If that’s the true reason for an exodus, then I hope it benefits the city to have residents that want to live here.

E.g. https://www.cityrealty.com/nyc/market-insight/rental-buildin...

What little I understand is if a landlord is leveraged (?) up the wazoo, the lending bank can make the landlord pay a lump sum if the revenue projections on which the loan is made shrink, since the risk is higher. Somehow, free months don’t count against these revenue projections (assumed a one-off?), through what I imagine is the magic of contract law. The higher end, nicer real estate is probably more highly leveraged. Someone in RE can probably clarify this better.

The companies that manage these properties acquire/refinance loans based on the value of their assets and the value of their assets is mostly determined by the rent they ask for, much less the rent they are actually getting. This leads to commercial landlords refusing to budge on a ridiculous price that was determined in different market conditions and as a result will opt to leave it vacant.

Taking the lower price would adversely affect their access to financing and could put them under water (they already were) on their loans.

Why these agreement/loans don't take this problem into account to prevent this situation is a total mystery though.

I did the math for SF and IIRC ~2mo was equal to a 15% discount. if it sits empty for longer than 2mo, you should have just given the 15% discount. if you let is sit for 2mo AND have to give a 15% discount, now you've really fucked your finances up.

If market rate was 3k a few months back, but is only 2k now, if you take a 15-year view, it's still cheaper to let your rent-controlled unit sit unrented for 12mo than rent it at just 2k for 15 years provided the 3k/mo rates recover in two years.

Basically, that's one of the major reasons why rent-controlled units aren't going down in prices. Bundle in Prop 13, and you aren't even paying any real property taxes on those units to sting your finances.

In my experience, most market rate units turn over every 2 or 3 years. 15 years in sf apartment leases are unusual except for people who cannot afford to move out.

If you assumption, as a landlord, is that the next person into your unit isn't moving for 15 years, then yes, the cost calculation moves. However, that calculation is very different from a 7 year calculation, which is very different from a 2 year calculation. So how much are you going to hedge against not losing money in the future, when you're losing concrete money right now?

I'm a little confused here. If your rent is 1.2k for a 2bd in SF (because resident since 2000s), whereas market rate for a 2bd now is 3.9k in SF -- what is your determination -- is a person able or not able to move-out?

Why would anyone move out every 2 to 3 years if they're rent-controlled, and they'd have to pay significantly more for any new place?

Likewise, if you've been owning a property since the old times, and it's fully paid off, the property tax liability in Cali is tiny, and for older owners perhaps entirely a wash-off due to infamous Prop 13. Which is part of the reason that many owners don't even bother renting their properties.

Edited to add to this, see the spread in June:

https://www.renthop.com/studies/nyc/renthop-2020-subway-rent...

West 4th = West Village, up 7% YOY mid pandemic, even as other neighborhoods saw more drops.

Also see the trend here as editorialized around NYC on pace to overtake SF as the most expensive rent market: https://www.zumper.com/blog/rental-price-data/

A better graph near the bottom of this article to show how small the dip is for rentals: https://streeteasy.com/blog/august-2020-market-reports/

This is all from my casual observations on craigslist and Zillow, I would love to see broader data and analysis if anyone has any

You can get a recently renovated 3 bedroom with laundry and dishwasher, in a desirable area for $4500. Those bedrooms weren't going for less than $2k a year ago.

All had the same rationale: taxes and housing were simply far too high when they could work remotely and live anywhere else. Sure, you don't get the same outdoors, food or retail scene, but plenty of places have those things too.

I imagine the move to working remotely has made that move possible for more people than before, but those I know aren't making temporary moves, they are buying houses.

In my experience this is becoming less and less true, smaller cities are really catching up, it's not 2010 anymore. My pet theory is that social networks like Instagram have done a good job spreading fashion and food experiences/expectations that were previously exclusives to big city centers.

I haven't found it to be even remotely true for the food my family is inclined to eat. Every time I've gone to visit hip small college towns for the last 5 years, I've eagerly sought out the talked-about eateries, and they were all... distinctly mediocre compared to NYC or Bay Area or LA food.

You still can't find anything but Americanized Asian food, even the California-cuisine upscale places are decidedly mediocre, and the food trucks are... fine.

