Ok, yes it is expensive, but I'm failing to understand how incomes lower than $270,000 are insufficient to cover $6,740 of housing costs. At $270k, even ignoring the large income tax break on mortgage interest, you have $92k/year left over to spend, a pretty large buffer.
Looking at the linked report, it just multiplied the monthly housing costs (for all markets) by 40 to get the minimum annual qualifying income. But how is putting a max of 30% of your income toward housing true everywhere?
I say the same when people on here complain about housing in the Bay Area. 30% of income is only reasonable if you assume that housing costs are correlated with other costs of living, which is very markedly not true in places such as the Bay Area.
Unless I misunderstood, 30% of gross income is likely 50% of your net income. Seems like a decent cap to put on housing expenses to me (especially considering other living costs in the SFO area as others pointed out).
28-30% of monthly income is one of the ratios that is looked at when you apply and you can't exceed it if you're trying to get a mortgage. If you exceed that it's a no-brainer that you will get denied the mortgage.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how economics works. Lots of people want it? It's going to be expensive. Nobody wants it? It's going to be cheap. I, too, would like to live in a huge mansion in Beverly Hills for $3 a week. But should I complain that I can't?
The other half of how it works is that when demand is high, supply should increase to meet it. The reason supply remains constricted and hence prices high has nothing to do with economics, and everything to do with NIMBYists hostile to newcomers.
The other thing is that, as this article points out, this isn't just pure "supply and demand", because the government is pouring subsidies on property ownership, pushing interest rates to 50-year lows, and offering tax incentives for owning homes. None of which gets passed to the majority of renters who end up paying the higher rates. It's a very good point and it's worth talking about.
hostile doesn't even begin to describe it - there's outright hatred (and alot of ignorance of supply/demand). Sadly, we're getting to the point where people would rather make the housing problem even worse, rather than allow more tech people or anyone else for that matter to move into the city.
Just lately they passed proposition C, which will reduce the overall housing supply even more.
The implication of these articles seems to be a very American idea that people NEED a house. Condo? Won't do. Rent and invest in something more diversified? Crazy talk.
I'm American. I just don't understand why people here think so much space is so necessary. Just because we had that luxury for the last 75 years doesn't mean we always will. It's not even a bad thing.
I'm selling my single-family house (in a large urban area) and moving to a small condo building (not an apartment conversion) for just this same reason. My house, small as it is, takes up such a minuscule amount of the actual dirt that I own. Just not having to maintain the yard--tiny amount that I do just to keep the weeds trimmed down--is motivation enough.
And here's the thing: I still have an outdoor area, deeded to me as part of my condo unit, for doing things like having a small garden or woodworking (if I was interested in either of those, but they're the most common "but I couldn't possibly" rebuttals I've heard). I get a deeded parking space, can paint the walls whatever color I want, and even have approval from the (tiny) condo board to run all of the network wiring inside the walls I can stand.
Obviously I'm unmarried sans kids and pets, yeah? Nope, I have a spouse, a kid, and a dog. And you know what? We're all going to fit perfectly. The new place even adjoins a public park, is across the street from a 24-hour grocery, has frequent all-day (and 24-hour) transit, and is within walking distance of two of the best schools in the city. And all for about $200k less than a free-standing house in the same area.
I'm thrilled to not need as much space. And yes, parents, it is entirely possible do to so comfortably, even with your kid having his or her own bedroom.
If I want to be a 35-minute bus ride from a job that pays a six-figure income (actually quite a few jobs, but I only have one of them) yet still live in an exceptionally walkable area inside a region of the country with moderate temperatures and a vast array of indoor and outdoor activities both private and social? Yes, I think that a total price exceeding $200,000 is acceptable. I will be paying just under $350,000 for this new residence.
When I lived in a metro area with a much lower median residence price, my commute to work by single-occupant vehicle was 40 minutes (to get that low of a house price) and statements like "be sure to not waste water, we don't have much of it" were commonplace on the news.
Are you taking into account that most condos are much smaller than most houses? You really should be comparing the median price of a condo where a family of 4 can comfortably live to the median price of a house where a family of 4 can comfortably live. I suspect that difference will, if not disappear, at least be much smaller.
I did not, and I admit that I should have (and only thought of it after clicking "reply").
On the other hand, I also thing we--as American society--need to have a discussion about what constitutes "comfortably." I have coworkers who are appalled at the idea that my three-person-with-pet family lives "comfortably" (kid has a separate bedroom, all of us have space for our hobbies, and there's storage) in a 900sqft house. We're moving to a 770sqft condo and the bulk of that "missing" space is reclaimed by going from a two-level house to a flat because the number of rooms is remaining the same.
