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San Francisco's Rent Hits a New Peak of $3,690, Highest in the US (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: The median rent for a one bedroom apartment in San Francisco has reached a new peak of $3,690, according to survey data from Zumper, a home and apartment rental app. That's also a rise of nearly 9 percent from the same time last year, the survey found. Not only are those figures high enough to make your bank account cringe, but they're also nearly 30 percent higher than New York City and more than double the prices in Miami. Seattle, home to Amazon and Microsoft, rang in at $1,970 and Washington, DC, hit $2,150.
Oh, and by the way, while San Francisco's prices rose, the median price of one bedroom apartments across the US dropped nearly half a percent during this same time. That means while San Francisco's prices climbed, the country's prices fell. "Though there may be a ton of cash flowing through the city and surrounding areas soon, many of these workers will not immediately invest in a home and may, instead, take their money to both travel and upgrade their rental situation," Zumper wrote in a blog post Thursday.
Oh, and by the way, while San Francisco's prices rose, the median price of one bedroom apartments across the US dropped nearly half a percent during this same time. That means while San Francisco's prices climbed, the country's prices fell. "Though there may be a ton of cash flowing through the city and surrounding areas soon, many of these workers will not immediately invest in a home and may, instead, take their money to both travel and upgrade their rental situation," Zumper wrote in a blog post Thursday.
This is not a case of free market failure. This is a case of local government putting restrictions on building affordable housing. You got the NIMBY part correct, though.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
If your tech company cannot support remote work in the year 2019, then you're working for the wrong damn tech company.
There's only one way you're going to get prices to revert to semi-reasonable levels in the Bay area; stop feeding that fucking stupidity.
I suspect a bubble or two will pop and rents will be almost normal again. For example, the revenue received by AI companies does not justify the investment money pouring into them compared to other industry returns. Either they will start spewing forth great products soon, or investors will get a clue and pop the bubble. We are overdue for a general market and economy correction anyhow, AI aside.
Table-ized A.I.
If you live in California and pay rent you know what I mean. If I seriously have to consider downgrading my standard of living and look for a sublet somewhere and live out of a single room in someone else's house, then things have gone horribly wrong around here.
and thus people are being forced to live in an increasingly dire situation
No one is forcing tech employees to come to SF and compete with each other to push rents into the stratosphere. I'm not denying the role of SF government in the supply/demand disconnect, but rents would not be where they are if people simply refused to pay that much.
I love this little nugget from the article:
>>Add in the fact that there isn't enough housing to go around, and prices have naturally skyrocketed. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development said last year that a family of four earning up to $117,400 qualified as "low income" in the city.
You got to be kidding me!! That town needs to slide into the ocean. That is nuts! SMH
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
Remember the guy who ran for NYC mayor on the sole platform of "The rent is too damn high!" Perhaps he should move San Francisco?
There is a difference. While the former can be just an indication of a healthy economy, the latter can be an indication of an imminent housing crisis.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
... the true scarce resource.
Same thing here in Germany. Prices are rising and there seems no end to it. I expect this to get worse with climate change.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I live in Dallas, in a $3,500 square foot house that costs less than $2,000 / month.
As far as jobs go, there are a lot of big companies here. A lot of aerospace, technology, financial services ...
I'm not in management, I'm a techie, and earn well into six figures.
Of course, here in Dallas they build based on need. When prices went up for a few years 2014-2018, they built like crazy, which kept prices under control. You don't have local and state government saying nobody is allowed to build any housing.
I work in IT in California and pay $1300 a month on my 4 bedroom house.
California is a big state of which San Francisco is only a small part.
NIMBY means there's not a free market; governments are preventing the market from operating.
As the rent goes up, it becomes a lucrative business deal to buy up properties, demolish what's there, and build housing. That's what a free market would lead to, but that's not allowed to happen.
Calling it "the government" just hides the blame. Existing property owners are blocking new construction. And no wonder: the value of their property skyrockets thereby.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
"This is how it's _supposed_ to work."
No it's not. How it is supposed to work is that when rental prices start to spike in a community developers see the increasing profit potential of an area and increase development. It's classic supply and demand economics and is literally how all of our major cities formed.
What is happening in San Francisco (and in many parts of California) is that supply isn't being allowed to increase or increase fast enough by local government. The biggest offender is the valley but their problem has become so severe (with a modest single family homes selling for over a million) that it's spilling over and exacerbating already existing problems in places like San Francisco and beyond.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Something is out of whack; there are empty houses in the Rust Belt, yet not enough housing in CA. Whenever an industry fades, we throw entire communities under the bus, to be burned at the Altar of Capitalism. We don't just punish individuals for picking the wrong industry at the wrong time, we punish entire regions. Is there no way to rebalance the Country? Should we "just accept" this silliness?
Table-ized A.I.
How is anyone forced to live there?
If you can afford that rent, you can afford a bus ticket out of there.
