What's Behind San Francisco's Sudden Building Boom?

[thelakelander]

This should make Simms happy .

San Francisco has long had a reputation as an anti-growth town, as a place not much interested in big new developments or massive change, where people who can afford to have learned to live with the consequences (notably in the form of exorbitant rent). In 2011 alone, the city added just 269 new housing units, pushing its badly imbalanced residential supply and demand even further out of order. Around this time last year, the San Francisco Business Times dubbed 2011 “The year of (almost) no new housing.”

Add to that local culture the effects of the national recession â€" which still linger across the country today â€" and San Francisco would seem poised for a prolonged and silent construction season.

This prediction, then, sounded a little far-fetched: “Developers started telling me we’re in the biggest boom of our lifetime at the beginning of 2012,” says Gabriel Metcalf, the executive director of the San Francisco Planning + Urban Research Association. "But I didn’t believe them or see it until the summer."

That’s when the tower cranes started to appear, now about two-dozen of them around town hovering above both public and private new developments. By SPUR’s count, construction has begun this year on more than 4,220 new housing units. An old furniture store is being rehabbed into a million square feet of commercial space. An old data warehouse is converting into a 250,000 square-foot office for the financial services tech company Square.

full article: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/12/san-franciscos-surprising-building-boom/4213/

[simms3]

^^^I have a friend from Jacksonville who works at Square.  It's interesting being in the market on the landlord side and looking at the risk factors of all these tech firms/start-ups.  We have a start-up created and funded by Sean Parker sub-leasing from a major dot-com in one of the office buildings I work on (speaking of leases that the tenant is looking to pay to get out of instead of us buying out the lease ).

I can tell you rents in SF are ridiculous due to the lack of new construction.  I looked at subsidized housing where the Studio Plusses were between $2200-$2400...in Civic Center, which is highly undesirable.  I found a studio in a rent-controlled building for a bit more, but I know I won't see those crazy 10-20% hikes every 12 months!

SF has the strictest development/zoning regulations in the country...it's pretty amazing how hard it is to get things built.  Check out the article below:

NYT: In San Francisco, Life Without 'Starchitects'