In the most abstract sense, I think you have a point, but the reality is that in America, there aren't condos a family of 4 can "comfortably" live in-- it's not considered acceptable that two kids might share a room, or have a dine-in kitchen. Americans just aren't willing to put up with as little space as Europeans are.
There just isn't much overlap in square footage between houses and condos overall-- so I think it's still valid to compare houses to condos. Condos are cheaper because they are smaller. They don't make small houses anymore; that market need is met by condos.
> Condo? Won't do. Rent and invest in something more diversified? Crazy talk.
I see a lot of merit in the rent + diverse investment approach (and that's what I've chosen so far), but this is needlessly dismissive.
Condos won't do for some households. They might be a better option if there were a larger variety of floorplans/sizes beyond 1-2 bedroom. And if HOAs were sane, which most aren't. Though I do appreciate them as a glimpse of what the world would quite likely be more like if a lot of libertarian ideas were adopted.
Renting can be nice, but it leaves you quite vulnerable to changes in demand for housing and consequent price changes. Better not ever be on a fixed income. And there are other ways you can end up being forced out of where you're at than being priced out.
> Just because we had that luxury for the last 75 years doesn't mean we always will.
But it's certainly worth asking why an economy that recently was able to provide one standard of living to more of its participants seems to have trouble doing so now. And housing is not just any luxury, not just any commodity. It's the matrix of communities. It's the geographic and social context of people's lives. Bedrock stuff.
> But it's certainly worth asking why an economy that recently was able to provide one standard of living to more of its participants seems to have trouble doing so now.
You and iamleppert ask the same (good) question but I think that it has a somewhat simple answer: This economy still does provide housing to everyone...just not in the locations where several of those people want to be.
My hometown of nowheresville, SomeOilState on the former fringes of BigCity is a classic example. Just a handful of years ago, I bought my first house for under $150,000 there. It came with a 1/4 acre lot, a pool, three bedrooms and about 1,800sqft of (air conditioned!) living space. Not to mention the two-car garage. In the intervening time since I left that property, its value has shot to more than $200,000 (and it doesn't have a pool any more). But it now has the attractive quality of being a <30 minute drive to many new corporate headquarters and inside a suburb with a growing tax base so that suburb can afford large-city-style amenities. A friend of mine living just north of downtown BigCity lives in a townhouse right next to a light rail station. He bought his property six years ago and it has gone up in value 2.5 times; he regularly gets letters from real estate agents asking if he wants to sell to their clients for cash.
On the other hand, my 14-acre plot of land out in really-middle-of-nowhere, SomeOilState has gone down in value. There used to be three houses along the same country road as it. Now there is just one because the other two burned and were demolished and not replaced. I'd give away the plot if someone wanted it but no one wants to live there because there are very few jobs.
As a society, we've started deciding that we want to live closer to jobs and schools and shopping and amenities...not farther from them. And areas that had fewer jobs now, usually, have more of them because those jobs are moving around from other places.
On top of it all, those growing areas are experiencing pushback from residents--new and old alike--who object to new construction and more housing units. Therefore, the prices climb because, as you correctly pointed out, housing is not fungible.
Of course not everyone needs a house. The point is at least it used to be an option for a lot more people. We're talking about the change in affordability here, not asking if a house makes sense to buy or not.
Just because you don't want a house or it doesn't make sense for you doesn't mean thats the case for everyone.
I've always been somewhat neutral on whether or not I own a house. I'd rather not live in a condo, however. I'm from Indiana (the only state I've lived in) and condos there were usually more expensive than a house or apartment with added maintenance fees. Some of them had minimum age limits or forbade children living there. You might own the inside, but you had rules like an apartment. I don't know if they differ in other areas.
The entire problem with the rent solution is this: When housing prices go up, so does rent. I understand SF has some rent controls, but those aren't going to help a new renter. Sometimes renting is actually more expensive than the monthly payments of buying a house. I only need a minimum of space personally, but I do want a safe and clean place to live. That is difficult to find in cheap (and some mid-priced) rentals.
And as far as space is concerned: This has just as much to do with regulation as it does with people's comfort levels. I don't know about SF regulations, but I know some places limit how many people can live in an apartment, especially if they aren't related. Lots of places limit what sorts of buildings can be built in an area and place minimum space requirements on the units. And other such things. The smallest of the places I know of - a studio or a rented room with shared bathroom and kitchens - are difficult for a couple and certainly not appropriate for a family. Some places child services will take kids away if they share a bedroom with parents, though this might not be the case everywhere. Still, lots of people do live in small housing if it is available.
