San Franciscans continue to move toward more ‘comfortable lives’ elsewhere as rental prices drop

A recent real estate report showed that prices for renting a room in SF have fallen 11.8 percent, eclipsing a record 9 percent drop last month as more locals pack their bags. We decided to catch up with some of them to ask why they are leaving (or have already left) the city by the bay.

Franciscans are leaving Dodge en masse as unemployment rates rise and notable tech companies (Facebook, Twitter, Square) adopt perennial models of working from home. A product of this local “tech exodus,” another anecdotal detail about making street parking easier, is that for the first time in over a decade, SF is home to a tenant market. And a recently released Zumper National Rental Report emphasized that point, showing double-digit rent decreases at seven-by-seven, the largest observed in any U.S. city and the strongest ever recorded for SF by the company. real estate.

Although for some, the choice to save their things and leave was not only financially based. It was simply that the pandemic enabled them to realize that the lifestyles they longed for were no longer confused with what San Francisco had to offer.

“Overall, there were some lifestyle reasons that influenced my decision to move,” says Charlotte Boyd, a former San Francisco Evernote employee who recently moved to her hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee, to SFist in an email. . “Even with earning more than $ 100K a year, I felt I had few long-term options for a lifestyle that suited me as I grew up: I could never buy a home or live alone, even on a comfortable salary.”

Your situation is well justified. Regardless of “pandemic prices”: In our research, we found a Zillow listing for a house in Bayview-Hunters Point that slashed another $ 100K from its already-reduced sale price in June; the median cost of a house in San Francisco still remains north of $ 1M.

So, if you consider a standard fixed interest rate of 4 percent, a monthly payment on a 30-year mortgage (which is killed by tax advisers) would add up to about $ 4,774. And that payment is only, per new, more than 80 percent of a monthly paycheck for someone who earns a salary on par with Boyd’s; Many financial experts believe that you should never spend more than 30 percent of your income on housing to have a good quality of life.

But the crazy idea of ​​homeownership isn’t the only reason Boyd traded the Bay Area for a subway that has a cost of living 3 percent lower than the national average. She, like many of her friends who have also recently moved from SF, wanted a more “comfortable” life.

“From a community point of view, many of my friends also moved to live a more comfortable lifestyle, which made me reconsider my surroundings,” adds Boyd. “There was so little creativity or time to do anything other than sleep, travel, work, repeat.”

It was a comparable Oprah right now She became aware of a second source close to SFist, who decided to remain anonymous, when she was fired from a local marketing company. Said deceased, San Franciscan used that unemployment attack as the catalyst to rethink what he wanted in life (such as “warmer weather”), and eventually pointed his move to another, albeit less expensive, start center: Austin, Texas.

Ironically, these larger, more affordable cities could see rent increases as people escaping from the more expensive cities move.

The report, which added data from more than a million active listings across the country and calculated the median requested income for the top 100 metropolitan areas by population, according to Zumper’s research methodology, states that as the pandemic persists, there could be increased demand for rentals in “neighboring, less expensive areas” across the country.

Although these regions could be considered comparatively “less expensive”, it seems that working in them has not affected the income of some people, including Boyd’s.

“I am currently doing marketing consulting for [three] different small businesses in the city and earning just below what I was doing in San Francisco, “he continues, just before closing with a resounding, direct line:” I finally have my time back, and I don’t know if I ever would. if I was still in San Francisco. “

Last month, the Board of Supervisors extended the City’s COVID-19 eviction ban indefinitely, helping to slow down hourglasses for thousands of San Franciscans as they ponder what their next moves entail. (A joint request by the SF Apartment Association and the SF Realtors Association to place a temporary restraining order on that ban was recently rejected.)

For more information on current and past Zumper rental reports, visit zumper.com/blog/category/rent-reports to see how rental prices have changed in the Bay Area over the years.

Related: Driven by Bay Area tenant exoduses, surfaces a San Francisco tenant market

SF supervisors extend eviction moratorium indefinitely

SF’s largest landlord insists it won’t delay the sale of its 67 rent-controlled buildings

Image: Aman Kumar