And that's EXACTLY what's happening. Folks are leaving both the cities AND the state because it's too expensive to live there. They are heading to places where the cost of living is lower. Places like Texas, Florida and other places where an $800K house isn't a two bedroom shack.
Wait, so people are moving away in droves, and prices continue to rise! That's crazy! It goes against pretty much everything written about supply and demand! Imagine how much apartments will cost when EVERYONE has moved away!
"SF is surrounded by water, Dallas is surrounded by shit. Shit is easier to build on."
Building "out" is hardly the only option for growth for a community. San Francisco has plenty of vertical space to build into. ...And before people claim "no" because of earthquakes, tall buildings can be safely built in earth quake zones. Japan and many other countries have a long, safe history of doing so.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
There is nowhere in the city left to build, you have to knock something down to put something else up there.
Every dense city in the world is this way. In most places, this happens routinely. When I was in Seattle, I could consistently see 14 high-rise construction cranes out the break room window. As one building would finish, another would start. There were always 30 or so mid- and high-rises going up, replacing shorter buildings. When I visited London, it was that on steroids: construction cranes as far as the eye could see.
So obviously there's NIMBY type stuff in every city
Yes, but it's extreme in SF. Seattle's mayor was proud that "we're not going to be SF": the city would work to enable new projects, not work to block them. Both very liberal west-coast US cities with similar values, but one wants growth and the other doesn't.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It's the location that is expensive, not the building materials. I thought that was pretty clear to everyone...
There's a desperate need in some circles to make California sound like a third world country. I think it's a bit of the good-old fashioned penis envy. California is one of the largest economies on the planet, and folks living in a lot of Red States just have never been able to deal with the fact that a state can by and large be democrat and liberal, and actually have an economy of such significance that it outguns most of the Red States combined.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yes, something is out of whack. The economy is going strong but only at Wall St area and Silicon Valley. Everyone in between is declining. PBS documentary highlighted Dayton OH where population has dropped 50% what it used to be back in the days, manufacturing including NCR have offshored, downtown is modern but ***no traffic***, coroner's office getting overloaded with bodies from drug overdoses, people that are still there making much less and no benefits like they had before.
Yep, same place where Trump said in 2016 "don't sell your home and move" [I'll bring good jobs back] and Hillary completely ignored these areas on her campaign.
Getting back to Silicon Valley, it gets creepy seeing phenomenal wealth at same time increasing "development" of tent cities.
mfwright@batnet.com
The free market puts the poors where they belong, at the far end of BART.
Nobody in their right mind builds new slums. You build new high end and existing inventory tinkles down. As always, sucks to be poor, sucks worse to be poor and be waiting for someone else to do something about it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
And they can keep their significant economy.
What good is making more money than red states when 1 bedroom apartments costs $3,690? That is more than 3 times the cost of apartments in San Antonio. And no, your minimum wage is not 3 times higher than minimum wages in San Antonio.
This is a definitive failure on free market, NOT because of the restriction as you think, but because there is NO REASON whatsoever for the free market to invest in cheap condo for poor folk at a small ROI when they can have a huge ROI with expansive condo. And this is where the free market will always fail.
If you ask a developer whether he'd like to build cheap housing with a 20% ROI or expensive housing with a 30% ROI, his answer will be both. If both are clearly profitable businesses, then there's no reason in the world why developers shouldn't do both... except that there is: Artificial restrictions on the number of building permits.
The "market failure" you cite arises only because the city restricts the amount of building that can be done. Obviously, if the government says you can build only one building, you're going to build the most lucrative one you can. But without that restriction, the free market will build housing for all price points down to a floor that is dictated by natural limits (scarcity of land and cost of building higher). But clearly those natural limits are not creating the ultra-high cost in SFO, because other cities (e.g. NYC) are similarly constrained by the amount of available land, and have similar building costs, and yet have much lower rents.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Yup, both you and the parent are right. It IS out of whack. But in the US, we've collectively decided that we're a dog-eat-dog country, and we don't let the government intervene to help people (or even regions). It sucks, but wealth concentration is inevitable if you let capitalism go unchecked for long enough.
I think it's a terrible system (or lack of a system), so I vote to change it, and I'm going to continue to vote to change the system until I eventually leave the country for somewhere more civilized.
I don't respond to AC's.
And they can keep their significant economy.
What good is making more money than red states when 1 bedroom apartments costs $3,690? That is more than 3 times the cost of apartments in San Antonio. And no, your minimum wage is not 3 times higher than minimum wages in San Antonio.
Minimum wage is not enough to pay for a home in the most desirable part of any City. Typically only the most well off live in the most expensive areas. Plenty of Californians CAN afford their mortgage and rent with money left to spare, because the wages are higher (and/or they live out of the most expensive areas).
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
If you don't have anything to point to, fuck off and die having lost the argument. The system works.
For values of "works" exceeding $3500/month for one bedroom.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Is that why California ranks almost dead-bottom for education and bottom for poverty level?
