Office vacancy rate in San Francisco just hit a new high
socketsite.com
socketsite.com
The Clocktower lofts on Bryant & 2nd Street are a great example of live/work offices and condos for the luxury market. Let's do the mid-market next!
https://www.rubyhome.com/idx/461-2nd-street-san-francisco-ca...
The monthly HOA is $941 lol
I know places in Austin where (and this was years ago), HOA fees were $1100 for a condo in the $1.2 million range.
And, to be clear, I'm not saying 941 is "cheap" on an absolute basis, just that it is for a condo that is already that expensive.
Condo HOAs usually cover the maintenance of the shared building parts (HVAC, roof, plumbing outside the units, etc). One danger sign is a condo with a HOA that is too low - it likely means maintenance is being put off or done incorrectly or you're going to get hit with a special assessment soon.
Older buildings start getting hit with the "every 20/50 years" maintenance, and also get hit with lawsuits against the building/HOA itself. Those can start to add up over time.
And the size of the building can also affect it; a smaller building with the same amenities would have higher HOA fees.
I personally wouldn't touch them with a fifty state pole, but some people like it.
Sounds like it could have been a co-op which would include taxes in the HOA.
So 11 * 40 * 52 / 12 = 1906$/month + SS.
Just because the land is more expensive doesn't mean your elevator maintenance contract should be.
Unfortunately all the newer homes have HOAs in my area. I am stuck with older homes or I have to buy a lot and build to get something modern.
HOAs are also a breeding ground for petty arguments.
And, unlike you're principle payment (which at least is an asset), HOA payments are something you will never see any return of value on, especially since they reduce the desirability of the property in question. If you doubt this, Just ask anyone who's had an HOA, whether or not they'd rather buy a property with an HOA or one without.
You can't live with 200 other families in a shared building without some sort of structure. What's allowed and what isn't, Can dogs swim in the shared pool? Can you ask the doorman to go find a parking spot around the block?
The HOA in question is a shared building. Which is more like a corporation, with 20-30 employees.
That's a thing???
Hate to break it to you, but the maintenance costs for a house over the lifetime of the property are astronomical. True, if you are a do-it-yourselfer and want to do all the maintenance work yourself you can save money. But the comparable cost to pay someone for things like yard work, internal repairs and upkeep is, in my experience, much higher in a house than a condo because you don't get the benefit of scale and good, defined supplier relationships. E.g. in a condo building you're paying a landscaping company to do the yard work, but that work is split amongst 50 or whatever condo owners.
Part of the challenge is determining the quality of the HOA before buying, and that quality can change over time. And you may have minimal influence over it.
The premise for the HOA to do this is that it's better for occupants to report problems for professional remediation, rather than to DIY or neglect them until it becomes worse for someone else in the building.
It depends a bit on where you live, but that's typically not true. For a condo, the owners are responsible for interior maintenance (for example, plumbing issues within the unit, as opposed to plumbing issues within the walls).
I just sold a house in Vancouver after living in it for over a decade. The amortized cost of maintenance was less than 100 CAD/mo; and that included new quartz counters, a new roof, new hot water tanks, a whole yard remodel, new flooring, and so on.
What the hell are they burning nearly a grand USD per month per suite on?
I also find elevators to add a decent amount to the overhead
Not everyone is fit for condo living, but those who do prefer to have a building manager full time on site they can talk to. They also want amenities, a gym or even a pool (which means paying a lifeguard), a rooftop or shared working space. And trust me the condo owners aren't going to go and mop that rooftop or gym, they're going to need even more employees to do that
This is probably the meat of the cost.
When I demo'd the floors the labour cost was my own time; rather than the market rate.
The roof only hit me back about 5k.
Flooring was only about 3k, I did cheap laminate because carpet gives me allergies and I have kids.
People are very bad at working out total cost of ownership, but it could work if the prices were very low and much of the labor was done by the owner.
Is labour just that much more expensive in the USA?
https://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/611-Washington-St-94...
