Posted on 06/07/2013 7:00:07 AM PDT by reaganaut1
SAN FRANCISCO VISITORS have forever left their hearts in San Francisco. But leaving the rest of your body here isnt so easy: theres no place to live.
The City by the Bay is going through one of its worst housing shortages in memory. With typical high demand intensified by a regional boom in tech jobs, apartment open houses are mob scenes of desperate applicants clutching their credit reports. The citywide median rental price for a one-bedroom is $2,764 a month, but jumps to $3,500 in trendy areas.
One reason for the shortage? Me.
Ive recently joined the ranks of San Francisco landlords who have decided that its better to keep an apartment empty than to lease it to tenants. Together, we have left vacant about 10,600 rental units. Thats about five percent of the citys total or enough space to house up to 30,000 people in a city that barely tops 800,000. I feel a twinge of guilt for those who want to settle in this glorious city but cant find a flat. But after renting out a one-bedroom apartment in my home for several years, I will never do it again. San Franciscos anti-landlord housing laws and political climate make it untenable.
My partner and I bought our home in the citys Castro neighborhood in 2004. We live upstairs and theres a smaller rental downstairs. At first we had wonderful tenants, and the income helped make our mortgage payments more affordable.
Then we rented to a man who began as a good neighbor, but who soon became a nuisance and who eventually became destructive and dangerous. It started one night when the tenant forgot his keys and rang our doorbell at 2 a.m. until we let him in. Then it happened again and again and again.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“The citywide median rental price for a one-bedroom is $2,764 a month,”
That’s about 5 years of property tax for my house, which has more than 5 bedrooms and cost only 5x more to purchase.
The crime rate here is pretty low too.
Ya might want to zot that comment. It is just bizzare.
We rented to my wife’s sister and BIL until they were able to afford their own home. Then we converted to a one-family. We never wanted to be landlords and wouldn’t gotten this two family house if it hadn’t been for a couple of things that fell into place.
LOL
No joke.
Actually, in a place like San Francisco you can reasonably leave a home unrented.
Victorian era homes, many times, are comprised 2 or 3 dwellings. That is, there may on front door the building with a residence on the main floor and a stair case leading to the other residence(s).
If I had one of those homes and had this guys experience, I can see myself letting the home below me stay vacant. I would use it for storage and guests, while avoiding tennants who do indeed have more rights than landlords and they know it.
Many renters feel entitled to abuse another person and their properly.
The law gives them imprimature and arrogance to trash someone el property and act in all kinds of manner.
I have a friend who owns several homes and she did just that.
No more BS interruptions to her life and if a friendhhas too much to drink they can spend the night downstairs and she is damned proud to be able to let her friends do just that.
Better they use what she calls her in-law home than to get beat up or robbed on the way home.
My bad. Topical not bizzare.
Well, you’re talking about owner-occupied buildings, which usually only have a couple rental units and are a small share of the market. They don’t have much impact on city-wide vacancy figures.
I did read the article, and in it, he makes the claim that people like him refusing to rent are the cause of the vacancy numbers city-wide, which is just ridiculous.
Probably not.
Well, salaries are also proportionally higher in urban markets as well. 3,000 a month looks insane if you live in an area where the average income is 30,000 a year, but not so much when the average income is 80,000 a year.
The average price of a single family home in SF is over 700k. Only 11% of the population can afford to own their own home.
I lived in SF for 25 years and even with rent control I paid $1000/month for a one bedroom apt in a 100 year old bldg. When I left SF in 2002 the rent was adjusted up to $3250/month.
While the physical setting of the city is beautiful the quality of life has deteriorated.
I think the rent control actually contributes to inflated rents, since when landlords finally get the chance to increase rents, they will raise them as much as possible. It actually makes it more of a “seller’s market”, instead of the natural rental market, where what tenants are willing to pay constrains how much rents are raised each year.
The rental prices are also naturally linked to home prices. When the credit is easy or home prices are low, rents drop because there is less demand for apartments. If the prices are high, like in SF, or there is limited inventory of homes, or tight credit, then more people rent and you can charge higher rents without risking vacancies.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.