SAN FRANCISCO RENT EXPLOSION: Continuing my ongoing series of Places That Are Fascinating Because They Are So Darn Expensive, here’s an interesting read from Priceonomics on the current rent situation in the Bay Area. Here are the average monthly rental amounts:
As the article points out:
And that’s just for a run of the mill neighborhood in the city. If you want to live in a spiffier spot in San Francisco, be prepared to pony up big time cash. A one bedroom alone will cost you almost $3,500 in SOMA or $3,200 in Russian Hill.
Rents aren’t just high in San Francisco, they’re rising quickly. In June 2011, the median price for a one bedroom was $2,195. Two years later, the price of a one bedroom has increased 27% to $2,795. During the same time period, the price of a two bedroom apartment rose 33%. That’s almost 10 times the rate of inflation during those two years.
Ouch! I’m quite content with my three-figure mortgage payment, thank you very much. In fairness, I should note that prosperity has something to do with the recent price increases:
HEALTH CARE SPENDING AS A PERCENTAGE OF GDP: I don’t have any point to make, as untangling the relevant issues is far beyond my level of expertise, but this is an interesting graph nonetheless. Relevant questions to ask would be along the lines of “Where does the extra money go?” and “What do we get for it?”
A USEFUL HEURISTIC: I present to you Sturgeon’s Law (H/T: The Big Picture):
From creator Theodore Sturgeon:
I repeat Sturgeon’s Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of SF is crud. Using the same standards that categorize 90% of science fiction as trash, crud, or crap, it can be argued that 90% of film, literature, consumer goods, etc. are crap. In other words, the claim (or fact) that 90% of science fiction is crap is ultimately uninformative, because science fiction conforms to the same trends of quality as all other art forms.
This quote is from the 1950s, so no mention of whether blogs are included in this rule.
ARCANE DETAILS OF BORON GROUP METALS PRICING UPDATE: The Daily Show on Goldman-Sachs’s manipulation of the aluminum market:
The other part on ridiculously high rents in SF is the supply side. It’s essentially a landlocked city with a lot of development restrictions, so those rents are going to be higher in prosperous times if you have no new supply. It would be interesting to look at the average commute times of San Francisco firefighters and teachers vs. those of, say, software developers.
Actually I’m now seeing that the article mentions that: That SF’s population is increasing by about 7,000 people a year, but the city added only 269 housing units last year. Oh, and rent control further discourages new construction.