> Fees Include: Common Area Electricity, Door Person, Insurance (Common Area), Landscaping/Gardening, Management Fee, Pools, Spa, or Tennis, Reserves, Security Service, Water
> HOA Amenities: Community Pool, Door Person, Elevator, Gym/ Exercise Facility
That stuff costs money; if you don't want it then that isn't the building for you! Having recently moved from a condo to a non-HOA house, I am realizing how much extra time it takes to maintain a house (plus all the little extra costs here and there that add up). Condo HOAs are a mandatory convenience fee, and if you are a busy person they might really be worth it.
Single-family detached house subdivisions with HOAs are a different world. Stay far far away.
* A lot of amenities (pool and gym) are provided with the HOA.
* The reason 1200 sqf in a tall building is so cheap ($860k) is probably because the high HOA is discouraging buyers.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2111-Hyde-St-401-San-Fran...
Most commercial office space in SOMA is a converted warehouse. Live/work apartments and lofts have already been converted from the same buildings. Let's do more of these!
Fantastic for bike commuting.
I used to be in the city, in essentially a shoe box that cost 5k a month, but with a fancy gym and common area. I moved to Marin during COVID and while I miss the food and walking distance/public transit activities I could do, I don’t think I can go back to the extremely small for the money living area. I’m hopeful a glut of new housing, hopefully spacious, will change that calculus.
Hair/nail salons, waxing and esthetician services, makeup and photo studios, etc.
Every nail salon in 10 square-block radius of me (in SF, SOMA) closed during the pandemic. SF residential rents aren't affordable for a trade/services businessperson. Tradespeople stopped commuting 2+ hours into the city when businesses fled. For a city to thrive, services/trade labor needs to live near their work.
On a personal level, I want to run a small manufacturing shop to dog-food my own product (https://printnanny.ai/ - automation for 3D printer ecommerce shops).
My options are currently:
* Move to a single-family home in surburbia, so I can work out of a garage/shed.
* Lease a business-zoned office suite in SF, commute every day.
* Live in a building zoned for business/residential, so I can legally run an office without inviting ire from an SF condo HOA.
* leave the Bay Area and go somewhere with higher quality of life and lower real estate prices (read: basically anywhere that isn't Tokyo or NYC), go for residential housing + commercial property
unless you have some reason to pick SF?
My wife and I made the opposite move. We had a house, a life, in the suburbs for more than a decade and now happily live in a 1 bedroom loft in SOMA. I would say that for our life, we live in a smaller (it's still pretty big, and not actually that expensive) in the city exactly because of the lifestyle/hobbies/family life we enjoy as a result. It's like the city is your living room.
Even though work and housing aren't in the same buildings, military housing can provide a good lens into this.
IMO, that's not really fair - at least for barracks. And I don't really think that "married" house style housing really applies since it's a suburb that just happens to be inside the base.
1. You don't own your barracks room. You generally don't have any ability to change furniture, appliances, paint, etc.
2. Barracks typically offer little privacy - there are periodic inspections, limits on guests, etc.
3. Military culture is a bit weird - there is often a very strong drinking culture, etc. It's not clear to me that the same social forces exist for a civilian live-work building.
4. The barracks are sometimes raided for off-hours extra duty. This downside doesn't really exist in the same way for civilians.
An office/apartment hybrid might work. I could imagine dividing the building, with offices in the inner core and apartments surrounding the core. The core and surrounding apartments would be totally separated, with separate lobbies and elevators. Although the offices would be totally windowless hellscapes, at least the apartments would have lots of light.
I think that's a bold statement already
Between B and C C is the clear winner.
This is utterly stupid, but it is driving rental vacancies in NYC.
I would say then the solution is to reform those laws, while we're at it we should reform the property tax laws in California.
Commercial property owners are seeking forbearance agreements with their lenders. Forbearance is like hitting the "pause" button on a lending agreement, with the hope that market conditions bounce back and the original loan terms can continue.
What that means in practice is that a massive amount of real estate will rot, unused, in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
Really, how different are offices from apartments? You have space, kitchen, bathrooms, etc.
The only thing that is weird is most offices don't have a washer and dryer, other than that if I walked in this space and it was decorated as an office I wouldn't think twice, same in apartment mode.
