High prices sending Bay Area renters and homebuyers to outlying communities | Hacker News Reader

High prices sending Bay Area renters and homebuyers to outlying communities

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16 pointsprostoalex56 comments

This suggests there are land owners who are growing rich on the backs of the prosperous tech community.

I always find it strange that articles on this topic go directly from wages to rent prices without acknowledging there is a human making the decision to raise rent in between. It's as if people have begun to believe that the relationship between demand and increased prices is a physical law rather than a societal tendency.

Consider the following alternatives. 1. A land owner decides not to raise the rent on their properties. (It might shock some to know that people do, willingly leave money on the table for all sorts of reasons) 2. Regulation fetters rent increases to prevent people from having to leave their homes.

I think there are many good examples where the above do not, and have not happened. But I take issue with the blindspot, or purposeful omission, of such discussion. Perhaps I am being overly harsh on readers of such articles, but I suspect that by omitting these considerations, you decrease the chance that one will call for property tax controls, rent caps, or organize local property owners into a self-regulating body to limit rent increases.

> A land owner decides not to raise the rent on their properties.

If a landlord has fifty prospective tenants (as they surely will if they're offering the best deal in town), how should they whittle that down if not by raising the asking price?

By choosing one at random, perhaps?

More realistically, through an arbitrary emotional choice.

There's a reason stories of housing discrimination generally center around communities employing rent control. When faced with more tenants than they know what to do with, landlords have way less financial consequences from doing all manner of unfortunate things.

What an inefficient idea. Better to give it to the person who values it the most, as signified by the price they are willing to pay.

If you make someone pay more for the same thing that was worth less before, did you increase the value of the thing or decrease the value of money?

I don't think "you" did anything. It was the preferences and decisions of millions of cooperating parties that affected underlying value.

Yeah, Chapter One of any economics textbook makes clear that it takes two to tango.

Actually, a lot more than two.

Screw "efficiency." Why should rent in urban areas be $3500 for one person just because someone can afford it? People on HN love to talk about how suburbs are destroying the planet, then others turn around and claim that impossibly high rents in urban centers is "efficient"?

Rent is $3500 because special interests are artificially suppressing the supply of housing.

Charging lower rent in urban areas wouldn't create more of them to live in. You'd have the exact same number of people living in suburbs.

Yes, but you'd have a more diverse mix in the urban center to run the place, more of the consumer surplus would be distributed more widely, and a strong pressure against class mobility, housing and transportation costs, would be reduced for those lucky enough to be selected for a high demand area.

And then they'd sublet to the highest bidder.

Very easy, pick the ones more likely to stay around, more likely to not damage the place, more likely to not cause a nuisance.

Now of course it is silly. Why would they not just raise the price? Unless they do what they do for fun or provide a public charity or good, why sift through hundreds of cred reports and pay marketing researches or run a lottery of sorts if say it is easier to just say "ok, rent is now 20% higher".

If there were a way to know in advance that a prospective tenant was going to damage the place or be a nuisance, or to stay a long / short time (whichever is worse) wouldn't landlords already be using that technique?

They do and try if it is quick. Credit reports are used as a proxy "Paid back his bills = proxy for will probably not skip on rent and trash the place". Others could use social status, for example, maybe other un-expected clues. Would it be illegal to create national black lists that land-lords can share? Casinos do it... It is just not worth bothering probably.

It just doesn't pay to worry about it if can just raise the price. The price to fix-up and absorb the damage from a few such incidents is folded into the insurance and current rent price.

Some landlords do that by offering discounts for signing a multi-year lease.

Because when the good times stop rolling, these high-earning tech workers getting bussed in to wherever they go will vanish.

My uncle owned a few properties, mostly outright with no mortgages. Once he found a good tenant, he'd generally only raise the rents to absorb new property taxes.

Everything has a price. If your investment horizon is 30 years vs 30 months, the safe gets are good bets.

Your comment seems to be answering some question other than the one I asked.

I always find it strange that articles on this topic go directly from wages to rent prices without acknowledging there is a human making the decision to raise rent in between.

There's also a confounding factor thrown in by the IRS: as I understand it, landlords are not allowed to claim losses on rental properties unless they charge above median rent for the area, without regard to property age or condition. Thus, there is a constant upward pressure on rent prices, especially for lower cost units.

Interesting. I wasn't aware of that incentive. Thanks!

"This suggests there are land owners who are growing rich on the backs of the prosperous tech community"

I wouldn't think this was at all in doubt?

There would probably be a consolidation happening. In such a hot area, those that have large resources would probably come in and just try to buy blocks at a time if they can. I imagine in a while you'd find that some prince from Saudi Arabia owns whole neighborhoods.

Then some landlords would 'grow rich' from selling property made more valuable by etcetcetc.

EQR and AVB, both with significant ownership in Bay Area, are publicly traded.

That's pretty much the side of the story that is never told. The newspapers only like to talk about the San Franciscans that are renters and find themselves forced out and completely omit the San Franciscans that are owners that realize they can make a great stable income taking advantage of the high rents if they are willing to live farther away.

I'd love to see the following headline one day "Increased housing demand from techies; Some San Franciscans win, some lose."

Furthermore, I'd love to see the following headline too:

"Why can't renting native San Franciscans count on those San Franciscans that own homes to choose them over techies when choosing who to rent to?"

The situation is absurd and it sucks for everyone, but if anyone should get the blame it is the housing owners. Ultimately, they can choose who to rent to and do have the right of renting to a fellow San Franciscan over a Google employee willing and able to pay a lot more. I really want to see the same people protesting the busses spend half their time blocking buses and half the time on the front lawns of those San Franciscans who've moved to the suburbs, but still own housing in San Francisco that they keep raising the rents on.

