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Comment by fche | Hacker News Reader

How would you support the proposition that San Francisco is not failing, or is even flourishing?

Simple. Demand for housing. Supply issues aside, a huge number of people want to live in the SFBA, and the rents reflect that.

My grandmother in law just sold her place in SF after living there since the 60s.

7 of 9 offers were from Chinese nationals looking to park their money. Full cash, no inspection, no contingency and of course never visited by the potential buyer.

Market forces and demand are not necessarily about a desire to live there.

That's part of the effect, but I don't think you can reasonably claim it's most of it - demand for rental housing is still high.

I don’t know enough to make a declaration. But I do know that she was renting the downstairs (it was a 2 unit apartment) for the past decade to the same people. Once this is a ghost house, no one will live there, thus one rental off the market. Is some demand artificially constrained?

I don't think anyone can claim one way _or the other_ on this issue. Once you live in a place that is being used in some part to park mainland Chinese money, like I currently _do_, you really start to wonder why there aren't readily available statistics on this problem.

By counting the number of millionaires who live in it. By that metric, it's one of the greatest cities in the world.

Or by counting the value of it's real estate. Or the value of the companies it has created.

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