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Comment by CydeWeys | Hacker News Reader

Most cities don't seem to be having the same problem (it's almost uniquely SF that has this problem). NYC for example is booming.

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This problem is not at all unique to SF. According to Cushman & Wakefield, Austin has 23% vacant offices, Manhattan has 23%, Brooklyn 24%, and SF has 25%, same as Minneapolis and Chicago, while Houston has 26% vacant.

https://www.cushmanwakefield.com/en/united-states/insights/u...

Unless you are the owner/lessor of commercial real estate, why does this matter? NYC is happening these days, even if not everyone is going back to the office every day. They're still here in their homes (which are renting out for record high rates) and going about their daily lives in the city, which is absolutely packed.

But downtown SF has always been like a scene out of "Night of the Comet" compared to NY.

Look, I'm not gonna argue with you that NYC has always been better than SF (it obviously has), but post-pandemic now the difference is even more stark. NYC's economy is much more diverse than SF's, and also has much more housing within city limits, to the point that it hasn't suffered nearly as much from the pandemic, and indeed right now is booming whereas SF is withering.

Ehn, SF is returning to its pre-2010 roots (heck, even the population in SF has fallen to the same level as it was in the 2000s).

The entire sofrware+hardware industry before the 2010s was south of Redwood Shores and the biotech industry was always situated in northern San Mateo County. Before the 2010s, SF was primarily a hub for the Northern California legal+investment banking industries, both of which cratered during the GFC.

There's a reason why "FiDi" is called that - SF used to be the Wall Street of the West until the GFC, and most private sector white collar jobs in the city back then were legal and finance related.

SF was a much different place pre-2010. And it's going to be rough getting back there from here. In particular the city's expenditures are way higher now (but without revenues to match), and the homeless crisis is way worse.

I was a kid here in the late 90s/early 2000s.

It's still as crummy now as it was then. I remember seeing drug addicts on market as a kid, as well as the gang crap in Hunter Points (what's now called Mission Bay - India Basin has been renamed Hunters Point) and Mission District.

The difference is Mission, Northern Tenderloin/"Lower Nob Hill", Western Addition/"Hayes Valley", and Hunters Point had been extremely gentrified at a shallow level by transient white collar workers and creative types (artists, musicians, etc) in their 20s and 30s (aka. Most SF HN commentators)

Neither group started families let alone sent kids to public schools in SF, nor were either group actively connected with electoral politics within SF (voting isn't connected), and the same issues that I saw in K-8 in SFUSD continue to persist.

Also, a massive proportion of SF's population cannot vote due to immigration status (around 40% last I checked). Add to that an addition 10-20% to represent unattached transplants and townies and the voting pie shrinks massively, so SF politicians end up pandering to the subset that votes instead

> India Basin has been renamed Hunters Point

Think you got this backwards.

Indeed I did! Good catch!

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2022/06/16/which-m...

I haven't scrutinized this heavily, but, at a glance, it appears that the best recovery for "Work Trips" is still down 13.2%, New York is down 26%, and the worst, SF, is down 32.7%. In no way do I see these numbers as booming - they all make me question how the cities are going to balance their books as commercial real estate gets devalued and undermines taxation.

Is that the wrong way to be looking at things?

(EDIT: these numbers are old, my bad!)

Are you planning on owning commercial real estate? If not, why does this one particular metric matter?

NYC is booming in all senses of the word that apply to the daily experience of your typical person living here. The streets are PACKED with people out and about having a good time at all hours of day and night, and rents are at record highs because so many people want to live here. So what if not everyone is commuting into the office 5 days a week anymore? Don't buy an office building and you'll be good.

How do you get around? Are the subways safe for tourists, families, etc?

I bike and walk most places, but I'm perfectly fine taking the subway for longer distances. Even that question itself sounds like it's out of the past from three decades ago.

No, I am not planning on owning commercial, but I am interested in avoiding having taxes raised on me to fill a budget deficit. Taxes on commercial real estate generate a significant amount of revenue, commercial rental agreements are usually ~5-7 years, and so, at least in SF, there is a looming wave of devaluations which has yet to be realized. The city already has an estimated 800M budget shortfall without assuming commercial real estate devalues by 50%. When that happens the only quick fix is to bleed money from the populace. If commercial buildings aren't being used in NY then this will also occur there.

