Since you are right in the middle of this, what prevents you from walking out on the lease? As in, what starts a flood of renegotiation / changing apartments from similarly lease-locked renters?
1) Convincing company to let me work remote full time in a much cheaper city.
2) Commit to learning how much it's gonna cost me to break my lease.
Before the factors was: "This is a lot of talk in SF about falling rent, but, what, a 10% savings?" (It's a lot larger than that, even locally. Knowing I'm overpaying in my locality is enough frustration that it makes me want to move, or get a new lease, or something) And how well the company was going to handle WFH, and they've been doing fine, so, good opportunity to find a cheap place to live.
I guess I should have googled:
https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/SF-tenants-brea...