The answer is no. Why? because the city collects more taxes from commercial zoned stuff.
it also seems like it could lead to increased rents, if you have the government guarantee rent will be paid, you can raise it by a lot and not worry about people not paying, or even not being able to afford it.
not at all.
The housing opportunity in SF is in all the vacant and underutilized space in the Sunset. Downtown offices do not have the egress, plumbing, ventilation, electricity, or telecomm capacity to be economically converted to dwellings in anything other than a makeshift, emergency fashion.
Which isn't to say we shouldn't utilize outer Sunset space too! There's already great public transport to the SOMA area though.
It's a shame to let commercial real estate rot in forbearance, when it's surrounded by the infrastructure needed for excellent city living.
Converting office space into affordable housing is a win for everyone, except the landlords, but I won't shed a tear for them ;-)
She's now living independently at age 86, thanks to a social security check and a community where she's everyone's abuela. Rent-controlled housing made it easier to divorce her abusive husband and start a business back in the 60s.
How is that dystopian?
The practicalities of the original design and trying to adapt it means these conversions often have limited natural light, limited fresh air, are made from hard, unbreathable, manufactured materials, are very 'liminal', have bad acoustics. Have you read the theory of 'sick buildings'? Homes made from office space seem to end up very 'sick', with an impact on people's mental and physical health, and increasing isolation.
That's how it's dystopian.
If it made a difference to your ability to get shelter, which would you rather choose: have shelter or live in a illegal tent under a bridge resting assured with the knowledge that there's a big book of rules in place.
Not all buildings in SF are high-rise open-plans. If you're imagining converting Salesforce tower, I see how that would seem impractical.
Most commercial office space in SOMA (old warehouse buildings) can be converted into live/work lofts.
Building Codes are words on paper. They can be changed more easily than physical buildings.
Check out 510 Townsend, one of the properties mentioned in the OP. What do you think about converting buildings like 510 Townsend into live/work lofts?
A dorm (ie. shared bathrooms/kitchen) wouldn't have this issue.
It seems to me there might be some disconnect in demand and supply of various labor types (not many unskilled jobs compared to the number of unskilled workers, vs not many software devs but lots of openings). It seems these forces drag the bottom down while pushing the top higher.
Edit: why disagree?
Why, theoretically, would wages rise enough to make it possible for any worker to live in the city? I think the situation where workers with the worst alternatives and weakest negotiating position are stuck commuting into SF from outside is unfortunate but theoretically entirely understandable; SF wages aren't forced to rise to support someone living here, but only to be high enough relative to wages elsewhere to compensate for the cost of commuting.
True, but then the implied issues with not living in the city you work in become moot if truly compensating for the commute and cost of living outside the city.
Suppose you're able to get two part time jobs with relatively little predictability in your shift schedule. Both are minimum wage, but one is in SF where the minimum is $17/hr and another is in Concord at $14/hr (the state minimum for a company with <25 employees). Say you live in Antioch, and can get to the Concord job in around 35 minutes for $4 with BART, and get to the SF job with more than 1h and $7.30 on BART (one way). So for every shift in SF you pick up, you get a $3 premium per hour relative to the Concord job, but for the first 2 hours that just goes to cover your extra BART fare, _and_ you lose an extra hour in transit. In dollars you still come out ahead on an 8 hour shift in SF relative to in Concord, but I think it would be unreasonable to say that "the implied issues ... become moot".
Who wants to live in a city if you can work from home? If you are poor and need housing subsidies and there are no jobs for you, there is no reason to live in the city to begin with. People go live where the jobs are. Without "white collar" jobs producing demand for services, there is much less demand for "blue collar" jobs.
If it's just cooping people up, there are cheaper ways to house people than maintaining expensive buildings that need financing and upkeep.
A situation at home that is distracting
The need for changing location for mental delimination of work
Doesn't seem like you need an office for that, though? You can invite your coworkers over to your home, go to a coffeeshop/bar, even the library. I went to the local library the other day and it was effectively vacant. I bet they would welcome your group with open arms to find some use for the space.
