
San Francisco Tenants Break Leases at Alarming Rates - ghaff
https://www.thesfnews.com/san-francisco-tenants-break-leases-at-alarming-rates/57573
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idiot900
> The survey revealed that 16 percent of owners reported residents broke their
> leases or unexpectedly gave a 30-Day Notice to Vacate. > A total of 315
> landlords responded to the survey, owning or managing 10,377 residential
> apartments citywide...

So, 50 landlords (~16% of 315) reported that they had at least one tenant
unexpectedly leave early? Over what time period? How many tenants in total?
This may or may not be an interesting story - we can't tell.

~~~
cameldrv
So it could be as few as 50/10377 = 0.5% of tenants broke their lease. This is
a useless survey unless they asked the landlords how many of their tenants
broke their lease.

~~~
apta
As typical of sensationalist media these days looking to get clicks.

~~~
anoncareer0212
Unfortunately not every survey will meet the high standards of internet
commenters looking for blood

~~~
peanut_is_yum
I understand why you might feel this way, but I don't think the parent and
grandparent comments are necessarily "looking for blood." They bring up valid
concerns.

Disclosure: I haven't read the linked article.

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dexterdog
16% is not alarming to me given the situation and how ridiculous real estate
is in SF. I expected a higher number than that.

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fredophile
It's not even 16% of rentals; it's 16% of the surveyed owners who, on average,
rent more than 30 rental units each.

~~~
stx
So it could be that of those owners they had one or two tenants break a lease?
This would be a much lower number of actual tenants breaking their lease but
we do not know with the data provided.

~~~
fredophile
Right. All the provided numbers tell us is that out of about 10 000 renters at
least 50 and no more than 9750 broke their lease. We really need to know where
in this range the real numbers are and where we'd expect them to be in a
normal year.

Before somebody complains about my numbers, I did round values to make the
math simpler. The real values aren't that far off.

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bensw
The Chronicle had an article citing the same statistics (but with a little
more investigation): [https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/SF-tenants-
brea...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/SF-tenants-break-leases-
in-startling-numbers-15347851.php)

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deathanatos
> _San Francisco Tenants Break Leases At Alarming Rates_

> _The survey revealed that 16 percent of owners reported residents broke
> their leases or unexpectedly gave a 30-Day Notice to Vacate._

An unexpected 30-day notice is how my Bay Area lease terminated gracefully.
Like, it was required that I do that, by the contract written by my landlord.
But I don't consider graceful, agreed upon move-outs as "breaking" a lease,
which to me implies someone trying to get out of the contract.

But also… this would be hardly surprising? My rent was going up 10% YoY when I
left, and it was clear that Bay Area politics were never going to fix the
rampant housing problems. With all the layoffs I've read about as a result of
COVID-19, I bet some people are moving out! (I moved prior to all this
craziness.)

One of my co-workers even told me that he had every intention of protecting
"his" piece of the pie, as much as possible, by letting as little as possible
get built as he could as a voter. It was just amazing to me how so many people
thought they had the right to tell _other_ people what they could not do with
"their" land. Zoning is one thing, but the Bay Area is a whole different
thing.

~~~
Klinky
There is typically a term to a lease, so maybe you were just month to month.

~~~
deathanatos
Yes and no — but my point is that _any_ normal termination would have resulted
in the 30-days notice. Yes, under a year-long or worse lease, you'd have to
wait until the end of the lease period, but you'd still be serving such a
notice.

(And in fact, we were on a year-long lease, and first transitioned it to a
month-to-month for the purposes of being able to eventually serve that
notice.)

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535188B17C93743
Glad to be one of them. We'll see if I make it back to the good ole Bay Area.

~~~
sangupta
Did you move out of bay area completely, or to a place more affordable. Am in
cupertino and been thinking should I move or not?

~~~
535188B17C93743
I'm originally from the Midwest, so I moved back with my parents for a bit of
time. Luckily, I'm a massive minimalist so it was easy for me to just pack up
and drive across the country without any issues.

I'd like to come back, but my company has consider allowing me to stay here.
If it's with the same pay, it would be a no-brainer. But I do love/will miss
the Bay Area. I'll probably be back when I'm a bit more financially stable.

~~~
vmception
> But I do love/will miss the Bay Area. I'll probably be back

I was going to ask, what is an ideal place for you? Like let's say cities lose
their allure because clusters of event venues won't exist and nobody has the
capacity to meet new people even if watering holes did implement distancing,
since everyone is distanced.

As someone that didn't retreat to my parents house and has a new favela in my
SF neighborhood amidst all sorts of chaos, I've been drawing a blank for the
last 4 months

~~~
535188B17C93743
>what is an ideal place for you?

If I knew, I'd be there :D Unfortunately, I have no idea. I like my family and
the cost of living around where I live (Midwest), I love the hustle and bustle
of the Northeast, and I like the outdoors and political vibe of the West
Coast. Even lived in Germany for a bit in college and loved that.