I'm not sure exactly. I've not lived in one. Those sorts of places do indeed tend to be mostly folks older than child-bearing age. This is a bad comparison, since I don't view children as animals, but here it goes anyway: I'm going to guess it is dealt with much like some of the housing associations deal with certain pets - some don't allow you to keep chickens, for example. Eventually, most of these places can force people out of their homes for such things.
Clearly you don't have children yet. I like my little one to have a safe green place to play and invite friends to.
Or just enjoy some clean air :-)
I'm not an American nor do I live there. There is a reason so many people like living in the suburbs.
As an American who recently moved back from Oslo, the biggest difference I notice is that family-friendly condos with greenspace are much harder to find in America, at least on the SF Peninsula.
It's the norm in Oslo to live in an apartment or rowhouse, but usually with very generous green courtyard space that let kids roam around and play. In the SF peninsula, most apartment buildings either take up the whole lot or fill most of their undeveloped space with parking lots.
It's the same here in Vilnius. The city has quite a small population, but is quite large for its size. Around virtually all apartment buildings (outside the city center) there is a lot of green space - at least it's one thing the Soviets got right!
>very generous green courtyard space that let kids roam around and play
I don't know why this isn't more common. Designs that maximize surface area for windows lend themselves to courtyards naturally. I particularly love the buildings with apartments on 3 sides and a fence/gate facing the street - you get both a nice community area, and an extra security layer (buzzers at both the front gate and the particular stairwell).
Condos can be dangerous. One second you're enjoying your nice condo, the next you're paying your $15k share of the repair cost of the buildings elevator.
The invest in something more diversified talk sounds like the ramblings of someone with a lot of money. The reality is that for most people their mortgage payment will be their largest monthly expense. Why wouldn't they want't that massive monthly payment working for them rather than just throwing it away. The alternative you suggest implies that they should pay that monthly payment (which is probably higher when renting) and then dump the same amount into diversified investments? Seriously?
> Condos can be dangerous. One second you're enjoying your nice condo, the next you're paying your $15k share of the repair cost of the buildings elevator.
Isn't the same true of houses? Don't you have to pay for roofs, water heaters, air conditioners, etc?
You can choose to push off your repairs, like I do with the roof, or you can try to fix them yourself, like my house's previous owner. And if you do choose to do something, you can choose the quality and the timeframe. With an HOA you are forced to spend the money and have little say as to how you want to spend it and in what timeframe.
It's not like Condos in San Fran are affordable either, though. Last time I looked. I don't have 20% to put down on $750k. And why is it $750k? Because we can't have new construction, no, that would diminish the property values of the "established gentry", excuse me, the people who were lucky enough to buy something in 1997. So let's screw over an entire generation of Americans, maybe even 2 generations, so that the 50-somethings can keep their cushy retirement funds, i.e., their existing properties. America. The Greatest Country on Earth, unless you have less than $2-3 million in total assets, in which case you can fuck right off and go live somewhere on a farm in Nebraska.
There are plenty of people who are happy to live in Nebraska. Warren Buffet is happy in Nebraska. You think you're too good for it or something?
Yeah, either be worth a couple million, or buy property in a smaller city or town. If said city or town is lame, make it better. We live in one of the biggest countries in the world. You don't have to live in SF or Manhattan, nor are you entitled to.
> Rent and invest in something more diversified? Crazy talk.
This seems like pie-in-the-sky talk from high-income earners.
It's not like people are just freely choosing to invest in a house over other investments. Instead, since they have to pay for housing no matter what, they are trying to mitigate loss, if not make a return, on the sunk cost of dwelling. If they are renting, they don't have "extra" money that they can arbitrarily put towards whatever they choose.
I don't know the population breakdown in San Francisco, but I would bet that the majority are not developers. Most Americans live paycheck to paycheck and have very little savings. Their house is the single largest store of wealth for people in America.
If they do have savings, it's likely to be in an IRA or a 401k, so they aren't free to apply that to whatever area of investment they like, either.
People who become homeowners aren't buying condos analogous to their current apartments, they're buying (comparatively) enormous houses with front and back yards and 2-car garages. This is not just trying to recover sunk costs, this is a substantial upgrade in consumption.
Also, remember that interest is front-loaded in the amortization schedule, and that disappears into the void same as rent. You can pay your mortgage for a long time without building substantial equity.
