
Wealthy Buyers Reportedly in “Mad Rush” to Leave San Francisco - SQL2219
https://www.sfgate.com/living-in-sf/article/Wealthy-buyers-in-mad-rush-to-leave-SF-15324574.php
======
geebee
This article is pretty light on data, and mainly relies on the latest
experience from a couple of real estate agents.

Sometimes “word on the street” is the best you can get. But for now I’d say
the headline is clickbait “mad rush”, a very extreme conclusion given the
scarcity of data.

Another micro data point - I’m not a real estate agent but I do watch local
sales. I live south of 280 near the excelsior, not a fashionable address in SF
to be sure. Everything is selling fairly quickly, inventory is low, and this
is true of houses listed during the covid closure. However the effects may
still be delayed and wouldn’t reflect the real estate effects of recent
demonstrations and riots.

~~~
harmmonica
Found this interesting and it made me question my not-so-scientific tracking
of the LA market, which is not exhibiting the same behavior as SF (may just be
behind SF, but right now it's the opposite in LA.

[http://socketsite.com/archives/2020/06/inventory-levels-
in-s...](http://socketsite.com/archives/2020/06/inventory-levels-in-san-
francisco-nearing-another-milestone.html)

[https://www.dailybreeze.com/2020/06/07/coronavirus-
rebound-s...](https://www.dailybreeze.com/2020/06/07/coronavirus-rebound-
socal-housing-jump-up-from-worst-april/)

~~~
gamblor956
Unlike SF, LA as a whole is not obscenely over-priced. There are still many
nice parts of LA that are relatively affordable for dual-income households
(and single-income households, if you adjust your expectations).

Also, it's not really an apples-to-apples comparison. While LA's population is
more than 50% larger than the SF Bay Area's population, LA is geographically
much larger so there's more space to build housing.

------
rcarrigan87
We've been seeing this in both San Francisco and New York and every week it
just seems to increase. Most of our moving company partners who never pay
attention to any data are also starting to notice a pattern of wealthy
residents moving out.

[https://www.movebuddha.com/blog/sf-outbound-
surge-2020/](https://www.movebuddha.com/blog/sf-outbound-surge-2020/)

[https://www.movebuddha.com/blog/new-yorkers-relocate-post-
co...](https://www.movebuddha.com/blog/new-yorkers-relocate-post-coronavirus/)

~~~
mturmon
Could this be a sampling effect? If you have traction in SFBA then many of the
moving searches you see will necessarily be out of SFBA. And conversely: if
you don't have broad coverage, you won't see searches from the hinterlands
about moving to large metros.

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supernova87a
There's some good articles discussing how after a major natural disaster,
cities aren't really fundamentally derailed in how much they rebound to
success vs. slide into oblivion by the actual disaster.

To spell it out more concretely, it's suggested that if a city is vital and
people want to live there, a disaster will not hurt that growth and city's
long-term trajectory. Physical damage, or even population damage will recover
and people will still move there to be around other productive people.

On the other hand, if a city was already losing its vitality and drive and
attractiveness, no amount of stimulus afterwards will stop it. People simply
don't want to live and work there, or be part of the city's growth. The
examples (I'll try to dig up the articles) were:

\- Kobe after their earthquake (stimulus and reinvestment did not stop a
general decline of that city that was happening long before the earthquake)

\- New York, after natural disasters, 9/11, etc. (the city rebounded and
people continued moving there no matter the physical aftereffects)

So for SF, you ask, aside from this virus situation, what was San Francisco
and California incentivizing people to do? It has been a confused message.
Tech and jobs, weather, and pleasant environment clearly drive SF's growth and
attractiveness. However, homelessness, traffic, zoning, high housing
prices/unaffordability, all the problems of SF that the supervisors have been
too ineffective to tackle meaningfully, drive unattractiveness.

I think the virus (like any other natural disaster) just exposes to a greater
extent what people really think and are likely to do about a city.

San Francisco (and any other city's) fate was made long before the current
situation, and short-term popular messages of "we will get through this and
get stimulus money or reform x,y,z" generally will not outweigh the years and
decades of what the city had set up for itself up to now. Personally though, I
think SF + Bay Area will manage to slide (survive) through it, despite many
faults, because it's been fundamentally a desireable place to be.

~~~
sharkmerry
This largely depends on remote work right? These people arent moving across
the country, they are going to Marin, or maybe Tahoe. If the business is still
centered in this area, they wont move quick.