Personally, I think those housing owners are right to accept a higher rent. Years ago they made the right choice to buy rather than rent while others took accepted their rent controlled apartment and ignored the housing problem until it was beyond their capacity to solve.

And on top of this, the Bay Area has awful public transportation, so relocated people equals more drivers on already crowded roads.

Whenever someone says this, I can't help but feel they don't know what truly awful public transport looks like.

Yeah, try anywhere in southern CA.

LA's made quite a bit of improvement over the past 20 years. It's not particularly great, but I'm not sure it qualifies as worse than the Bay Area anymore. Depends to some extent on where you are within each metro area and what kind of commute you have. Some LA maps (metro and commuter rail):

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spring-2012-LACMTA-M...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Metrolink_system_dia...

The extension of the Expo Line (light blue on the first map) out to Santa Monica, scheduled to open next year, should improve things further. The Purple Line extension even more, but that's unfortunately some years out.

The bus network is also crazy-extensive, and used by a large portion of the city: http://media.metro.net/riding_metro/maps/images/system_map.g...

Sure, there are plenty of places with worse public transit, even just within the state of California. That doesn't change the fact that the Bay Area has an awful public transportation system that fails to provide services to the majority of commuters.

I guess I don't have enough experience. From what I've seen of San Francisco, buses are frequent and timely.

My friend out there checks her phone, leaves the house accordingly, and catches it every time. To me, that seems like excellent service.

SF is just one part of the Bay Area.

> Muni is the slowest major transit system in America—and among the least reliable and most overcrowded.

http://www.spur.org/publications/article/2010-02-01/learning...

Visit a second day and see if your opinion remains. Muni is the worst major-city public transit system in the nation.

Well the silicon valley is based over here so you would expect better.

Not sure what that means. Where is here?

Wow, completely misunderstood that. Not sure how.

It is always relative for public transport. You get people in New York and London whinging about having to wait 6 minutes for the next train, because they just missed one. Coming from an area where we would have buses every hour if you were lucky, this seemed ludicrous, but I started to feel the same way after 6 months.

Part of the reason is because people in New York treat public transit differently: at least in Manhattan, it's assumed that public transit is "just there", i.e. I don't have to time when I leave for the subway. This means I don't bother checking when the train is leaving, or planning my day around the subway, at all. I just assume, given I want to go somewhere, that how long it's going to take me is about the longest it's ever taken me so far.

In contrast, in Providence or Phoenix (or even when taking the train in NY), when using public transit, I make sure to time everything as well as possible, so that I minimize my wait times. Which means it's a lot more of a big deal when there are delays, because there aren't enough buses/trains to just take the next one available, and I end up waiting for the entire time of the delay.

I grew up in Toronto, Canada. And when everyone is complaining about Bart or Muni or Caltrain. And complain again when Bart is on strike. I just laugh at them.

Any fellow TTC haters would agree here.

By the way, do you call Tracy as part of Bay Area?

I am amazed how well the TTC works in the snow.

ha, I'm a Toronto guy myself.

I've lived in Toronto. And San Francisco. The TTC is a thousand times better than either BART or MUNI.

You can actually sit on your seats (see: BART). There aren't giant shit-stains on the carpet (who the fuck puts carpet in a public transit vehicle?!). The trains run on time for the most part (see: MUNI). The stations don't literally smell like shit and piss (see: BART). Oh, and it takes 23 mins to travel 7 mi, instead of 55min (York Mills - Union station, compare with Ocean Beach - Embarcadero).

The BART and MUNI are horrific transit agencies. The TTC ain't perfect, but it is strictly better in every single way. You Torontonians have easily the second- or third-best mass transit system on this continent. Nothing in the SF Bay Area even comes into the same league.

Bart is very punctual, didn't see that from TTC. Covers more areas, actually building new stations to SF. Connected with 2 international airports....

Really?

Nope, disagree. The TTC is excellent. SF transit is... ehhhhhhn. The Bay area's geography doesn't make it easy I imagine.

I find the Caltrain to be roughly 100000x better than NJ Transit.

The seats are better on NJ Transit, but I never had to take it as a commuting platform (only on the weekends into NYC or to EWR), but I found Caltrain to be so unreliable as to make driving 40 minutes up I280 to a BART station to be a better option.

Also their ticketing is messed up unless you're a regular with a clipper card, and even then it's easy to forget to sign on / off.

Not sure if trolling. I use NJTransit on a daily 2 hour commute. The main problem with NJTransit is that the ride home is almost never on time. 90% of the time, it's 5-10 mins late. But I can count on one hand how many times the morning ride has been delayed over the past 2 years, most of which had to do with atrocious winter weather affecting all the trains. If Caltrain had to deal with Northeast winter weather it would be 10x worse than NJT.

You are so right on this. I realized at a young age, if you want a life and you live in the Bay Area(except S.F.); you need a reliable vehicle--preferably a vehicle you can repair youself. If you are reading and poor--buy a old Toyota. The 22r engine is almost indestructible.

This has been happening for the last 20 years. The quintessential "commute" town is Tracy. Grew out of nowhere to fill this exact need.

Hey, at least you can ride a train from Tracy to San Jose. Doesn't necessarily have to be a nightmare of a car commute.

Wow, that commute time image is laughably wrong. 1 hour commute from Tracy? One hour to where?! One hour over the pass, barely into Livermore!

I recently left the bay area as well, but I went way far north and gave up the commute. None of the fringe cities have decent school systems. That's what is most important to me at this point. (3 kids.)

>>>That compares to San Jose's fourth-quarter median price of $645,000; Sunnyvale's $964,000; Milpitas' $648,000; Oakland's $435,500; and San Francisco's $867,000.

Can anyone explain why Sunnyvale has a higher median than SFO? Is it because SFO has more apartments compared to individual houses in Sunnyvale.

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