Work from home doesn’t mean work from home, it means work from anywhere.
No need for nationalistic conspiracy theories. If your employer wants to replace you with an outsourced company or worker they will do so regardless of remote work policies, as it already happens.
Incidentally there are virtual office zoom call services where you can get on a call and work with other people who have the same issue of not being able to work on their own.
People who want to be in an office should have it available or work for companies that can provide it. People like me can avoid it or only do it when the paycheck is right.
My family is my family, my friends are my friends and my coworkers are my coworkers.
Zoom absolutely does not count.
There is life outside of work, but that doesn't mean work needs to be lifeless.
As i said, i dint mind people wanting or working on site. But that demand seems to either directly or indirectly mandate that others work onsite as well.
So why should earn less and live in worse conditions just so that you can chat with me in an office?
I will value positions that fit my needs, and you are free to do the same.
When hiring, I will select employees that meet the onsite requirements and fit the culture.
Doing all of this in a city jam packed by people rushing to offices would have been impossible. Making friends also since its a large city and there is no time to meet and maintain relationships anyway.
I think keeping an open mind and exploring the options remote work give you might help fix the issues that might impede socialising. The alternative is not even knowing you can do better, but maybe in the right setting - which you could explore by remote working.
Others may be:
* Access to specialist resources/equipment which is only available in the office,
* Costs of heating / cooling / etc. (more significant now, in Europe at least),
Wasting 1-2 hours of my day, with the potential to have it become a 4 hour drive once every week or two.. just way too rough.
I honestly don't get how people put up with commutes. Like, honestly and really. It feels like i'm just destroying any chance i have for downtime during the weekdays. Throw in chores, and oof. Plus i don't have kids.. i can't imagine having kids on top of a commute.
Someone is going to come along and say "BuT I dOn'T hAvE AnY bIkE pAtHs!" That might be true. Almost nobody has a bike path from their front door to their office. I sure don't. But if you stare at a map long enough, you'll find a way. It might mean you add a detour to ride a safer route. It might mean you have to drive half way. It might mean you take public transit half the way. I can't solutionize for everyone, but changing up your commute really changes things. It doesn't have to be such a miserable existence.
For example, I am a 40 minute, 30 mile drive from the city center. Most people in this area would consider that a reasonable commute. It would take 2 and a half hours to bike that distance in melting Florida heat and heavy aggressive traffic. It would take 2 hours by a succession of busses.
If I wanted to live a nice bikeable distance from the business center, I would pay dearly for it home price.
It didn’t have to be like this, but at this point we are so committed to suburban car-centric sprawl that there is now way back for most of the country and things like walkability, bike friendly and rapid public transit are going to remain luxury goods.
Solution? I got an e-bike. Again, I'm not saying everyone can bike the whole way. Take a bus for the first or latter half. It can be done if you actually want to make the change.
Must be a cultural thing, but in my sphere 'home' is where a lot of socializing with others takes place.
Mentoring
Engineering a physical product. Maybe not the norm on this forum, but certainly the norm for many engineering jobs.
What a dystopic world we live when where "work" became the main, if not only, source of socialisation.
I use the hours I shaved off by not commuting for real socialisation
My parents met at work and I've made friends at previous position and remained friends with them. I also think that being in close proximity is important to me. For example people around the world travel home for the holidays instead of using a webcam. Since the cost and time of that travel is significant must there be a reason why it's important.
I spend far more hours at work than I have for socializing outside of work, with or without commutes.
This is actually the biggest reason for me. Even after nearly 2 years of WFH I didn't find it nearly as easy to mentally separate from work. Leaving the office at 4pm does that much more effectively. I went back to working at the office as soon as it was possible.
As for locations: - Coffee shops are noisy and staying there multiple hours is both inappropriate, you could have power issues, wifi issues related to speed.
- Being outside requires some internet device which may not be reliable or fast, power issues again but I guess you could just have a backpack with a USB power bank. The sun makes it difficult to see, you need to find a table, bugs, animals, other people, rain, heat, cold, etc
I've tried these things. My home setup is dual 27 inches with a physical keyboard. This improves my performance greatly, maybe I could get used to a laptop but that would require an adjustment period.