Certainly, it's better than it was at the margin, but it really depends on what your baseline is.

Dropping 50$/person on dinner & drinks in sf isn’t that much money when your rent is 50x+ that figure.

If you want a great literal hole in the wall, try Yamo in the Mission. Burmese food, grand total of 6 seats (all at the bar) in the restaurant, and the entire kitchen is right in front of you. $6 entrees.

While I haven't been up to SF proper for food and barhopping in a few years now, the Lark up in the financial district is much more of what I'd call a good cheap bar. I tend to bristle a bit at people dissing the SF food and drink scene, but I have to remind myself that with few exceptions my favorite places in the Bay Area aren't actually in SF itself. The metro area as a whole has virtually everything you can imagine at a very wide range of price points. I suspect one could make a case that the most interesting stuff happening is in the East Bay and South Bay, though.

Within a narrow window. The diversity and turnover of New York or London’s food offerings compared with the Bay Area’s is on par with the latter’s offerings in relation to Fresno’s. If anything, the Bay offers its uniqueness in the middle tier of immigrant fusion.

Los Angeles and New York City have a substantially larger cultural footprint than other cities.

Even though the variety of food, music, etc. is growing quickly elsewhere, it’s really not the same.

That's a poor choice to judge a restaurant on. You need to base your judgement on things you can't or won't cook at home because it takes too much time, is too complicated, or uses ingredients that are difficult to get.

In a sign of the crazy times we live in, Chez Panisse has started doing takeout. First time I tried it, I got a BLT sandwich. Exactly what it says on the tin: bacon, lettuce, tomato, no weird spices or creative takes or deconstruction. Just a stock BLT sandwich—except better in every way. I'm not even sure how. I would not have thought there was that much room to improve on a BLT through better ingredients and execution, but apparently there is.

Anyway, if you're in Berkeley, I would highly recommend giving it a try.

I don't go to restaurants to be entertained by the food or "impressed" by the "creativity" of the chef, and I'd wager neither do most people.

There are plenty of “sit down” restaurants that aren’t fancy, but are more than “solid takeaway” that fit in this picture. And these are what most folks actually think of when they picture dining out.

From that perspective, eating out in SF always felt like a good deal because for $15 you can get some truly exceptional farm to table food.

But even if we expand the statement to "outside a major city" or even "outside a major metro area", I think a lot of places are culturally devoid suburbs (though I probably would have picked a nicer way of putting it).

I would wager that the majority of suburbs in the US don't have much variety in cuisine, and while communities will certainly have a few stand-out restaurants, there will also be a lot of mediocre fast food, fast casual, and pizza shops. I grew up in places like that, some of my family lives in places like that, and some friends who used to live in cities, but moved out for more space, also live in places like that.

Get too far outside Seattle, Portland, the SF bay area, greater LA, Chicago, Boston, NYC, DC, Austin, Dallas, Nashville, and even many smaller cities, and there really isn't much to write home about when it comes to food. And for some of those cities, "too far outside" can be as little as a half hour drive.

Anecdotally, I moved from the bay area to somewhere near los angeles a while ago, and the americanized chinese food here sucks compared to what I could get in the bay area. And it costs twice as much! :(

The difference in food options between SF (where I am now) and OC (or LA vs OC) is absolutely astounding. Its really not even close. Its gotten better but large cities are still orders of magnitude better.

Sincerely, the League for Reducing Hyperbole on the Internet

PS: “Everybody else”, “absolutely astounding”, “its [sic] really not even close”...sit down and have a nice glass of warm milk and think about what you wrote. :-)

The quality is what it is, but at least someone is trying to give you something interesting to do.

Or at least that was the case in 2019. I really hope we return to valuing in-person interaction when it's safe to do so.

As one example, NYC opens Governor’s Island to the public for only part of the year. Food service comes in the form of a “food court” made up of a bunch of food trucks/container kitchens.

[1] The "Chili Monster" at the Dillinger in Boulder City, NV, in case you were wondering. https://www.thedillinger.com/ (Not to be confused with Boulder, CO.)

Going out of your way to not eat local stuff is completely pointless to me. People take quite a lot of pride in having good stuff specific to their area.

