The Monday Morning Real Estate Update — Monday, December 7th, 2020

THE VOICE OF SAN FRANCISCO

Podcast Transcript of Never Too Late To The Game’s Monday Morning Real Estate Update, December 07, 2020.

COVID SIP ROUND #2

As San Francisco enters another lockdown, more small businesses, especially restaurants & bars, find themselves in the crosshairs of Covid-19. With the absence of financial support many small businesses will be collateral damage.

Shut-downs and stay-at-home orders are necessary but so is financial support. Washington has surely failed us all but especially small businesses and restaurants.

Prior to Covid-19, San Francisco was already in a bad place with respect to devastated small businesses, income inequality and homelessness.

Many people blame big tech for the current state of affairs (and they deserve a lot of blame) but it takes two to tango and tech’s partner was none other than the City of San Francisco itself.

San Francisco gave away the farm to Big Tech and in return received the highest rents in the country, an insane cost of living, a lack of affordable housing, filthy streets and homelessness.

Now San Francisco is feeling abandoned, the first wave of SIP techies to leave were those in the marginalized “subtenant” category of renters. Who can blame them? The Master Tenant / Sub Tenant schema is only works in strong economic times. So, without any legal constraints to hold them back, the subtenants gave notice and moved, leaving thousands of Master tenants with the whole rent to pay and a shortage of anyone looking for a roommate housing situation.

AT LEAST ONE TECH BRO FIGHTS BACK

The San Francisco Examiner published a funny article on December 3rd, the headline was: The Audacity of the tech industry is staggering.

The article is about how big tech has embraced remote work —which has caused many techies to high-tail it out of San Francisco, leaving in the rear view mirror insanely exorbitant rents, a growing homeless…