But... I don't go to work to socialise. I hate the idea that my social life is tied to my work. Since moving to work from home permanently, I've built social connections with people who actually live in my community which I far prefer.
I miss everyday banter and eating lunch with my co-workers.
Shameful.
You can still socialize digitally with others if you work from home, or step out and get lunch or coffee at local businesses and be around people.
A home is no more distracting than an office.
Work is what happens when your laptop is open. Make a ritual of closing it to symbolize the end of your work day and you get the same effect.
Working from an office sucks and is for lower class jobs IMO. It is beneath a software engineer’s esteemed status.
I don't think socializing digitally is a sufficient substitute. Being around people I don't know isn't socializing because I don't have a relationship with them."
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"A home is no more distracting than an office."
My apartment is quiet, I have two cats, I'm not near any loud roadway just a park, and my building has sound proofing so I never hear my neighbors.
Everyone has a different living situation but your comment implies it's the same for everyone.
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"Work is what happens when your laptop is open. Make a ritual of closing it to symbolize the end of your work day and you get the same effect."
This is not sufficient for me. I don't know why you think what works for you psychologically would work for others.
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"Working from an office sucks and is for lower class jobs IMO. It is beneath a software engineer’s esteemed status.
This is such a stupid comment that I'm just going to call you an asshole and take the flag.
All this means is that working in an office should be optional. Forcing it on everyone just because some people use work to socialize is not intelligent.
Edit: note that I’m an individual contributor and not in any sort of management position - but I imagine this is how management types think.
In my case, our house has a room that is basically only big enough to be an office, and we have solar that means we barely pay for electricity. It's a no-brainer for me to save the time and money that would be sunk in a commute and just use that room for work. However, I can totally see how someone without that extra space would find an office important.
I think what would be optimal for society is if we could reclaim the space that is used for central, commuter offices and bring that space closer to home. Whether that's building more homes that have rooms specifically designed to be offices, or building coworking spaces in the middle of residential areas, we need to do something to eliminate commutes. The amount of pollution, accidental deaths, property damage, and wasted time inherent in people driving to work is insane. Technology is at the point where, for most office workers, the harm caused by commutes far outweighs the benefits of being in a centralized work environment.
If you're working from home, you should be writing off that office space come tax time, which should offset the utility cost.
Alas, most offices are optimized for 1) cost-per-person 2) modern looks and an open concept
My home is much better for working than my workplace is
Orphan Andy's, Safeway on Market, and Pinecrest diner are no longer 24/7. Sparky's closed forever (a 24/7 diner). It's Tops Coffee Shop stopped staying open late and then eventually closed forever. Corner/liquor stores that used to be open late are closing well before midnight. Kowloon Tong Dessert Cafe used to be open until 2am most nights, but now they always close at midnight.
Higher paid jobs like healthcare workers, no problem.
Most blue collar labor types living in the East Bay are in the Alameda County flatlands (parts of Newark, parts of Fremont, inner city Oakland, Berkeley, El Cerrito, Albany) or North Contra Costa County (Pittsburg, Antioch, Richmond).
But most of the unskillled labor underclass you see in the Bay Area cities tend to drive in/Bart in/ACE in from San Joaquin Country, Sonoma County, or Monterey County.
And yes some parts of the East Bay are expensive, especially the neighborhoods on the hills or Piedmont/Claremont and further inland like Walnut Creek or Orinda etc. But let's be real, most of the East Bay is one big suburban wasteland.
There are a lot of folks living in East Oakland (with roommates, often) who work in SF restaurants.
There most definitely has been a decline in quality of healthcare due to decline in quantity and quality of healthcare workers relative to patients in the recent past.
Even though a job might be higher paid, it does not imply the pay to quality of life at work is sufficiently high to incentivize the desirable amount of labor sellers to pursue it.
So depending on the building it could be a huge cost to turn into livable residences, much less desirable ones that would offset the expense.
Not to say it can’t be done but it seems really hard.
