A lot of the fire, heat and policy-making on the Peninsula lately has been driven by the belief that we will be adding more of...well, everything. Except perhaps affordable, local entertainment. Rent control. Affordable housing. Mass transit. High density. Subsidized X, Y, Z and back to A. ADU's. UBI. Free lunch. What if it's all just BeeEss?
You can find polls and surveys to support or contradict any position you choose. But you can't deny the fact of open market pricing. Not the engineered, subsidized, hidden-cost stuff like renewable energy. I'm talking the "walk into a place of business and get a price quote" response.
Here's the "walk-in" price that caught my eye this week. A friend of a friend is moving to Portland. I know, I know--really? Now? He's got remote work status until..... who knows when. She can transplant her practice anywhere. All that aside, the cost to rent a truck to move your stuff yourself to Portland today is $2,500. The price to rent the same truck in Portland to drive to the Bay Area is.......wait for it, $300. If I gave you my special 20 minute How-to-Negotiate class, I'll bet you could get them to pay you $300 to bring the truck back for them. It would cover gas, lunch and the Golden Gate bridge toll.
Will the exodus continue? Yes. Will it last more than a couple years? Maybe. Will it reverse within the next five? Doubtful. I'm glad I'm not all-in on a high-density, all-electric$$, bird cage with a minuscule courtyard, 6' x 6' elevators and no balcony that I will need to sell for $650,000 to break even. The old saying "don't fight the Fed" only applies if you have to get in the ring.
Joe- like the “all-electric” snap.
The electricity was out on the Avenue for the second time this month. Bet the restaurants and bakeries were glad they had natural gas.
The City Council needs to keep us safe and fix potholes. No more virtue-envy of Berkeley’s wokeness.
Posted by: Cassandra | July 31, 2020 at 07:17 AM
DMV appointment Monday November 9th @ 930a in Reno. Officially becoming Nevada resident.
Posted by: Barking Dog | July 31, 2020 at 07:38 AM
+13% after-tax income. Congrats.
Posted by: Joe | July 31, 2020 at 10:45 PM
Interesting piece in the WSJ on Wednesday about Google going to work at home until at least July 2021. It notes a Santa Clara County regulation requiring each workspace to be 250 square feet! Thinking back to my office days, that seemed like senior executive-style space. Indeed a search yields this:
By 2010, the average office worker’s space had gone from 90 square feet in 1994 to 75 square feet, Time magazine reports.
If your company plans an office redesign, it's likely that new cubicles will measure 6 feet wide by 6 feet deep -- that's 36 square feet -- or maybe less -- perhaps only 5 feet by 5 feet, or a mere 25 square feet. Cubicles are generally sold in pods of six or more. While the smaller cubicle gives you less elbow room, it's better for the environment. Less space improves an office's carbon footprint. While the average office worker might have less room in which to work, that's not true at the executive level. Time magazine reports that executive work spaces have actually grown -- but these employees are probably not working in cubicles.
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So the latest in Covid regulations means a 7-10X increase in per worker floor space? Don't expect that to become the norm in Silicon Valley. Austin, Salt Lake City, Denver, Boise---the techies are coming! I wonder if San Mateo County is similar?
Posted by: Joe | August 02, 2020 at 02:57 PM
From the screenplay for the 1960 film The Alamo. Written by James Edward Grant, delivered by frontiersman and former Congressman Davy Crockett, played by John Wayne-
“Republic. I like the sound of the word. It means people can live free, talk free, go or come, buy or sell, be drunk or sober, however they choose. Some words give you a feeling. 'Republic' is one of those words that makes me tight in the throat - the same tightness a man gets when his baby takes his first step or his first baby shaves and makes his first sound as a man. Some words can give you a feeling that makes your heart warm. 'Republic' is one of those words.”
Posted by: Peter Garrison | August 02, 2020 at 04:50 PM
https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/tahoe-real-estate-homes-for-sale-pandemic-15449660.php
Posted by: Barking Dog | August 03, 2020 at 12:07 PM
Thanks, BD. Being a 20+ years owner in Tahoe, I will be interested to see how the new owners who may think they want to be here full time adapt to poor cell coverage, sketchy internet from Suddenlink, snow, sleet and wind driven power outages, etc. Should be fun on the roads in Jan/Feb too. "What are snow tires?"
