Quote:
Originally Posted by Pedestrian
In San Francisco, yes. Lots of people have roommates they are NOT in any romantic relationship with. These people are mostly young(ish), single and want to live in the city for the excitement, night life etc. Nothing unusual there.
But they don't share living spaces because they couldn't find a place of their own. I see "for rent" signs all the time (although certainly the vacancy rates are quite low). It's because of the cost, as in an average rent of $3600/month for a 1 bedroom, $4700 for a 2 bedroom (just divide $4700 by two and you've saved $1250/month).
Even somebody newly arrived out of school for a tech industry job (average starting salary $91,700) would be stretching a budget to be paying over $43,000 out of that $91K (before taxes and CA has high taxes) for just rent. Got to leave room for the $5 cups of coffee (at Philz; at tech fave Blue Bottle it's more), $25 Mexican lunches (unless your employer has a great cafeteria), $12 Uber rides and so much more.
I'm not really arguing there's no shortage of apartments--rather that building more apartments (or allowing them to be built, whether or not it then happens) wouldn't solve the problem for a lot of people. And it is true that nearly all the apartments that ARE getting built are at the top of the cost spectrum. That $3600 average includes a lot of older buildings and subdivided homes made into flats and so on. The average for new construction, especially highrise construction, would be much more.
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I mean, having roommates in high-cost cities isn't unusual at all...for apartments! Happens all the time in NYC, and has for decades. I'm not arguing that having roommates is a sign that things are screwed up in the San Francisco market. I'm arguing that having
renters split houses is a sign things are fucked up.
Basically, in a normal, healthy housing market (i.e., not California) the most profitable thing to do with a house which doesn't have an occupant is to sell it to someone who will become a homeowner. For various reasons - both related to limited supply and the idiotic property tax regimen in the state - it's much more valuable to hold onto a house forever as an asset.
Outside of student-heavy areas, houses are far more profitable as rental units when they are "chopped up" - as the rent you get from one three bedroom house is less than the rent you get from three one-bedroom units, even after accounting for the initial cost of adding three kitchens and closing some doorways. Again, you only see people splitting houses as roommates in "student slum" type areas typically - and that's because the zoning hasn't actually caught up with the rental demand in that particular area. If the zoning was updated they'd become multi-units pretty quickly.
I'd also note that if a market distorts to the point that three bedroom houses are being occupied by three single people (or worse yet, three couples) it means that families with kids are absolutely doomed in the housing market, because they'd need to make significantly more than all the single people in order to bid into similar units, whether for rent or for sale.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chisouthside
Even with apartment units being available, alot of workers in Silicon Valley would rather rent a room in a 3 bedroom SFH than a room in a 3 bedroom apartment. Especially transplants from the midwest and east coast that want to take advantage of the year round nice weather  |
I agree that most people would prefer to rent a room in a house than in an apartment. But most people would prefer to rent their own studio or one-bedroom over sharing a unit with strangers - far and away. Some young people do go through a phase where they want to live
with friends when they're young, but most even grow out of that by their late 20s.