The ingredients are sourced locally for the most part, and the imports are about as good as they can get, and substitutions are sober.

It's hard to share scales with Americans.

I can't imagine there were very many Indian people there, but the food was amazing.

Keep a long runway in an emergency fund, keep your professional network warm, always be ready to bounce if your employer tries to change your quality of life for the worse (mandatory return to an office somewhere, for example). (Disclosure: This is how I operate, and have worked from home for over 7 years.)

[1] https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/companies-switching-remot... ("27 Companies That Have Switched to Long-Term Remote Work")

Certainly I believe that remote work was already on the way to becoming more and more accepted, but by moving out you're still limiting your employment prospects to those companies that decide not to focus more on in-person roles. Maybe that will still work out in the long-run, but I still think there's significant long-term financial benefit in maximizing your number of potential employers.

Plus, if you're expecting to move back to San Francisco at some point, right now is the time to do it while prices are through the floor. You're far better off moving in right now at a 35% discount—which is permanent given rent control—than trying to come back in another year when COVID-19 is (hopefully) over and people are flooding back in.

You apply at companies with remote roles. I haven't lived in SF though, and would never do so, so I can't speak to solving for timing the market there.

When you got major companies like Twitter, google, Facebook, and others already saying WFH is a permanent option that’s put pressure on others to figure out how to make it work.

Talent is needed at many, many companies and if the talent is a.) needed and b.) good enough the company will make “exceptions” to the rule.

Enough companies make enough exceptions and it’s a mainstay policy.

Overall, the other part is that companies that now offer remote work as a permanent option may not have to pay SF salaries so that’s a bonus to the company. It’ll go both ways, the company can say I’m not requiring you to live in high COL area and we have an office in X city, we pay 10% above the market average of ~35-40 cities so they’re still competitive on pay (assumption being that most companies move to this model, FAANG may overpay still but that’s always been the case) so now what do you do?

Literally the only thing keeping me from listing my house right now and moving to a different area is that not enough Bay Area companies have committed to permanent WFH yet. Once that happens, I'm gone.

there is a huge difference, not only in the kinds of work you can put on your resume, but in the quality of co-workers, and what you can learn from them.

You can approximate that experience in some other areas (Provo, Boston, Austin, San Luis Obispo, etc) but a LOT of American cities are still technological backwaters, and there's nothing available but garbage jobs that will drain your soul and turn you into a code zombie.

If companies look like they're aligning on more of a hybrid model where you can WFH but they expect you to show your face in the office every so often, then I'd have to stick to $CA$ and maybe head out somewhere on US-50 between Folsom and Placerville, or maybe way up I-5 somewhere towards Shasta.

It’s great when you have a family with kids and you’re less career focused. But I noticed my comp increased almost 2x their’s over the same timeframe.

This is also true when you're at a home office, and you get acquired, and it becomes a remote office. Your career gets fucked.

I've had it happen to me over and over again; and it's very different when you work at the headquarters.

It's my biggest worry about 'permanent WFH'. It's that I'll end up being like the remote-office nightmare all over again.

If the commitment is there for WFH to become an option for all, corporations will promote one or more WFH VPs to send the message that it’s OK, as occurred for women and minorities. I’d guess they’d choose rising stars with personal commitments that make WFH the obvious humane and moral choice.

If you have employees who have been working productively remotely for a year, it's probably better to find a way to keep them happy and working than to have to find a new employee.

Take your pic. CA folks seem to think the rest of the world is an inhospitable wasteland. Sure, CA is a bit more mild, but it's not perfect.

The advantage with cold is that it’s possible to do something about it. You can always layer up and get better materials for your layers. I spend hours skiing outside at like -15F and am actually comfortable. In hot weather though, once you’re sprawled out naked on the ground, you’ve exhausted your means to get cooler without some kind of machine.

Maybe once or twice per decade is the AQ so bad in CA you have to stay indoors. As opposed to weeks or months every winter (depending on your tolerance - I hate cold).

We definitely had stay-inside days this year and last year, and I could have sworn we did the year before as well. That blew through your per-decade quota in recent consecutive years.

I fully expect we'll have some stay-inside days next year too.