One difference is that a house didn't normally cost more than renting. It required the down payment, but after that could very easily be cheaper than renting and it was its own investment. So you were able to invest in other things while also investing in real-estate. This of course assumes the price of housing is reasonable, but it was for many years and still is in many places.
Another big reason to prefer a house is that Apartments are very often not family friendly and have very little sound proofing (to protect others from your crying baby and to keep others from waking your finally sleeping baby).
The solution is to vote someone in who will loosen the law around building homes. More homes = more supply = reduced price (assuming fresh supply outpaces fresh demand).
This is not magic. This can be fixed. It needs the knowledge, organisation, and will to fix it.
'loosening' isn't even the beginning of the solution.
Build baby build; I would actually love to see this solved by taxing out building uses that are no longer congruent to the density of the surrounding area.
Historical landmarks could become immune if they are deeded over to public trusts as a form of museum or park.
Of course, it's worth noting that this wouldn't be such a big issue if nearly every city surrounding SF weren't hell-bent on remaining (depending on your perspective) either 'quiet leafy suburban utopia' or 'dystopian car-choked sprawling asphalt hellscape'.
Maybe some of the other cities nearby should pick up their fair share of residents.
The part of SF I live in hasn't seen the massive price and rent hikes that people are up in arms about. There has been some increase in the last six months, but before that, over the decade, it's been relativeley slow and stable. Why? Because it's unfashionable.
It's hard not to see the entire 'crisis' as a bunch of techbros and hipsters squabbling over the same four city blocks in the mission.
Yeah, this is entirely accurate in my experience. I've lost a couple friends to the SF hype train, and all of them are complaining because the apartments that are walking distance from their offices cost too damn much.
Bitch, I live 25 minutes away from my office and have a 2 bedroom townhouse for the same price you pay to rent a spare bedroom. Granted, I live in San Diego, not San Francisco, but still.
I've taken public transit to work every day for about 4+ years now, since I started working downtown. My commute to the Embarcadero is ~30 minutes. There's Bart, Caltrain and multiple bus routes.
How long until tech companies need to start offering free housing to attract talent to move to SF?
Even with the higher salaries, high enough to afford the same caliber home, the stress of dealing with that market is a turn off. What if it turns out to be a bubble and the million dollar shack you bought is only really worth $200k. You could be trapped with an underwater mortgage easily. Not that I know if it is a bubble or not, but that is a large amount of risk that the employer is expecting the employee to take.
Which is why I wonder if you tried to shift the risk. Say, give up 30%(the supposed standard amount spent on housing) of salary in exchange for the company providing housing.
"the stress of dealing with that market"
I could easily imagine a compensation package where the employer provides/pays for some kind of concierge-like service to take care of this for you. I would be stunned if there was more than token provision or uptake of company-provided accommodation.
> How long until tech companies need to start offering free housing to attract talent to move to SF?
To do that they would have to build housing, and if you get permission to start building then you don't need to give it away as things should start to correct themselves.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 112 ms ] threadLooking at the linked report, it just multiplied the monthly housing costs (for all markets) by 40 to get the minimum annual qualifying income. But how is putting a max of 30% of your income toward housing true everywhere?
But it might depends on the country and stuff.
Just lately they passed proposition C, which will reduce the overall housing supply even more.
I'm American. I just don't understand why people here think so much space is so necessary. Just because we had that luxury for the last 75 years doesn't mean we always will. It's not even a bad thing.
They are cheaper than houses of a similar size, but, at least where I live, the HOA fees negate about 50% of the difference in price.
And here's the thing: I still have an outdoor area, deeded to me as part of my condo unit, for doing things like having a small garden or woodworking (if I was interested in either of those, but they're the most common "but I couldn't possibly" rebuttals I've heard). I get a deeded parking space, can paint the walls whatever color I want, and even have approval from the (tiny) condo board to run all of the network wiring inside the walls I can stand.
Obviously I'm unmarried sans kids and pets, yeah? Nope, I have a spouse, a kid, and a dog. And you know what? We're all going to fit perfectly. The new place even adjoins a public park, is across the street from a 24-hour grocery, has frequent all-day (and 24-hour) transit, and is within walking distance of two of the best schools in the city. And all for about $200k less than a free-standing house in the same area.
I'm thrilled to not need as much space. And yes, parents, it is entirely possible do to so comfortably, even with your kid having his or her own bedroom.
A total price far over $200k is considered cheap?