Also, SF isnt the only issue with homelessness etc. Cupertino has their
"first" homeless camp, solely because they used to live unseen in ravines,
under bridges and have been kicked out of there

------
e5india
It's hilarious to me how hard people keep pimping this notion of people
abandoning the SF Bay Area. As long as I've visited this site there's been a
constant rotation of here's why people are leaving.. Feels like a good portion
of the population is forever waiting for California's comeuppance for whatever
reason.

~~~
thorwasdfasdf
It's the CA dream, to be able get out and escape from the Bay area and CA but
no one has been able to realize it. But, with covid-19 and the subsequent
possiblity of work from home, it reignites the possibility of that dream.

~~~
geebee
Fascinating. I'm pushing 50, and I've lived almost my entire life in San
Francisco. It really wasn't that long ago that the benefit to working in tech
was that you get to live in San Francisco. In fact, people considered the
livability (and social tolerance) of San Francisco to be key factors in why SF
became the center of the tech world.

Now, it seems like the dominant narrative has shifted: the downside to working
in tech is that you have to live in San Francisco. Brutally high housing
prices and severely deteriorating mental health and addiction conditions on
the streets are big factors in this, I'm sure.

Nonetheless, there are few problems so severe that they are completely
resistant to hyperbole, and you get a lot of that in the "I hate SF" rants.
Much of SF's extraordinary livability remains. I still have beautiful days
here.

To me, though, SF's advantages have eroded. First, the uniquely urban
pleasures are diminished by street conditions in many of the very urban
neighborhoods that set SF apart from everywhere in the US outside New York
(which exists on an entirely different urban scale). The diversity and
cultural options that were once hard to find outside SF are more more widely
available in smaller, more livable cities (try to get a good espresso west of
the Mississippi a couple generations ago, and you'll find North Beach is more
than a historical curiosity - in 2020, you can get this in a strip mall). SF's
opera is pretty exceptional for a small city, and again, outside NY, it may be
the best (and NY is a long way from the west coast). But cultural options have
expanded in smaller cities, even if they are somewhat more limited, and how
often do you go to the opera, really?

And SF has become so, so, so expensive. I just think the good life is more
attainable elsewhere - and high rents limit your life and creativity in
serious ways, and quite a bit of what SF had to offer is largely available
elsewhere. Maybe not all, but quite a bit.

------
untog
Eh, I’ll care more if/when it’s a long term trend. Immediately after 9/11
people predicted it was the end of NYC because everyone was going to leave.
And some did! But it wasn’t long before the city rebounded. It’s always the
rich that are first to move because they have the means to. They’ll also have
the means to move back again pretty quickly should they wish to.

~~~
reaperducer
It may be finally happening in New York. The _Times_ has had a pretty steady
stream of stories over the last few months about people just being fed up with
the city, and getting out. Especially long-term residents.

/Ex-New Yorker

~~~
tdfx
Every person I know under 40 who is/was living in Manhattan has had a post-
pandemic moment of clarity about the cost/benefit ratio of living there. Most
enjoy the vibrancy of the city (nightlife, especially the shoulder-to-shoulder
raucous kind, is not returning any time soon) and the proximity to their job
(most are working from home for the rest of the year, possibly indefinitely).
When you remove the social and career draw of the city, it really changes the
equation.

------
julianeon
To me it seems that SF is still fairly safe. In my opinion a lot of people
don't understand who SF is 'for' these days.

It's not for poor people (no doubt) and it's not really for billionaires
either, for people so untethered from jobs and material needs that place is
irrelevant.

If you can pick up and pay cash for a Tahoe house tomorrow, sure, you might
leave. But that resident was never very plentiful. They might make for an
interesting anecdote, but in the big picture, they don't matter.

SF's core value, today, is for this person:

You work for Google, or Apple, for FaceBook, or an accomplished startup. You
are a senior engineer or an executive. You may have gone to an Ivy League. You
want to live in a fun, world-class, brand-name city - but not Palo Alto or San
Jose. Where can you go?

San Francisco is pretty much alone in its category here, as the type of city
that type of person likes. There's no good substitute in the area; "a really
clean Starbucks and a top-notch Target" ain't it, and will never be it.

While there may be fluctuations in house sales and so forth, I think SF will
continue to rank highly with that demographic. And as long as that's true,
housing prices will be safe.

~~~
whalesalad
> You work for Google, or Apple, for FaceBook, or an accomplished startup.

The irony is that none of those companies have a real presence in the city.
Their campuses are miles away. So you live in the city and ride on a tour
coach down to your megaplex every day.

I don’t know why anyone strives to live a life like this.

