average rent in sf hits record $3096

[Liberal_in_LA]

Rents in San Francisco are escalating at breakneck clips this year, largely driven by an influx of tech workers. Oakland and San Jose likewise are seeing steep run-ups.

San Francisco's bigger apartment complexes saw average asking rents break the $3,000 mark in the third quarter, hitting a record $3,096 across all size units, according to data service RealFacts. That's an 11.9 percent bump from the same time last year.

Median asking rents for San Francisco apartments listed on www.livelovely.com clocked in at a record $3,398 in the third quarter, up 21 percent from 2012, said apartment-finding company Lovely.

"Rents are rising faster in San Francisco than almost anywhere else in the country," said Jed Kolko, chief economist with housing service Trulia. "Rising rents are a bigger challenge than rising home prices, especially in a place like San Francisco where buying is out of reach for many middle-class and lower-middle-class people."

Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of the think-tank San Francisco Planning and Urban Research, said the city is facing a "crisis of affordability."

"What happens when you let a city get this expensive, is that over time, only the wealthy can live there. You lose everyone else," he said.

http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Rents-soaring-across-region-4924282.php

[BadGimp]

1. It's true - I am moving end of month south of the city due to rent costs

I have an internet startup I'm getting off the ground, and while we will have an office in SF in Dec, I can't afford to live there. Then there's the parking and crime...

[loli phabay]

2. onereason i live in the country, cheaper housing costs and room for parking at home

[CrawlingChaos]

3. Personal sore spot

My husband and I were both born and raised in the Bay Area, but we just left for the Central Valley. I don't really want to be here, but at least I can afford a home here and have money left for food, etc. Where we came from, Mountain View, 2br apartments were going for $4K/month. Finally, we said the hell with it, it's not worth it. Frankly, it had become a very stressful place to live anyway.

What kills me is that everywhere we went looking in the areas surrounding the Bay Area, somebody would announce to us "oh they hate people from the Bay Area here". If you ask why, you get some vague response about "yuppies". Just super. Anyway, I hope I can get to like it here. ::sigh::

Of course, the Bay Area still has rundown, poor areas where the "servant class" lives (somebody has to clean the houses of the rich, after all) but even those hovels are unbelievably expensive now. I realize many in the tech sector make enormous 6-figure salaries, but I have no idea how others are surviving.

[Liberal_in_LA]

22. wow. Mountain View rents 4K? wow. I lived up there more than 20 years ago.

[steve2470]

4. SF has no rent control at all ? Did it used to ? nt

[Luminous Animal]

10. Yes we do on all housing built before 1979. But there is no rent control

on vacated units.

[penultimate]

5. I keep seeing some company posting listings for jobs in their SF office...

I think the pay is like $60k/yr, but if the average rent is $3k/mo, I don't think that's going to work for me. I wonder if they're trying to sucker people who are used to lower costs of living or something, which is why they post in other parts of the country.

[etherealtruth]

6. Whew ... living in the interior of the country

... I forget how different the cost of living is on the coasts.

[madville]

7. Won't complain about my house payment anymore

Just refinanced the $60,000 left on the mortgage for 15 years, it's $430 a month, $550 with taxes and insurance escrowed in. I make 60k a year and couldn't afford $3,000 a month in rent. I only take home like $3500 a month as it is.

[FreeJoe]

8. There is no simple cure

A lot of people want to live there and there isn't much housing. You can control the rents, but that works like a lottery and locks people into their homes. You can let the market decide, but prices keep going up. You can make it easier to build more and cheaper housing, but that decreases the quality of life.

[CrawlingChaos]

11. Affordable housing decreases the quality of life?

I recently read an article about increasing numbers of families in the Bay Area living in storage sheds and garages - taken in either by friends or family, or those seeking to profit from their desperation.

Let me assure you that quality of life in the SF Bay Area is already in the dumper for all but the most privileged. Why would we want to tailor public policy to create a future of wealthy enclaves?

[FreeJoe]

21. no, excessive population density does.

[steve2470]

9. "In San Francisco, most tenants are covered by rent control."

http://www.sftu.org/rentcontrol.html

[taught_me_patience]

13. Thank the damn anti-development NIMBYS

They got theirs in the 60's, 70's, and early 80's and have now given the big eff you to the next generation.

[flamingdem]

14. That's incorrect. Boomers/Nimbys average very little in savings, research that

before you assume they're all wealthy. They are being displaced in many cities.

Everyone is being hurt. NIMBYS were politically engaged enough to keep rents low as LONG as possible until the banks and international consortiums / global $ flows had their way with us.

Where is the younger generation on this? The ones I see at City Council meetings support the status quo. The rebels are still the Nimbys trying to preserve neighborhoods.

[Douglas Carpenter]

15. in 1982 I rented a 1BR apartment at 75B Noe ST - Duboce Triangle area for $325/month

I guess only the rich can live in the cool places which makes them not so cool anymore

[Blue_In_AK]

16. In 1970, I rented a beautiful three bedroom 1880 victorian house on Clement Street

with three other girls for $250 a month. Of course, I was only paid about $400 a month, but it covered my portion of the rent with no problem. Times have sure changed.

[Douglas Carpenter]

17. for me the whole attraction to San Francisco or any of the really cool places one might live

is that they tended to be full of all kinds of interesting people - a bit of everyone from everywhere - you meet people from the entire spectrum of the human experience - That is exactly why I moved into the city after attending a party at a friends place on Market near Filmore on May Day 1982 - Escalating housing cost are simply making, the bastions of colorful and interesting characters less colorful and less interesting. After all - it was relatively low rents that attracted Bohemia to Greenwich Village in New York or the Haight or the Castro or even earlier North Beach in San Francisco or the South End in Boston. If their reputation for coolness and color eventually drives up housing cost into the stratosphere - so that only high end techies and hedge fund mangers can afford to live there - how cool can they remain?