When I lived in a metro area with a much lower median residence price, my commute to work by single-occupant vehicle was 40 minutes (to get that low of a house price) and statements like "be sure to not waste water, we don't have much of it" were commonplace on the news.
FWIW, I'm not in San Francisco.
- Seattle[0]: Median sale price for a property classified as a condominium, $413k; median sale price for a single-family house, $672k.
- San Francisco[1]: Condo, $658k; single-family, $1.14m
0 - http://www.zillow.com/seattle-wa/home-values/
1 - http://www.zillow.com/San-Francisco-CA/home-values/
On the other hand, I also thing we--as American society--need to have a discussion about what constitutes "comfortably." I have coworkers who are appalled at the idea that my three-person-with-pet family lives "comfortably" (kid has a separate bedroom, all of us have space for our hobbies, and there's storage) in a 900sqft house. We're moving to a 770sqft condo and the bulk of that "missing" space is reclaimed by going from a two-level house to a flat because the number of rooms is remaining the same.
There just isn't much overlap in square footage between houses and condos overall-- so I think it's still valid to compare houses to condos. Condos are cheaper because they are smaller. They don't make small houses anymore; that market need is met by condos.
I see a lot of merit in the rent + diverse investment approach (and that's what I've chosen so far), but this is needlessly dismissive.
Condos won't do for some households. They might be a better option if there were a larger variety of floorplans/sizes beyond 1-2 bedroom. And if HOAs were sane, which most aren't. Though I do appreciate them as a glimpse of what the world would quite likely be more like if a lot of libertarian ideas were adopted.
Renting can be nice, but it leaves you quite vulnerable to changes in demand for housing and consequent price changes. Better not ever be on a fixed income. And there are other ways you can end up being forced out of where you're at than being priced out.
> Just because we had that luxury for the last 75 years doesn't mean we always will.
But it's certainly worth asking why an economy that recently was able to provide one standard of living to more of its participants seems to have trouble doing so now. And housing is not just any luxury, not just any commodity. It's the matrix of communities. It's the geographic and social context of people's lives. Bedrock stuff.
You and iamleppert ask the same (good) question but I think that it has a somewhat simple answer: This economy still does provide housing to everyone...just not in the locations where several of those people want to be.
My hometown of nowheresville, SomeOilState on the former fringes of BigCity is a classic example. Just a handful of years ago, I bought my first house for under $150,000 there. It came with a 1/4 acre lot, a pool, three bedrooms and about 1,800sqft of (air conditioned!) living space. Not to mention the two-car garage. In the intervening time since I left that property, its value has shot to more than $200,000 (and it doesn't have a pool any more). But it now has the attractive quality of being a <30 minute drive to many new corporate headquarters and inside a suburb with a growing tax base so that suburb can afford large-city-style amenities. A friend of mine living just north of downtown BigCity lives in a townhouse right next to a light rail station. He bought his property six years ago and it has gone up in value 2.5 times; he regularly gets letters from real estate agents asking if he wants to sell to their clients for cash.
On the other hand, my 14-acre plot of land out in really-middle-of-nowhere, SomeOilState has gone down in value. There used to be three houses along the same country road as it. Now there is just one because the other two burned and were demolished and not replaced. I'd give away the plot if someone wanted it but no one wants to live there because there are very few jobs.
As a society, we've started deciding that we want to live closer to jobs and schools and shopping and amenities...not farther from them. And areas that had fewer jobs now, usually, have more of them because those jobs are moving around from other places.
On top of it all, those growing areas are experiencing pushback from residents--new and old alike--who object to new construction and more housing units. Therefore, the prices climb because, as you correctly pointed out, housing is not fungible.
Just because you don't want a house or it doesn't make sense for you doesn't mean thats the case for everyone.
The entire problem with the rent solution is this: When housing prices go up, so does rent. I understand SF has some rent controls, but those aren't going to help a new renter. Sometimes renting is actually more expensive than the monthly payments of buying a house. I only need a minimum of space personally, but I do want a safe and clean place to live. That is difficult to find in cheap (and some mid-priced) rentals.
And as far as space is concerned: This has just as much to do with regulation as it does with people's comfort levels. I don't know about SF regulations, but I know some places limit how many people can live in an apartment, especially if they aren't related. Lots of places limit what sorts of buildings can be built in an area and place minimum space requirements on the units. And other such things. The smallest of the places I know of - a studio or a rented room with shared bathroom and kitchens - are difficult for a couple and certainly not appropriate for a family. Some places child services will take kids away if they share a bedroom with parents, though this might not be the case everywhere. Still, lots of people do live in small housing if it is available.