Posted by: Joe | August 03, 2020 at 01:44 PM
Every once in awhile I actually bother with NextDoor. Tonight I find a classic case (head case) named David Katleman from San Mateo saying:
Such a NIMBY topic, don’t you dare build more housing near me. I raised three children who are in their twenties now, all moved out of state because it’s too expensive here. Heck, if I sold my place I’ve had for 30 years, I would have to move too. I gladly invite more dense housing near rail/BART. I’ve had enough of NIMBY owners trying to keep others out, it’s revolting.
....If the mysterious censors on ND remove my response, it will still be available here:
I've had enough of people thinking they can call someone a NIMBY and they are done with the conversation. I'm a NIMBY-deal with it. Idiots like Scott Weiner don't know anything about the Peninsula lifestyle WE Bought Into and don't care so why should we give a care about the development addicts?
Posted by: Joe | August 03, 2020 at 08:03 PM
Most of us started small and worked and saved to move here.
10, 20, 30, 40 years of hard work and the blessings of good health and stable family life.
Others are welcome to the same challenge.
If the character of our town changes enough, people won’t want to move here and we’ll move away.
If it works, don’t fix it and especially don’t use other people’s money to fix it for people who don’t want to work and save.
Posted by: Cassandra | August 03, 2020 at 10:05 PM
More back and forth with David Katleman:
Really? When you bought your home, it came with a guarantee or promise that more people wouldn’t move into “your” Peninsula, or something like that. Don’t recall any such promises, nor would I expect that. Saying you bought into a lifestyle and oppose any change near you is exactly what NIMBY means.
From me:
It came with zoning laws--ever heard of them? R1. Height limits. FAR. Declining height envelop. You don't know what you are talking about and are a clueless fool and should move to be near your kids. Leave the rest of us in peace.
Posted by: Joe | August 03, 2020 at 11:54 PM
https://www.sfgate.com/living-in-sf/article/For-sale-homes-in-San-Francisco-hits-15454894.php
Posted by: Barking Dog | August 04, 2020 at 10:58 AM
The techies can and will lead the exodus especially from San Fran as the Chronicle notes. Their love of the cool factor was waning before Covid as the quality of life degraded and they aged into adult life. Almost forgotten is how business unfriendly the city has gotten. Many traditional big employers have left or plan to leave.
Posted by: The Techxodus is Real | August 04, 2020 at 12:22 PM
I can't think of a more Boomer thing than paraphrasing a Nextdoor thread on a blog, so congratulations, Joe. If nothing else, these comments will serve as a time capsule of pre-pandemic, trickle-down economics, Capitalism first Burlingame values: when membership to a community and belonging to a place was premised on the purchase power of the consumer and nothing else. How quaint.
I appreciate the historian aspect of your work here, Joe, but maybe you should have called it Burlingame Gentry.
Posted by: Fugit All | August 04, 2020 at 09:32 PM
How quaint that you feel entitled to call direct quotes, cut and pasted from ND, "paraphrasing". And yes, they are a time capsule since the nameless blog-police (being polite here) at NextDoor took the whole 50+ comment thread down by morning. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it..." You know, it's "the thing". So fun paraphrasing Sleepy Joe.
But I do like the "Burlingame Gentry" moniker. I'd use it, but you would accuse me of paraphrasing. Fugit.
Posted by: Joe | August 04, 2020 at 11:11 PM
Copying an inane, rude exchange from NextDoor to your own blog, and naming the other guy, is classy, Joe. Real classy. We expect better from you.
Posted by: Concerned | August 04, 2020 at 11:59 PM
The big draw here has always been the high paying jobs and entrepreneurs starting the next big thing. As long as we continue to have the jobs, we will have the housing shortage and high prices. The exodus from SF is a product of the pandemic and will end when the pandemic ends. Right now, a lot of younger workers are moving from SF because they can’t go out to restaurants, clubs etc, which are closed due to COVID. and, some have lost their jobs, and others don’t feel safe living in a densely populated city. These conditions will change once we have a vaccine. We had an exodus after the dot com bubble burst. If I had a lot of money, I would buy up rental property in SF over the next six months.