But I do agree that the number of days the air quality is bad just does not come close to the number of days where it's really cold or really hot in other places.

The problem is environmentalists don't want to do planned/controlled burning anymore, hence, the things burn by themselves on their own schedule now, out of our control.

Wear layers. A scarf makes a huge difference. Probably larger than you would think.

Chicago will probably get a "polar vortex" in February or March. It will be a week of really cold weather and then it will be over. You'll probably find that November and December are warmer than you expected. January is a bit dreary, but only because of the reduced daylight hours (compared to LA). Chicago is just a bit further north than NYC, but compared to Paris or London it gets a lot more winter daylight.

The think I've noticed about winter since moving to Chicago is that the really sunny days are the coldest and the cloudy days are warmer. If you've got large south-facing windows, you might need to close the shades or even open the window slightly when it is really cold. That sun can be intense!

For the two hours a day it's out!

Obviously an exaggeration but you can go to work in the dark and drive home in the dark on the shortest days of the year. Can be a real bummer for those that didn't grow up like that.

Per Wikipedia, Chicago's record extreme low is -25°F.

Then there's the humidity with 100+F days in the summer. And mosquitoes.

The other problem was I grew up in a reasonable, livable suburb, and now, when I go back there, I see that rents and housing are really extremely expensive compared to salaries. Jobs suck (there's no real tech industry anymore). And traffic in the suburbs is constant gridlock wherever you go. It's become a real horror show and I couldn't ever contemplate moving back. Weather/Climate is not even the consideration.

If you take what a typical couple pays for SF rent you can buy two houses in most of the US. So... if you're going to be spending a lot of time at home, for many people it makes sense to move out to a cheaper and more spacious locale, at least for now.

Though SF is no New York, it is notably more urban than Portland. San Francisco is physically more strikingly beautiful than Portland, with magnificent views of the bay and ocean from the hills. Portland is surrounded by beautiful forests and parks, but so is SF - you can get from downtown SF into the middle of a quiet redwood forest in about 25 minutes, and the coast, north and south, is far more accessible than it is in Portland[1]. While SF has a severe problem with street addiction and mental illness, so does Portland, and SF does still have extensive walkable urban and semi-urban neighborhoods. Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, and Crissy field are just a few of the outdoor options within the city. There are also plenty of options to live in lower density, SFH neighborhoods with small backyards. Culturally, San Francisco is much more diverse than Portland - SF actually ranks first among US cities in the number of languages spoken by 1000+ households. Portland is overwhelmingly white and has a historical hostility toward ethnics and immigrants (some believe that the anti-Californian sentiment has roots in hostility toward Catholic and darker skinned immigrants) - and, ironically on the other side of the political spectrum, a lot of immigrant or first generation communities are actually uncomfortable with predominantly white, left wing progressive politics. Immigrants may be more likely to find a community in SF than Portland.

[1] I surf, which makes Portland a hard pass for me, though that's a bit too niche for a general comparison.

I think the only things you omitted are the differences in weather and the size of the cities.

- Portland is a fairly small city (especially inner portland) with a long history of anti-growth sentiment. The result is very rural agricultural areas _just_ outside of Portland.

- The weather patterns bring different wildlife and kinds of beauty. While the forests outside SF are quite pretty, they are also very different than the wet douglas fir forests up north. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder -- Portland also extends into the hills and provides famous views of Mt. Hood from the SW hills. The portland zoo for instance, is like going from a city into a rain forest.

The oregon coast is cold and rainy 95% of the year, not the most fun place to visit.

Crime and homelessness, while problems, aren't major factors for people in my experience. After all, those two things haven't really changed.

https://cdn.abcotvs.com/dip/images/5380756_sanfrancisco2019....

I disagree. Its consistently brought up, along with high rent, as one of the worst parts of living in the area. In my experience, the people who stay in SF are willing tolerate it for access to all the amenities there. When the pandemic makes it difficult to enjoy those amenities, it will drive people away.

[1]: https://abc7news.com/renaming-sf-public-schools-school-name-...

I'll add, the fact there are people who downvote information is quite possibly another strike against SF.