~~~
dredmorbius
Google and Facebook have offices in SF proper, and YouTube is located just
south in San Bruno. "none ... have a real presence" is a considerable
overstatement.

Though yes, a large number of employees _do_ travel south from SF daily.

The larger issue is that the Peninsula and South Bay have resisted housing
densification and transport improvements for decades.

~~~
mc32
It's really not an overstatement. They have some sales offices and some execs
like having offices the city so they don't have to commute --but the great
majority work in the the main campuses on the penn.

------
JumpCrisscross
> _buying a new home in an isolated haven in a nearby bucolic county is not an
> option for lower-income San Francisco residents, and some believe the trend
> is only exacerbating the wealth divide_

I thought the rent control crowd wanted the wealthy to leave?

------
duxup
Is this a move OUT to the outer areas or just lack of demand in the city and
increased in some outer areas?

I'm not sure it has to be one to the other...

Are these necessarily the same people and what kind of volume are we talking
about?

------
ww520
Real estate is regionally cyclical. People bounce between regions by moving to
more favorable locations from time to time, but the trend often takes decades.
That was the flight to the suburbs in the past and the city gentrification
later on. It's not surprising a new flight to the burbs has started.

~~~
hckr_news
I disagree with the trend of people flocking to suburbs. I have no data to
back this up but the trend seems to be more like folks choosing reasonable
cost of living such as cities like Salt Lake, Minneapolis, Chattanooga,
Rayleigh etc

~~~
ww520
It would take much longer and much more data to form a trend. Now is just all
speculation. The first wave leaving would be people without strong ties to the
Bay Area (layoff, no work, etc). They tend to leave for other regions, like
you said. The second wave would be people still working in the region but
cannot stand the deterioration in the big cities. They will move to the burbs.

------
pascalxus
I've been looking at data on movoto.com, looking at their inventory snapshot.
For the past few months, you can see Housing inventory (SF) has increased very
slightly and when you take into account the seasonality (inventory usually
increases a little up until sept), it doesn't look unusual at all. There's NO
unusually large increase in inventory. It's just super super low inventory,
the same as it has been for the last 5 years, with no major difference in the
last 3 months of covid-19.

In absolute terms, it's pretty crazy that there's only 252 houses in
inventory, in a city of almost 900,000.

~~~
jhart99
If they are wealthy enough, there is no reason to sell.

------
cobookman
Title should be leave San Francisco County/City. The article mentions that
many are moving to SF suburbs in the bay area (East Bay / South Bay /
Peninsula /..etc).

------
chkaloon
If you want to get out of CA altogether, the Willamette Valley in Oregon is
beautiful and reasonable. Vinyards and nut farms, mountains, hiking, skiing,
and beaches within 90 minutes. You can live as rural or urban as you like,
depending how close to Portland you get. And you can even live in a small town
and take the TriMet light rail into Portland for your urban fix every so
often.

No, I'm not a realtor, just visit often.

------
microtherion
To each their own, but I suspect that some of those leaving may discover that
the cultural and culinary options of, say, Lake Tahoe don't really measure up
to San Francisco.

As for Reno, I've never hear there, but I hear that the primary source of
entertainment there is to shoot a man just to watch them die…

~~~
bdcravens
Like many things in life, it's a cost/benefit analysis.

Moreover, those cultural and culinary options don't exist in a bubble. Supply
is a product of demand.

~~~
microtherion
Yes, but I don't think there will ever be sufficient demand density out there.

~~~
bdcravens
Quite possible, but I suspect that as time goes on, areas like SF may not have
as much to offer as in years past.

~~~
microtherion
I may have misunderstood your earlier remark. I thought you meant that the
infrastructure in Lake Tahoe would improve, not that the one in SF would
decline. I agree that the latter is possible, but I'm inclined to think that
there will remain enough demand. My impression is that the housing boom in SF
predates the jobs boom (people worked in the south bay, and just preferred
living in SF).

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jiveturkey
> Mill Valley listing [...] 13 bids and the home went over the $1.7 million
> asking price by "a lot,"

1.7mm is not wealthy by local standards.

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r00fus
warning: this article is originally from Bloomberg. I have never trusted them
since the SuperMicro/Apple Big Hack unverified story.

