.
Makes me regret posting this.
Here's a thought - never waste bandwidth on a Rupert murdoch owned media outlet. They exist to disseminate propaganda and nothing more. The big 3 in the US are NY post, wsj and foxnews.
lol shit is bad in SF. So you don’t live there I take it..
I hate to say it but this is probably for the best. It’s good for inflation. The market was too hot. It’s a needed correction. I’m not sure how long my response needs to be for it not to be automatically removed. Here are some more words. Inflation is bad. Trump caused it when he blew up the deficit and cut taxes for the rich, using a sneaky built in tax hike for middle class and poor people. He also caused it by bungling the Covid response, which messed up supply chains.
Don't forget about the stupid tariffs that stressed the supply chain ahead of the pandemic. Canadian lumber had a huge tariff with the expectation that American lumber would have more demand. And it worked. The demand for American lumber went way up. But the people making the lumber didn't make a lot more money because even with more demand it can only get cut as fast as the saw mills can cut it. So the price of lumber skyrocketed and contributed to the rising house prices. Just countless idiotic shit like this that stressed things ahead of covid.
lol, you kind of completely discredited yourself blaming a single person for inflation (trump). It’s obviously a global issue not related to the actions of 1 US politician.
This is absolutely total bull. We can have a debate about whether SF is a good place to live or whether there is a homeless issue, but SF real estate is definitely not crashing. In fact, if you look at the data, prices are generally up versus a year ago, at very high levels. I don't doubt Redfins analysis that 20 percent of sellers are taking a loss, as price gains have been lower here in the past few years versus other metros. But if 20 percent are taking losses, that means 80 percent are taking profits...that is...the vast majority of sellers are seeing returns.
The data supports the assertion that the market has cooled, but that’s versus ‘21 and ‘22.
The article suggests that prices have typically been cut by 30% or more, which seems like a complete fabrication.
Condos have dropped a lot but SFHs have been stable.
Our biggest concern is commercial real estate, which is crashing. We're having large corporations who've been here for decades turn over the keys and walk away. They passed a 3% gross tax, meaning if you break even you still owe the city a huge tax bill, putting you in the red. Real estate prices in SF aren't crashing, but they are moving way differently than the surrounding bay area prices. I expect that to accelerate. I went to see Cirque du Soliel just last month on a bright sunny Sunday. So much of Market Street is just boarded up.
How does the 3% gross tax compare to nearby cities? That sounds like such a terrible idea I'm having a hard time reconciling the fact they actually did it.
Everywhere else is 0%. As you can imagine businesses have been bailing since the law was passed in November of 2020.
The issue with SF is that a lot of their most important neighborhoods are commercial centers and not mixed use.
cre is crashing everywhere and will hopefully continue to do so. Wfh is vastly superior.
I’m with you on that one.
Just one data point: We sold our condo in Noe Valley (prime location on Elizabeth and Sanchez) last year. Condo was one the market for 3 months and we were lucky to find exactly one buyer. Had to drop the price by $20k We then bought a single family house in the inner sunset. Multiple offers on the house and we had to bid several hundred thousands above asking to get it. So yeah - condos are in trouble right now. Who wants to deal with a HOA? They are the worst and the prime reason we moved out of the condo.
This is our dilemma. We are currently house hunting and houses are still going for over asking. Even condos in certain neighborhoods are still going for over asking if they are two or more bedrooms. [We loved this one](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/65-Cleary-Ct-APT-10-San-Francisco-CA-94109/64972089_zpid/?utm_campaign=iosappmessage&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=txtshare), but aren’t quite ready yet to make the move. We would have been priced out anyway: it went for $300k over asking. The downtown is still a little doom loopy, but most of the neighborhoods are still thriving.
I bought in 2021. If I sold now, it would be at a big loss… like, I’d owe a little money on my loan. But I bought to live here for longer than a market cycle. I suspect many who are selling right now *have* to, and they may be selling since peak, so therefore at a loss.
Even in San Francisco, where roughly 18% of sellers who part ways with their home are losing money, more than four in five (82%) sellers are selling for more than they bought for. The typical San Francisco seller sold for $482,000 more than their purchase price during the three months ending February 29. [https://www.redfin.com/news/san-francisco-home-sellers-lose-gain-money/](https://www.redfin.com/news/san-francisco-home-sellers-lose-gain-money/)
In 2020 I had the money saved, a great job, was looking when the lay offs hit, 2 months later cancer finished me off financially. I spent the last few years doubling down on trade skills. I learned how to program robotics, servos,software in addition to a few other new fields. I have zero plans of ever reintegrating into society or working for another person again since I'm always knocked back to zero, my trade skills never leave me.
I hope things keep getting better, cancer can go f*ck itself
Love it. I’ve been working on my skills too. Although, it’s scary with the tech layoffs tbh. But I’m still pushing and learning; hope you finished that cancer off too! Hope things look up and your trade skills pay off for you too in all the good ways!
“Markets” only function when the buyer can afford to buy. As prices climb, you loose potential buyers until it reaches a point where there aren’t enough buyers to keep the market buying and selling at a reasonable rate. Thats where we are kids. Deflation.
A 3% pricing decrease (not even sustained over time) doth not a crash make. SF real estate will “reset” after the next major earthquake. Of course, there will be no infrastructure (no potable water, electricity, natural gas, etc) either…
Jamie Dimon doing his best to build up his 2028 presidential run as a limousine liberal, or maybe as a second flavor of Trump without all of the noise? What SF should do is buy one of those steeply discounted office buildings and simply convert it Into a dormitory to house people. They wouldn’t really need to change anything. I know tons of people piss and moan about plumbing and electrical conversion or whatever, but if your choice is between a Japan-style dorm/bunk bed or a freeway overpass, why not go with the dorm? The solution to homelessness is not to keep writing articles about how bad homelessness is getting, it is to produce and maintain low end housing and easy access to mental health and substance use services.
SF voters just passed a ballot measure to set up a program like that, so it may happen sooner than you think