Well it's either greedy, scheming tech workers or greedy, scheming Chinese speculators. Isn't there a pattern here? The problem simply must be caused by powerful, scheming outsiders. Despite lack of evidence, as this comment is a great example, defying the claim of lack of such by GP as if it simply hadn't been heard.

A lot of it is greedy, scheming local slumlords, to be honest.

If we abolished Prop 13 statewide, did some minor up-zoning throughout the Bay Area (and had more mixed use zones), made new housing easier to construct (less drawn out process for people to block development, etc.), reduced parking requirements, worked on improving public transit, and taxed unlived-in buildings [or better, switched toward land-value taxes], did more planning at a regional rather than municipal level, we could take a lot of incremental bites out of the housing quagmire.

Unfortunately most of those are politically infeasible.

Yes, I think the largest property owner in the US is Blackstone, a private equity firm that bought the property at the downturn.

From a strictly economic perspective they are helping increase demand when it was low and increase supply later on. They got rewarded for that.

How does owning a property increase it's supply? I'm not an economist, but I think you have got to build houses to make more of them.

If the zoning laws werent there, they would be building new buildings(like they currently do in china. Hence the term ghost cities) instead of investing in overpriced existing stock.

That's not always the case. In places like SF, the only way to build is up, which is expensive, requires alot of capital, and is risky by itself even if you don't have NIMBY people fighting it. In this case, Monopoly has it exactly right as far as the costs and values of putting a new hotel on Boardwalk vs. putting 4 hotels on Mediterranean Ave.

What data do you have that building a high rise in San Francisco is financially risky? To the contrary cities like San Francisco is a gold mine for rent seeking as there is such a pent up demand for housing after many decades of under building and the rents are so high that building a high rise is unlikely to carry much risk at all compared to other asset classes.

> the only way to build is up, which is expensive, requires a lot of capital, and is risky by itself

inherently more risky than building up in any other city, like NY or HK?