Wish I had bought a SFH in SF in late Summer/early Fall. Too late now.
Reduced price, not a bad deal (downside: your house is next to 101 wall and relying on FB employees)
https://www.redfin.com/CA/Menlo-Park/1101-Del-Norte-Ave-94025/home/1767625
My property manager says rents are down 25%. She’s focused on peninsula and South Bay. A lot of tech tenants are moving further away, since they can work remote.
It’s interesting since I’ve had two bay area companies contact me in the last week to see if I’d move back. The roles are in office and not remote (expected to reopen in July-September time frame). It makes me wonder if companies that require in office will lose talent to those that allow remote.
At work, we’ve been hiring SV engineers and engineering leaders that’ll work 100% remote.
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Rents are up 40% in South Lake Tahoe
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In high end 7k+, rents are down even more. I recently saw someone buy a really nice house 4.6k sqft on .45 acre lot in prime north Los Altos for 6.5M and then trying to rent it for long term for 10.5K. It made me chuckle at the stupidity of the buyer.
One tenant paying $1300 was replaced by a new tenant at $1800.
Another paying $2800 is being replaced by one paying $3800.
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Are these apartments?
1800 a 1 BR?
3800 a 3 BR?
I expected SLT rents to be lower.
1800 is for a 2/1 600sf apartment. 3800 is for a 4/3 2300 sf house in the Keys. Look at Zillow rents are crazy high. My studio apartment was $900 now 1200.
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Is a good thing that matured companies move many of their non intensive R&D office off SF. This should allow more startups to move in. Non intensive R&D doesn’t require young and hungry SWEs who are willing to work their guts out for a possible lottery. I think those who moved out are mostly families with kids so SF is not suitable. They need bigger houses, good schools and safer neighborhoods.
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Companies who have lots of cash and less debt or are secretive in their products and who receive thousands of applications for every position can afford to dictate employees to come to work. For most others my guess is it’s a net positive if workforce can WFH most of the days of the week. I’ve not heard that WFH has been a negative for productivity. Collaboration is over hyped IMO, while it may be applicable in some relatively smaller number of cases . Most employees learn on their own/online_courses most of the time (again based on my and my spouse’s experience- btw my spouse is in Semiconductors and she is also learning online+books and the learning is better when WFH with loads of time saved).
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Pharma will never go 100% remote - I’ve interviewed with 20+ companies since October and all of them are 100% remote now for non mfg/lab roles but stated expectation would be to be in office at least a few days a week moving forward.
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Same is the case with semiconductor companies as far as WFH when the vaccine gets applied throughout the population in 6 months, i.e. they want people to return in some cases 100%.
Transition is just beginning now. My view is, it’s an old way of doing business and sticking with ideas when tools for work sharing and remote work weren’t available. We’ll have to wait and see how and if competitive cost pressures affect companies as far as their views on WFH going forward(since my view is it’s cheaper and at least as much or more efficient doing WFH) .
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As predicted, young people moved. Older people who have kids stayed put.
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Yep, I think just empirically speaking from my network, those without kids, I would say 50%+ of them moved out of SF bay area. I’m not sure how many are coming back. Many bought houses in LA, Austin, CO, FL, etc and are proudly showing all their decor on instagram. 
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If the next generation of tech employees doesn’t have to move to the Bay Area, that’s going to be bad for RE.
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Another pattern I’ve noticed is that SF area is no longer cool for younger folks. It’s been happening prior to pandemic but there has been a pretty large shift to NYC, etc and I think young people will just stay there or move there instead when things come back to normal. If I didn’t have a family, I would move to NYC or Austin or LA area too.
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I shifted from NYC to BA 1 yr back. The tech salary is super low compared to BA (non FAANG). Yes for single and newly married NYC is good.
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Is SF ever cool? Thought is all work, not much exciting night life like NYC and LA. I stayed in NY for more than a year and roamed around LA (some actress friends 
not the superstars) for awhile.
You are no longer young?
What I heard that women go to BA to get husbands, men go to NYC for wives. Reason is too many men in BA, too many women in NYC,…
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Could be true but FANG salaries in NYC just as good as BA. Also, I’m hearing that FANG’s full remote need to take some cuts in certain area if you’re moving out of BA. Austin, for example, from what I hear is 10% salary cut, stock/bonus remain the same. It’s actually better off living in Austin if that were true with no state tax and huge houses/lots. 
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