In the Bay Area intent to lease is worthless and not taken into account for mortgage qualifications (I tried it).
Your suggestion seems to be to just buy the place and have your friends be roommate tenants? The reason this isn’t viable is the costs are too high.
By buying a place together you can get a better place with an affordable mortgage split and you can share in the upside without getting locked out of the market.
The risk is the standard social risk plus the risk that if everyone does this prices will get even crazier.
> The risk is the standard social risk plus the risk that if everyone does this prices will get even crazier.
Should be roughly neutral in effect; the money is pulled out of the rental side of the housing market by people who aren't able to afford sole purchase going together to do a joint purchase and going into the owner-occupied housing side that way, but that either drops rental prices (making purchase at high prices less attractive) or gets current rental units sold off into the owner-occupied market because they are unable to make enough to be profitable as rentals, increasing supply on the owner-occupied side and dropping prices.
Yep that’s the real solution - just build a lot more (not “affordable” housing just lots of any housing).
Unfortunately between existing owners working to kill any new units and renters in SF claiming that building more increases rent (and vying for rent control which makes things worse) I think it’s just hopeless.
Higher land prices mean it is only profitable to build luxury apartments and therefore new construction is more expensive than the average. However what people seem to forget is that each unit of housing means more people can live in the area and eventually the luxury apartments will become average apartments in 30 years.
Your suggestion seems to be to just buy the place and have your friends be roommate tenants? The reason this isn’t viable is the costs are too high.
By buying a place together you can get a better place with an affordable mortgage split and you can share in the upside without getting locked out of the market.
The risk is the standard social risk plus the risk that if everyone does this prices will get even crazier.