I'm stunned that this would be legal for all but a small class of dwelling (retirement homes, perhaps).
If you get pregnant you're kicked out? How does that even work logistically?
It hasn't been since 1988. You can no more refuse to rent to someone with children than you can someone who is black.
Pretty sure the Fair Housing Act would like to have a word with the landlords ("55 and older" communities excepted).
Some places child services will take kids away if they share a bedroom with parents
I'm pulling the [citation needed] card on this one.
That's not to say that renting, in whatever form, doesn't have its issues. I simply think that some of the issues you raised aren't real.
It's the norm in Oslo to live in an apartment or rowhouse, but usually with very generous green courtyard space that let kids roam around and play. In the SF peninsula, most apartment buildings either take up the whole lot or fill most of their undeveloped space with parking lots.
I don't know why this isn't more common. Designs that maximize surface area for windows lend themselves to courtyards naturally. I particularly love the buildings with apartments on 3 sides and a fence/gate facing the street - you get both a nice community area, and an extra security layer (buzzers at both the front gate and the particular stairwell).
The invest in something more diversified talk sounds like the ramblings of someone with a lot of money. The reality is that for most people their mortgage payment will be their largest monthly expense. Why wouldn't they want't that massive monthly payment working for them rather than just throwing it away. The alternative you suggest implies that they should pay that monthly payment (which is probably higher when renting) and then dump the same amount into diversified investments? Seriously?
Isn't the same true of houses? Don't you have to pay for roofs, water heaters, air conditioners, etc?
Yeah, either be worth a couple million, or buy property in a smaller city or town. If said city or town is lame, make it better. We live in one of the biggest countries in the world. You don't have to live in SF or Manhattan, nor are you entitled to.
This seems like pie-in-the-sky talk from high-income earners.
It's not like people are just freely choosing to invest in a house over other investments. Instead, since they have to pay for housing no matter what, they are trying to mitigate loss, if not make a return, on the sunk cost of dwelling. If they are renting, they don't have "extra" money that they can arbitrarily put towards whatever they choose.
I don't know the population breakdown in San Francisco, but I would bet that the majority are not developers. Most Americans live paycheck to paycheck and have very little savings. Their house is the single largest store of wealth for people in America.
If they do have savings, it's likely to be in an IRA or a 401k, so they aren't free to apply that to whatever area of investment they like, either.
Also, remember that interest is front-loaded in the amortization schedule, and that disappears into the void same as rent. You can pay your mortgage for a long time without building substantial equity.
Another big reason to prefer a house is that Apartments are very often not family friendly and have very little sound proofing (to protect others from your crying baby and to keep others from waking your finally sleeping baby).
This is not magic. This can be fixed. It needs the knowledge, organisation, and will to fix it.
Build baby build; I would actually love to see this solved by taxing out building uses that are no longer congruent to the density of the surrounding area.
Historical landmarks could become immune if they are deeded over to public trusts as a form of museum or park.
Maybe some of the other cities nearby should pick up their fair share of residents.
It's hard not to see the entire 'crisis' as a bunch of techbros and hipsters squabbling over the same four city blocks in the mission.
Yeah, this is entirely accurate in my experience. I've lost a couple friends to the SF hype train, and all of them are complaining because the apartments that are walking distance from their offices cost too damn much.
Bitch, I live 25 minutes away from my office and have a 2 bedroom townhouse for the same price you pay to rent a spare bedroom. Granted, I live in San Diego, not San Francisco, but still.
Great beer, though, and I did really enjoy my neighborhood (South Park) when I didn't have to leave it.
THAT is your mistake. I would die if I tried to cycle to work every day. I take a car like a barbarian.
I've taken public transit to work every day for about 4+ years now, since I started working downtown. My commute to the Embarcadero is ~30 minutes. There's Bart, Caltrain and multiple bus routes.
Even with the higher salaries, high enough to afford the same caliber home, the stress of dealing with that market is a turn off. What if it turns out to be a bubble and the million dollar shack you bought is only really worth $200k. You could be trapped with an underwater mortgage easily. Not that I know if it is a bubble or not, but that is a large amount of risk that the employer is expecting the employee to take.
Which is why I wonder if you tried to shift the risk. Say, give up 30%(the supposed standard amount spent on housing) of salary in exchange for the company providing housing.
To do that they would have to build housing, and if you get permission to start building then you don't need to give it away as things should start to correct themselves.
NIMBYs don't want that though.