Open to suggestions, haha

~~~
throwaway_12351
London! I moved to SF from London, you get bit of everything! :)

~~~
hckr_news
Tell me more. I’m also in the Midwest US. Still early in my career. I’d
consider London but the cost of living scares me. Also the whole Brexit thing.

~~~
throwaway_12351
Don't worry much about Brexit, I was quite worried about it myself and I lost
the chance to buy a house at a cheaper price. Brexit is turning out to be
quite positive for the UK, and the media claims that the companies will move
out is backfiring and they are moving into the UK now.

I have lived in SF / Boston / London / Portland, and I think London has the
bits of all. Comparing to the west coast, London has equal or better food
culture, similar political vibe but much more diverse yet localized within the
city, the hustle and bustle of living in a true city, the architectural beauty
and most importantly quite nicely located with accessible sites of natural
beauty within the UK and Europe.

I think the only thing that is negative about London vs SF is the weather :-/
Also, it's not a very friendly place to move at the start of your career,
quite closed for newbies and an old boys club so that's a caveat.

~~~
disgruntledphd2
OK, so the only part I'll respond to is the Brexit thing.

Firstly, Brexit has still not happened in any real sense (there's a transition
period till the end of the year).

Secondly, the UK government appear to want a minimal trade relationship with
the EU, which will hit services trade pretty hard (and the UK exports lots of
services).

The likelihood is that many large companies will need to move staff/assets to
the EU to retain their licenses.

For me, specifically (as I'm a data scientist) this probably means that data
products out of the UK are going to be tricky to sell.

I would expect that there will be a drop in London property prices, but a
larger drop in jobs.

Don't get me wrong, London is a great city, but I (personally) would stay away
from moving there till at least next year, as the implications around Brexit
and trade should be much clearer by then.

~~~
throwaway_12351
I don't even have any counter arguments to make, you can speculate as much as
you want, the home prices were suppose to drop drastically and I was waiting
for it. They went up after the withdrawal agreement was signed :-/

I was under impression that whatever you just mentioned would have happened by
now, but Nissan and Unilever are now moving to UK and all the speculations are
going down the drain.

I have come to a conclusion that all the anti-brexit hysteria has been priced
in, and indecisiveness is proving more costly as time goes by!

~~~
disgruntledphd2
Totally. I'm in a similar position (wanting to buy a house, but concerned at
the insane prices), so I totally get you. Maybe coronavirus will accomplish
it. Something something market, irrational, solvent.

So, the Unilever thing is a stock move, that really only occurred because the
shareholders in the City didn't like it (being removed from the FTSE would
have been very bad for their share price).

My understanding is that Nissan (and all the car-makers) rely on frictionless
trade in goods, which probably isn't going to happen. I believe that they will
probably invest in the UK for the domestic market, but we'll see.

Again, nothing has practically changed in terms of trade, and will not until
January 1st of next year. We'll see I suppose.

~~~
throwaway_12351
Well, that means UK does have a pretty amazing leverage to keep jobs in the
country. I am one of the least politically aware person, but I have come to a
conclusion that Brexit isn't going to be as good as it is being claimed by
people who have voted for it. It's also not going to be as bad as people who
voted against it claim to be.

As an outsider, for something as zero-sum as buying a home where supply is
low, cost of waiting and indecision can be pretty high.

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thinkingkong
I mean it makes total sense. If the prices go down then the math is super
simple. If people are leaving its _very_ likely they're paying cheaper rent.

If anything 16% of their poll seems totally reasonable given the market &
circumstances.

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gentleman11
You couldn’t get evicted, but your sf bills continues to accrue while you may
not have been working. Imagine the stress of people whose jobs didn’t come
back to have 3 months of debt pile up like that

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DevKoala
I enjoy looking at Zillow data and everything in the range I am looking at is
racing back to 2018 prices, mainly driven by foreclosures.

I thought about investing, but it seems that mortgage lenders now expect a 40%
down deposit on the property.

~~~
jorts
For investment property or primary residence? I didn't have to put down nearly
that much for my residence in the east bay.

~~~
DevKoala
Investment property. When I bought my residence, the down payment was 20%.
These current numbers come from a check on the Zillow advertised mortgage
lenders. The 40% down in the simulation tool seems to be because lenders won’t
take more than 700k in debt (>1M total cost).

~~~
Gibbon1
A lot of investors stopped buying jumbo loans. FHA though is still buying
conforming loans.

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harpratap
> The biggest group of tenants breaking leases in San Francisco are Generation
> Z workers, those between the ages of 18 to 25 years old

Since when did people born in 1995 counted as Gen-Z?

~~~
blululu
That's somewhere on the border. But really, this is more a matter of blaming
the youngest generation for every problem that besets the older ones. Gen X
are a bunch of nihilistic latch key kids, Millennials destroyed every industry
but online retail and avocado farming, and now we can blame gen-z for breaking
lease agreements while scrolling through their tik-toks. Of all the
statistical screw ups in this article, getting the age range of gen-z off by a
few years seems mild.

~~~
_jal
Well, they're also less likely to have much savings, more likely to have a
service job that doesn't currently exist, and more likely to still have the
option to go to stay with the folks. I would expect young folks to be much
more likely to break a lease than older folks.

I do agree that generational nonsense has been pretty rich lately.

    
    
      -- Nihilist raised by the tee-vee

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pascalxus
So far it seems this has not yet affected housing sales much more than the
typical seasonal: [https://www.movoto.com/san-francisco-ca/market-
trends/](https://www.movoto.com/san-francisco-ca/market-trends/)

Look at the 5 year chart. it basically shows inventories are still roughly the
same place they were at this time the last 5 years.

~~~
DevKoala
This is the first time SF is down YoY for the past decade.

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dilyevsky
In a few months we’ll be hearing complaints about how tech people came and
drove local housing to insane levels.

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buboard
alarming to whom?

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deeblering4
I’m guessing alarming to slumlords, property maintainers and the like.