Posted by: Chris | August 05, 2020 at 06:39 AM
10's of millions of square ft of office space available for SUB LEASE in SF. Tech and others looking to unload their leased space now as working from home is more efficient for them and cheaper...
Posted by: Barking Dog | August 05, 2020 at 12:17 PM
@Chris, you may very well be right. In some ways I hope you are. Certain things have changed since the last time--mostly in the technology tools arena.
@Barking Dog, I just randomly met a mobile notary from Northern Nevada who is stunned--floored--by how many Californians are flying in, writing real estate checks and flying back.
@Concerned. Sorry, I have to respectfully disagree for a number of reasons. There is no expectation of privacy on ND (or most anywhere else with on-line commentary). I have read 1,000s of on-line pieces that include Twitter screen grads, etc. It's stabdard stuff.
Katleman and I were engaged in a two-way conversation. If someone were to paraphrase or selectively edit that would be uncool, but that didn't happen here.
And ND's crazy policy of deleting whole threads (this one was 50+ comments ling already) is Orwellian. People spouting nonsense--or worse pure misinformation--need to be called out. "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it". I'm sure you recognize where that originate.
Posted by: Joe | August 05, 2020 at 05:08 PM
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/for_andrew_cuomo_waking_up_and_smelling_the_socialist_coffee_is_a_bitter_whiff.html
Posted by: resident | August 06, 2020 at 05:12 PM
Thank you for trying to keep Nextdoor honest. You may be facing an uphill battle but I appreciate it. I am disappointed with what it has become.
Posted by: Anna | August 07, 2020 at 09:55 PM
https://www.sfgate.com/ontheblock/slideshow/Condo-inventory-spikes-with-price-reductions-206546.php
Posted by: Barking Dog | August 13, 2020 at 11:36 AM
A full-length piece in yesterday's WSJ about the Silicon Valley exodus notes all the same things as I did here, but ends on a nice local note:
For Carolyn Guss, 44 years old, coronavirus sped up her long held dream of living in the mountains—something she thought wouldn’t happen until her children, 8 and 10, were in college.
“I had this idea in my head that the Bay Area is the center of the tech universe and if you don’t live in the Bay Area, you can’t really progress your career,” said Ms. Guss, a vice president of marketing for a software company.
In March, she drove with her family to their condo in Park City, Utah, to ride out the pandemic. They soon realized they didn’t want to leave. The lack of commute, affordability of housing, access to ski slopes and Utah’s lower tax rate all argued in favor of making the move permanent, she said.
One day, the CEO of Ms. Guss’s company asked if she was still in Park City. When she said yes, her boss asked why she’d bother coming back.
“I said, ‘Well that’s funny you should mention that,’” said Ms. Guss.
Her company approved her request to make her relocation permanent, and she and her husband bought a home in Park City that’s twice the size of the house they owned in Burlingame, Calif. for the same price. Their old house had a garage so small they didn’t park their car in it. The garage in the new one fits four cars.
When Ms. Guss and her husband listed their California home, which sold for under asking, their real-estate agent said people were eager to buy homes with yards outside of San Francisco proper. Would-be buyers expressed interest, but there was a catch: Too many people were trying to sell in San Francisco. During the first week of August, property listings in the city of San Francisco were up 96% compared with the same week last year, according to Zillow.
“We realized they couldn’t sell their place in San Francisco,” said Ms. Guss. “When did you ever think that you would say the sentence, ‘Yeah, I can’t sell my place in S.F.’?”
Posted by: Joe | August 16, 2020 at 12:03 PM
https://youtu.be/QrEK5hgr3vY
Pushing to tax you for 10yrs after you leave California
Posted by: Barking Dog | August 16, 2020 at 01:05 PM
https://www.wsj.com/articles/californias-next-tax-increase-11597445360?st=po07cy83q687d5j&reflink=article_email_share
Posted by: Barking Dog | August 17, 2020 at 11:39 AM
Waiting for the next school bond to “help the children” held back by the virus (of teacher unions).
Posted by: Cassandra | August 17, 2020 at 11:54 AM