As much as I hate Cali: educational results can usually be explained by demographics, and Cali is no exception. This is especially true of states with a sizable ESL population: you're never going to get the same statistical educational outcomes from native English speakers and those who enter the educational system not speaking English.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Wasn't Google working on building a giant floating barge with office space in San Francisco's harbor in order to get around these insane housing prices? What ever happened to that idea?
Supply and demand. A lot of people want to live here. If you come to California, you will understand.
The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Decatur, Alabama is $599. If you go there, you will understand. As with everything in life, you get what you pay for.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If you're smart enough to succeed, you're smart enough to succeed elsewhere.
I don't think that's in doubt. Highly educated people generally can succeed anywhere. The question is, do you want to succeed in the middle of nowhere? Personally, I don't. I like great universities and great museums and great restaurants. All of those things are generally concentrated in and near large cities or metro areas.
I don't respond to AC's.
Is that why California ranks almost dead-bottom for education and bottom for poverty level?
As much as I hate Cali: educational results can usually be explained by demographics, and Cali is no exception. This is especially true of states with a sizable ESL population: you're never going to get the same statistical educational outcomes from native English speakers and those who enter the educational system not speaking English.
Clearly the solution to this is to expand that ESL population via open borders.
No. California out-migration is second-lowest in the nation. Only Texas is lower, which is why that comparison works, but doens't mean anything.
https://medium.com/ca-rising/the-great-migration-myth-bda59595dfa2
California is 18th for poverty rate. Beating Oregon, Texas and every Southern state and most of the Southwest.
For education, California is ranked 26th. Making it pretty typical of the US as a whole.
Well, clearly that's California's solution. And heck, they might be better off for it in 50 years. But I won't be living there in the meantime.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Humans poop in the streets in NYC, SLC, Miami, Detroit, and every city. What's your point?
It's not a typo, and that sounds about right.
So, Fuck That. We live in a world now where most jobs that don't involved physically laying hands on hardware can be done any where in the world now. If I was inclined I could rent out a 1 bedroom shack in bumfuck Alabama, and as long as I had a good internet connection, manage thousands of servers any where in the world.
No, I'm not inclined to move back to bumfuck Alabama.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Rent control as practiced in SF, Berkeley, etc has absolutely added to the increased price. I know of multiple apartment units on my street that are vacant or only occasionally airbnb'd because the owners are older, their property taxes are like $1000/year, and they aren't willing to risk renting their until for what could be the rest of their lives. Literally they are forgoing $36k per year in income because the rights of the renter are so absolute in SF, the risk isn't worth it. So those rent controlled units are off the market. That's repeated throughout the city.
The notion of protecting the elderly and handicap from difficult evictions is worthy. My immediate neighbors are all earning $200k and are in rent controlled units...how does that make any sense? Why not make rent control means based? Answer: SF politics.
And then the new builds, non-rent controlled units. Next time you are crossing the Bay Bridge back into SF at night, look at all the new towers in Rincon, South Beach, SOMA. Notice how many of them are dark. Sure some people might be out, but many of those are investment properties only...again, not available for rent. Why not pull a Vancouver style occupancy tax if this is such a 'crisis'. Answer: SF politics
A few other Slashdot posters have noted that the run-up in housing prices is not unique to SF, And in fairness SF has always been in the top 5 priciest places to live in the US, since about 1849. So nothing new here. What is new is that the demand for a place in a prime city like SF, Seattle, NYC, DC, etc is now global. And that means the demand is essentially infinite. SF cannot build its way out of this anymore than Hong Kong has. HK has gone full tilt, super vertical, 100,000's of new units and still twice as expensive as anywhere in the US.
Well, to be fair, San Francisco's median income is also double that of San Antonio's, and with the left over, they can still buy a few places in San Antonio on top of their place in San Francisco.
I know $3500 a month sounds like a horrifying amount to you, but keep in mind the median there takes home over $7000 a month, after taxes.
I fit pretty squarely into the slightly-above-median bracket for SF incomes, living in Seattle paying not much less than their peak in rent.
I'm still shoveling a G or more a month to my family in the midwest, living their high life with their low cost of living, and while people may poop somewhere in the streets around here, the air isn't inundated with the smell of chicken shit, I'm not playing the will-I-get-killed-by-a-tornado-this-year lottery, and oh right- my house doesn't look like what would be a condemned building here. So there's that.
It's different, but I've been on both sides of the comparison. I'll keep the west coast, thanks. I may pay a shit-ton of money to live, but what I have left over is still more than the median take-home income of anyone in the south, and I live better for that.
You're not wrong, you just missed the obvious connection between the government and the people who are the real estate market, in that they're not different people. Is that pure capitalism? Of course not. But then again- that's the fucking problem with capitalism.
I raise your left wing social science site and see you the California Legislative Analyst Office which claims a loss of 2.5 % of its population in the last 15 years, and growing.
https://lao.ca.gov/laoecontax/article/detail/265
As a matter of fact on line the only source I can find for your contention is the site you mention. Every other source agress California has a negative population growth, even with undocumented counted.