Dropbox handing over 25% of San Francisco HQ back to landlord as commercial real estate softens::San Francisco is seeing its highest office vacancy rate since at least 2007 as Dropbox and other companies allow employees to work from home
I say this as a homeowner who has seen a 150% increase in my home’s valuation over 8 years…hopefully commercial and residential real estate prices across the board are in for a drop. Home ownership was totally within reach for my wife and I in 2015, but anyone in a similar financial place today is SOL
200+% over 10 years, refid in 2019 or so.
Feel like I won the lottery.
It’s not fucking sustainable and it’s cruel to anyone younger.
Yep. Heck, it is rough even for those of us who won the housing lottery. If we ever want to move it means paying incredibly inflated prices (even with big gains on the sales of our own homes) and now crazy rates. Probably why prices haven’t really come down: few are selling. Golden handcuffs.
It’s really out of control these days. I feel like I will get priced out of this place eventually with the property taxes skyrocking to extreme levels. Ready for things to be taken down a notch
I feel very lucky I was able to purchase in 2015 at a good price and interest rate. Looking at prices now I’d never be able to afford a home. It’s absolutely insane this is even a problem.
All you commentors fortunate enough to buy I house… I envy you.
Finally got a well enough paying job in 2019. Watched the housing market 2-3x.
Commercial space is abundantly available which is why that market is soft. Residential listings is at historic lows and only slightly increasing. You’d need to see a massive swell of listings to see residential property values crash. Only way we’d see that is if rates get to where it makes sense for borrowers to trade in their 3% mortgages.
At some point, there will be more large-scale conversions of commercial space into residential with the market so lopsided. It’s already happening in some places
Most commercial projects physically cannot be converted. You’d have to strip out the whole building and reconfigure it for plumbing and electrical to exist in smaller units (condos).
I’ve spoken to developers about this before (I’m a mortgage lender that works with builders) and for them, it’d be easier to demo some of these buildings and rebuild them as residential so it’d have all the amenities tenants want.
If you treat commercial real estate as any other investment, you want to sell when it’s high. I don’t understand all these companies doubling down on Return to Office, just to have their commercial real estate value plummet later. Dropbox has it right. Get rid of it now.
We bought our house toward the end of the good times in 2020 at 2.5% thinking it was the best we were going to see for a long time; it was now or never - we either go hard or we get stuck in a starter home forever.
I hate having been right on that guess. The unavoidable conclusion is as you say… Anyone who missed the boat is hosed for the foreseeable future.
This is fantastic news. It confirms the long-term establishment of remote work and the knock-on impacts especially regarding the sheer waste of time that is the commute, reduced vehicle wear and tear, reduced energy of varied forms on propulsion for the commute, etc…
It’s good to see this, especially over the other option - forced return to office policies.
