
Bay Area rents down for second straight quarter - gibsonf1
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/23/BUV3176CF5.DTL
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nostrademons
I'm seeing both ends of this. My roommate is moving out because she's worried
about her job and is looking for a cheaper place so she can save up some
money. I'm looking to upgrade, because decent 1BRs are now only a couple
hundred more than I pay for my room now. Places that were $1700+ when I looked
at them in December are now going for under $1400, and there're even a few
1BRs (in crummy complexes) available for under $1000, whereas there was
nothing under $1200 back then.

I'm also noticing that there's a lot of shifting around with my coworkers'
friends/roommates. A lot of people are moving around, either because they're
not secure in their jobs and want to downgrade, or because they're bargain-
hunting and want to upgrade.

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novum
I live with 4 other people in SF. Our one-year lease is up in July, and even
the most cursory browsing of craigslist shows that we're far overpaying for
our apartment, even within our immediate neighborhood.

Landlord offered to drop our rent by $750 for next year. Any other time, we
might have taken it; but now we can live in a bigger, nicer apartment for
$1500 less.

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Shamiq
Thought about brining this up with your landlord? Seems like too much
available supply. He may comply without y'all having to worry about moving and
the associated headache (think of all your "behind-the-desk" cabling).

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novum
Yeah, we've had a lengthy (but polite!) email back-and-forth with the landlord
about this. Honestly, I think at this point he's just calling our bluff - that
we won't move because of all the hassle involved.

But we're all 20-somethings, so we're definitely willing to move in order to
save that kind of cash :)

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catch23
supposedly business rental areas have drastically cut prices. hackerdojo was
looking for office rental space for awesome hacker mayhem and managed to find
a space at 40 cents a square foot, or $4000 for a 10,000 square foot space in
a downtown location.

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syntactic
I was trying to rent my 2 br (technically 1 br since 2nd br was large but
didn't have closet) place in hayes valley and saw this happen nearly in the
blink of an eye: I had a renter ready to go at $3,000/ mo in December, but
foolishly turned him down because he needed it too quickly and I wasn't yet
ready to move out. Then in January, a lot of people coming through kept
mentioning how many 2 br's were out there, and I ultimately ended up renting
it for $2650 after the applicant showed me several comps at lower prices.

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tmpk
To add another data point. I recently rented a 2 BR apt in a nice complex in
Santa Clara for $1400. The ad asked for $1500, but I negotiated it down to
$1400 with a slightly longer lease term. Just 6 months ago, the same apt was
renting for $1800.

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banned_man
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGgkA91hOb8>

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banned_man
Why was this voted down?

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jerryji
Because that points to an irrelevant (and downright stupid) "Final Fantasy V
Music - Victory Fanfare".

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banned_man
It's celebratory, which is relevant to the context of falling rents/property
prices.

