
High prices sending Bay Area renters and homebuyers to outlying communities - prostoalex
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_25095612/high-prices-sending-bay-area-renters-and-homebuyers
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iandanforth
This suggests there are land owners who are growing rich on the backs of the
prosperous tech community.

I always find it strange that articles on this topic go directly from wages to
rent prices without acknowledging there is a human making the decision to
raise rent in between. It's as if people have begun to believe that the
relationship between demand and increased prices is a physical law rather than
a societal tendency.

Consider the following alternatives. 1. A land owner decides not to raise the
rent on their properties. (It might shock some to know that people do,
willingly leave money on the table for all sorts of reasons) 2. Regulation
fetters rent increases to prevent people from having to leave their homes.

I think there are many good examples where the above do not, and have not
happened. But I take issue with the blindspot, or purposeful omission, of such
discussion. Perhaps I am being overly harsh on readers of such articles, but I
suspect that by omitting these considerations, you decrease the chance that
one will call for property tax controls, rent caps, or organize local property
owners into a self-regulating body to limit rent increases.

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raldi
_> A land owner decides not to raise the rent on their properties._

If a landlord has fifty prospective tenants (as they surely will if they're
offering the best deal in town), how should they whittle that down if not by
raising the asking price?

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rdtsc
Very easy, pick the ones more likely to stay around, more likely to not damage
the place, more likely to not cause a nuisance.

Now of course it is silly. Why would they not just raise the price? Unless
they do what they do for fun or provide a public charity or good, why sift
through hundreds of cred reports and pay marketing researches or run a lottery
of sorts if say it is easier to just say "ok, rent is now 20% higher".

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raldi
If there were a way to know in advance that a prospective tenant was going to
damage the place or be a nuisance, or to stay a long / short time (whichever
is worse) wouldn't landlords already be using that technique?

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rdtsc
They do and try if it is quick. Credit reports are used as a proxy "Paid back
his bills = proxy for will probably not skip on rent and trash the place".
Others could use social status, for example, maybe other un-expected clues.
Would it be illegal to create national black lists that land-lords can share?
Casinos do it... It is just not worth bothering probably.

It just doesn't pay to worry about it if can just raise the price. The price
to fix-up and absorb the damage from a few such incidents is folded into the
insurance and current rent price.

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nextstep
And on top of this, the Bay Area has awful public transportation, so relocated
people equals more drivers on already crowded roads.

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scotth
Whenever someone says this, I can't help but feel they don't know what truly
awful public transport looks like.

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truncs
Well the silicon valley is based over here so you would expect better.

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scotth
Wow, completely misunderstood that. Not sure how.

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kirpekar
This has been happening for the last 20 years. The quintessential "commute"
town is Tracy. Grew out of nowhere to fill this exact need.

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thrownaway2424
Hey, at least you can ride a train from Tracy to San Jose. Doesn't necessarily
have to be a nightmare of a car commute.

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NDizzle
Wow, that commute time image is laughably wrong. 1 hour commute from Tracy?
One hour to where?! One hour over the pass, barely into Livermore!

I recently left the bay area as well, but I went way far north and gave up the
commute. None of the fringe cities have decent school systems. That's what is
most important to me at this point. (3 kids.)

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abraham_s
>>>That compares to San Jose's fourth-quarter median price of $645,000;
Sunnyvale's $964,000; Milpitas' $648,000; Oakland's $435,500; and San
Francisco's $867,000.

Can anyone explain why Sunnyvale has a higher median than SFO? Is it because
SFO has more apartments compared to individual houses in Sunnyvale.

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niio