If your company has enough employees that are interchangeable enough to organize teams based on the work preferences of the employees, you could probably make it work. But most companies don't have employees that are that interchangeable.
I'm on a split team, it's the same as remote except you can send DMs and create groups chats with some of the team IRL and you have multiplayer rooms join video calls.
daily status meeting over teams. jira for tasks. teams for chat if I have questions.
Office workers: I want to work in the office AND I want you to work in the office as well.
Also the cities are dying because the suburbians aren't commuting in!
Maybe it's not as simple as people want to make it out to be, and cities are more dependent on suburbs that simple YouTube videos want to admit.
Will it be the same? No but cities never revert they always change and remain dynamic as us humans do.
In addition while climate (though people will argue about the city itself as opposed to the South Bay) and natural beauty add to SF's appeal, I'm not sure how many it would draw absent the economy. Certainly there are many mostly East Coast plus Chicago cities that attract a lot of people without the climate or mostly the geography.
Boston ticks a lot of the boxes but, again, snow and you're a couple hour drive from real mountains.
And I agree that Denver and SLC are both similar as well, but they don't have as deep and diverse a white collar environment yet. As a Bay Area native, only other metropolitan I've seriously considered living long term are Boston, DC, Seattle, and San Diego. But not all of them are one-to-one similar to the Bay.
Agree that it would mostly be "a nice place to live" a la Seattle or Portland, than the forlorn days of $3k/1bd for a mediocre soma apartment of yesterdecade.
That's also the problem when there is no way to restrict people who cannot afford it
i don’t think anyone doubts that when the commute is reasonable and office perks good it’s better to be in an office. mostly for social reasons. sf had some of the longer commutes in the country
some other better connected metro area will grow bigger and more successful and then things will have a forcing function to make it less painful to go into the office
Certain demographics of generally younger people in particular. Mind you, this isn't a law of nature. A lot of now "elite" cities were still losing population 25 years or so ago. And when I graduated in the mid-80s, Manhattan aside, almost none of my classmates moved to a downtown.
That said, very anecdotally, my company is has actually added some space downtown even though I understand our suburban office is pretty empty. (Boston area)
This is manager fantasy. You're not going to find enough talent to fill an office with a 'reasonable' commute in my city. Its silly to hire based on commute time, so inevitably any office situation like this will have a bell curve of commute times, with some being 1+ hour each way - a crazy waste of productivity.
I work in the financial district and the number of empty spaces that used to house cafes and restaurants is shocking. Unless they manage to pivot that office space to housing (Very difficult for multiple structural reasons), the downtown of SF is going to continue to look like Zombieland.
I think that's a misleading characterization. The city notoriously gave tax breaks to large tech companies, accompanied by some weak rhetoric about supporting local communities, but with weak or no oversight confirming any real local benefits.
I also think it's important to distinguish between _office space_ and _retail space_. Retail and restaurant spaces will also struggle to get filled if neighborhood office workers are getting catered in-office lunch, getting delivery from ghost kitchens, and buying goods from amazon etc. I.e. the way we live and work increasingly supports the Zombieland street-level experience.
The city notoriously set up large and complex taxes on tech companies in SF and then randomly and unpredictably granted breaks to the ones that had the best lobbying.
> accompanied by some weak rhetoric about supporting local communities
And billions of dollars sent into homeless slush funds for activists and nonprofits with no accountability for how the money was spent.
> no oversight confirming any real local benefits
Accurate
I'm not claiming that the city spends responsibly, but next month SF will at least vote on a ballot measure which would create an oversight commission for HSH spending and programs, and require audits of services provided. We have an opportunity to improve things.
https://ballotpedia.org/San_Francisco,_California,_Propositi....
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-10-17/california-...
But again, lots of messed up things in the real estate market of Austin generally; the residential market has essentially frozen up, with sellers unwilling to admit how much things have dropped, and the buyers unwilling to pay for houses they know aren't going to be worth that much in a year's time or less.
It has to do with the valuation of the properties and not needing to get the cashflow for a VERY long time.
And the buildings that are owned by individuals/families may be owned outright so they don't have much loan pressure on them.