I think you're being too speculative here. If you're really trying to minimize paying taxes, then you should be moving to a state with no income tax, don't buy property there (because states with no income tax tend to make up for it with high property taxes), and don't live in a city because cities will have local taxes. But you move to NYC, you do so because NYC is awesome and living here is great. I wouldn't pay less taxes to live in the middle of nowhere.

Yeah, I think you're right. Thanks for the feedback. :)

> ... you should be moving to a state with no income tax, don't buy property there (because states with no income tax tend to make up for it with high property taxes)

Remember not to rent too, otherwise landlords would passthrough the high property to you.

This isn't true in many places for lots of reasons. E.g. in California the owner could easily have grandfathered-in low property tax thanks to Prop 13, that you as a new housing purchaser couldn't benefit from. Or there could be NY-style rent regulation that controls the allowable rental price and doesn't take property tax into consideration at all. Or it could simply be that property taxes go up in a neighborhood (which you'd have to pay if you owned) but that rents do not, for whatever reason; this happens all the time.

As a renter, all you care about is what the rent is. If the rent is good, then you're good. Property tax is very much NOT priced into buying a property, and is an ongoing expense to worry about that moves in way that rent does not.

> This isn't true in many places for lots of reasons.

Fair point, but are any of those places in states with no income tax? Thise states have to make up for that loss of revenue somewhere.

I thought they had a surplus just a few years ago.

Odd.

Can confirm: packed streets, packed theaters, restaurants, etc - even the subway is recovering. NYC is going great aside from older, overpriced midtown buildings that are failing to lease.

For (way) more details, I recommend Jonathan Miller's blog: https://millersamuel.com/blog/

Those numbers are almost a year old; NYC is expecting a significant rise in tourists[1] and for business travel numbers to return to pre-pandemic levels[2].

To my annoyance, rent has continued to rise as well.

[1]: https://www.thrillist.com/news/new-york/nyc-expects-61-milli...

[2]: https://www.cityguideny.com/article/summer-tourism-data-nyc-...

Because of prop 13 how much does the value of commercial real estate effect taxation?

The problem everyone seems to miss is that SF is one of the few places that had a recession due to COVID (not necessarily a GDP recessions, but definitely a weak businesses closed en masse recession) and a lot of other places (illogically) boomed during COVID.

Given recent history (Phoenix MSA’s 2011 GDP was lower than 2007 GDP, whereas SF never went below 2007 levels), it’s not unreasonable to think that other cities are simply in artificial bubbles from the $3tn that was given to consumers over the past 3 years.

The recession was caused by fake tech startups built on ZIRP policies running into IPO difficulties after a bunch of them dumped on the market.

Exactly; the tech companies in SF didn't have the backbone to require RTO like the finance firms in NYC did.

The cities' respective recoveries show that the finance firms made the right call.

Is "backbone" the new moniker for "iron fist"?

Right call for whom ? What's it got to do with backbone if it is just not in anyone (except landlords') interest to mandate RTO ?

I'd argue that people having to leave their house every day is better for society as a whole, even if it feels a bit inconvenient.

Having everyone lock themselves inside and exclusively interact via video chat is not a good thing, IMO.

> Having everyone lock themselves inside and exclusively interact via video chat is not a good thing, IMO.

Sounds like a Black Mirror episode.

lol people would just move jobs to keep working remote.

That's the beauty of working in tech. There's a lot of companies to move over to. Finance is a lot more restricted.

And, interestingly enough, an increasing number of people have moved to NYC to work remotely from here. Living in NYC is a legitimate attraction in its own right, and is appealing to a lot of people even if they're not working here.

As long as people are living where they can afford and enjoy, that's awesome news.

Personally, I prefer to live in smaller cities, but I lived in a huge metropolitan area for decades. I just grew tired of it. In that regard, remote work for me is a blessing.

A better way of putting it would be:

NYC finance workers didn't have the backbone to resist RTO like SF tech workers did.

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