My personal opinion is that some of the renaming is a bit over the top, but I'm glad we're re-examining our historical "heroes"; most of what kids read in their US history classes paints an idealized, unrealistic picture of these figures, and ignores real harm they caused, both by their actions and attitudes. Regardless, I just frankly do not care whether a building is named Lincoln High School or John Doe High School. If ditching Lincoln's name makes a bunch of people feel more comfortable, it's no skin off my back.

What's actually important is that we teach the truth, and all of it. When we teach kids about Thomas Jefferson, we should certainly give him credit for the statesman he was, and for what he did to free the US from England. But we should also teach how he owned slaves throughout his entire life and saw no problem with that, and how he was a rich, elite landowner who believed that only a very small, single-digit percent of the population should be allowed to vote. Even Washington, who seemed not entirely comfortable with slavery, owned a slave that was only set free upon Washington's death. And Lincoln... well, his main concern was keeping the Union together. If that ultimately meant allowing the South to keep slavery intact, he was fine with that.

I don't bring all that up to say that they were awful, irredeemable people with no positive qualities. Some of them, if born today, might grow up with very different attitudes. But I think it's reasonable to suggest that quite a few people, especially non-white people, might not be particularly comfortable sending their kids to schools named after these people. And it's perfectly ok that they feel that way.

https://www.city-journal.org/california-race-coding-criteria...

End of lockdowns in CA are being tied to vague "racial justice" goals. These things are all connected. Renaming a high school says "we consider this the most important thing we could be working on right now" which is clearly absurd when you consider the real problems CA has.

But despite being a lifelong Democrat there is a certain level of concern over purity that makes me uneasy. All my Jewish cousins who were in Europe mysteriously disappeared during WWII. Yet, I own and enjoy a German car whose corporate origins are very intertwined with the history of that period of time. I think the Apollo program was pretty cool, and that was fundamentally rooted in the exploitation of German expertise from rocket research involving Nazi slave labor during the war.

So, if someone is disgusted with these things and personally avoids them, that's cool. But if they are on a crusade to purify society from them, I probably don't want to be neighbors.

What did Diane Feinstein do? :)

I think they're leaving for places where lower land prices mean homes with more space - which could mean the suburbs, smaller towns, or could even mean moving back in with their parents.

I know people, in London, where three 20-something couples were renting a three-bedroom house, living 2 people to a room. They barely had room to set up comfortable desks and chairs for everyone, let alone things like exercise equipment. Some of them decided temporarily moving back in with their parents wasn't such a bad idea after all...

The hard bit is the live+work space. I was incredibly lucky that I moved to a larger place right before the shelter-in-place order hit (from a loft to a condo with walls and doors!), but I know a lot of people who have been working on dining tables and sub-optimal improvised desks for the past seven months. If you live in a loft-style place with another person, the lack of personal space can really get to you.

Austin is nice, but comes no where close to the natural beauty of Colorado. I'd put it 2nd the West Coast.

Texas is just flatness and trees. The rivers are nice though.

  SMATTERING OF QUOTES FROM THE ULTIMA VII TEAM

  "Looks like shit... could be west Texas."
  - PHILIP

My favorite restaurants are all closed and you have police state ensuring you don't use public facilities. Why would I pay $4000 a month for housing with none of the benefits?

And you're discounting the fact that they will still be living in a tiny apartment compared to other areas with much lower housing prices.

Especially as Arizona has become more and more liberal/left leaning, you got less folks viewing it as hostile & enjoying the fact you have a lot of hiking/outdoor activities, rivers, lakes and camping all within a short driving distance.

I think the weirdest and most noticeable thing is people riding motorcycles without helmets.

That said; yeah, the heat is not really that bad (it took me about 2 years to acclimate), and there are options for relief. Surprisingly, I think we get more rain in Arizona than in California (not this summer though), and winters are definitely much colder in Arizona than they are in California.

(I spend most of my city time in miami, nyc, and montreal)

One might say that something that could be considered a fairly good indicator of a "good" food-scene would be this: https://www.statista.com/chart/16308/michelin-restaurant-us/ Where SF is no 2 in the country for number of Michelin star restaurants. Again as the first sentence states; one might argue this is not the indicator of a "good" food-scene but I guess we'll have to take what we can in terms of objectivity to try to judge a city on different things, and for food this is at least for high earners, probably a somewhat good indicator.