[Blue_In_AK]

20. I couldn't agree with you more.

That's what attracted me to Sf, too, back in the day. I still love to visit down there, but it isn't the same. I guess nothing is.

[arcane1]

27. We have the "tech boom" to thank for much of this, and the money that comes with it.

Personally, I'm sick of the words "trendy" and "upscale". And did you hear about these techies wanting to rename SOMA "The Cloud Neighborhood" or whatever it was?

The proverbial shark was jumped this year, when news came out that rich-asses were going to Burning Man with cooks and maids in tow to serve them. Heck, I don't even attend Burning Man but that news annoyed the hell out of me.

I'm lucky, ion that I make slightly less that $60k and my rent is $1,100, and a good deal compared to other units in this building. It still beats the hell our of having to make a car payment, insurance, maintenance, gas, etc. I'm going to hold on as long as I can, and hope that things will s3wing in the other direction eventually

[Douglas Carpenter]

18. from the 70's on - speculation replaced production as the main fuel that drives economy

There has always been an obvious relationship between the popularity of a place to live and its relative cost. However, following the unilateral departure of the United States from the post World War II Bretton Woods agreement in August of 1971 along with the steady departure from the Keynesian economic consensus - the move away from an industrial economy - speculation and pushing the envelope to the extreme has simply created a situation where it is now hard to see how the majority of future generations can possibly afford the basic necessities of life. The days when you could head across the country with barely any money at all - and start a new life - now seem like a distant dream.

[Vashta Nerada]

19. What do people do for work in San Fran?

I pay $659/month for a one bedroom apartment and I think that's ridiculous!

[Liberal_in_LA]

23. that would rent you a room in Los Angeles! A bedroom with kitchen privileges if you were lucky!

[Art_from_Ark]

24. When I was looking for a place to rent in LA back in the '80s

the best I could find that wasn't in a place where I would need body armor, was a converted motel a couple of miles from Venice Beach, which was going for $320/month plus 2 months deposit to move in.

[Liberal_in_LA]

26. the same place would probably rent for 2K if it hasn't been torn down for condos

[Art_from_Ark]

30. Holy mackeral!

[Xithras]

25. It's leading to some interesting development ideas.

Google, for instance, is supposedly building a giant housing barge using recycled shipping containers that will be broken into tiny apartments that can be rented by their employees for about $1000 a month (dirt cheap by SF standards). The barge will be moored in SF during the day when employees get off work, so they can take the train into SF from Mountain View and spend their evenings in the city. At some point during the night, the barge will be unmoored and tugged down south toward Mountain View, mooring a short distance from the Google headquarters. Once the employees were off the barge, it would begin its return trip to SF.

The idea is to give their employees the "San Francisco lifestyle" without paying SF rents, and while eliminating the morning commute for their employees. They apparently want to moor it at Fort Mason in SF (I have no idea where its supposed to be moored near Mountain View, as I don't know of ANY wharfs south of Redwood City that can handle a barge that size).


It's not much more than a rumor at this point, but it's a neat idea.

[Liberal_in_LA]

28. rich people living near the beach would protest like crazy

[Xithras]

31. Yeah...there's no beach in that part of SF.

Fort Mason is an old Army base and wharf complex that still regularly docks ships. In fact, most of the wharves and docks along the SF waterfront are active and are still used from time to time. If the ship is being moved and isn't permanently moored, I don't think the neighbors get a whole lot of say in it. It would be like complaining about cruise ships at Long Beach...you can complain about them ruining your view, but nobody is going to listen to you because the wharves were designed to be used that way in the first place.

San Francisco doesn't have much beachfront real estate on that side of the city anyway. The oceanfront residents living near Fort Mason get an awesome view of warehouses. The closest real "beach" at Crissy Field doesn't have any residents nearby, because it's inside the old Presidio and is fronted by even more warehouses and old administrative buildings that have been converted into private businesses. You really have to go to the other side of the city, along Ocean Beach on the Pacific side, before you'll find any "beachfront" homeowners.

[Liberal_in_LA]

29. here is the article

http://www.sfgate.com/technology/article/Google-structure-rumors-afloat-by-Treasure-Island-4933645.php

Google structure rumors afloat by Treasure Island
By Caleb Garling

[Xithras]

33. Interesting that none of the rumors address the plan I spoke of.

Google has been promising lower cost housing for its interns for some time, and has made it clear that they plan on delivering on it. They went several rounds with Redwood City last year trying to build lower cost apartments for their employees, and when they lost the fight they promised to come up with some creative alternatives. It was leaked months ago that Google was considering a number of alternatives, including floating housing. The great advantage to it, for Google, is that they'd owe no property taxes on it (it's not real estate), and they won't have to deal with the notoriously fickle governments in the Bay Area. If they're not permanently mooring it, the cities get very little say (under state law, cities can't discriminate against anyone wanting to use their ports...if it's open to anyone, it's open to everyone).

That leak came out a while back, and now Google is building a massive new ship at Treasure Island. It's interesting that the Chron reporter didn't manage to link the two.

It's really not a bad idea. It creates affordable housing, it reduces traffic congestion on the roadway, and if implemented with clean propulsion, might actually use less fuel per person getting them to work than the other alternatives in use today. It's obviously not a scalable solution though...there are only so many docks that you can park these at.

I've personally been a fan of floating housing for a long time. There are a number of locations, like Alameda or Oyster Point, where this type of thing could be implemented without environmental problems or disruption to existing residents. I've never understood the resistance to the idea.

[Blue_Tires]

32. I'd hope some candy and flowers came with that screwing...