- You'd have to include SF, San Jose and Oakland together to equal the size of NYC (and much of that SF metro area is single family home suburbs with no one on the street at night)

- Tech workers concentrate in SF proper because there is not much outside of it (yes, there is, but SF is the core)

Just my take, but SF seems to revolve around tech, while finance is big in NYC, it's not the dominating industry like tech is in SF.

you ignore a lot of other industry around the bay and around nyc. Neither Queens nor Fremont are representative of the other areas, neither is Brooklyn or Oakland. Or Berkeley. Or Bronx.

This is a fundamental shift and broadening and many people lived in the city for access to jobs that now they can live elsewhere for.

My understanding is that at Github working remotely is the norm, while I believe the changes Microsoft announced require manager approval if you want to work remote > 50% of the time.

Do you see an end to this pandemic in the next year or so? A good percentage of people are still refusing to wear masks, we aren't anywhere closer to a vaccine etc. I am trying to be optimistic, but the situation isn't improving from any direction and we are already 10 months in :(

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/10/13/covid-vacci...

0: https://www.uchealth.org/today/coronavirus-vaccines-101-what...

If it isn’t, the trial resumes.

I wasn’t speaking to the GP’s question about progress but to their “not following the news” comment.

I apparently should have made that clear.

Expect a majority of the vaccines in trial to fail over the next 6 months, either for safety or efficacy.

For lack of economic need. Most coronaviruses only cause mild symptoms, so there's not been a need for one. SARS vaccine efforts died early because the disease itself died out and there was no impetus to continue searching. MERS is similar in that, even though it hasn't gone away, it burns itself out so quickly that the need for a vaccine is relatively small, and therefore research efforts have been limited.

> Drug development is hard. Most candidates never make it to market.

For vaccines, something like 80+% that make it past Phase 2 end up making it past Phase 3. Its unlikely for most vaccines that make it that far to fail. We already have half a dozen candidates around the world at that point, with more on the way. If anything, its highly unlikely we won't find some kind of vaccine. If not one that grants sterilizing immunity, one that provides enough protection that it makes the disease far less deadly, like the flu vaccine.

Exactly, and because of lack of economic need our experience with creating vaccines against coronaviruses is pretty minimal.

And yes, I agree that we'll get something, but people should be prepared for a few of the vaccines to fail, a few to be pretty mediocre (are they worth even getting) and a few that actually have some utility. The challenge is the ones in development are strung out along a pretty long timeline, so if we're lucky, one of the earliest ones works and we don't have to wait until late 2021 for something worthwhile.

And not only that, but people should expect something promising to be approved and then likely pulled off the market 6-9 months post-approval. It's just the nature of trying to accelerate a vaccine and then once approved, dosing tens of millions of people with it.

The demand was high for reasonably priced older units. "Just add new construction" doesn't work if all that gets built is luxury apartments.

If you build enough quality housing you end up with old crappy housing being impossible to rent out so it either gets abandoned or redeveloped. If you build enough housing the price floor that is rent control ceases to bind because market rates drop below the floor. There can absolutely be a “shortage” of a given combination of quality and price but that’s like saying there’s a shortage of Peter Norvig talented Computer Scientists who’ll work for $50K a year.

That said, housing can be profitably built cheaper, but why would any sane developer make a low price house when there is more profit in luxury housing. SF has refused to allow enough construction to meet demand, and this has resulted in only luxury being built.

Cities with less growth than SF are building more than SF, and as a result all housing is cheaper.

If you consider that a newly constructed 750 sqft 1BR apartment can easily run $800k-$1M, a buyer is looking at $4-5k per month to cover the mortgage, property taxes, insurance, HOA, maintenance, etc. Do you really think a buyer is going to turn around and rent it out for $2k/mo?

For buildings wholly owned by a leasing company, the economics are better, but still not to the point where they're going to rent that out for under $3-4k/mo.

Didn’t stop Elon...

:p

For well-studied examples of this, see Japan: https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-housing-crisis-in-japan-ho...

Building more luxury apartments creates more older units.