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Bay Area Exodus? How Big? How Long?

A lot of the fire, heat and policy-making on the Peninsula lately has  been driven by the belief that we will be adding more of…well, everything.  Except perhaps affordable, local entertainment.  Rent control.  Affordable housing.  Mass transit.  High density.  Subsidized X, Y, Z and back to A.  ADU's.  UBI.  Free lunch.  What if it's all just BeeEss?

You can find polls and surveys to support or contradict any position you choose.  But you can't deny the fact of open market pricing.  Not the engineered, subsidized, hidden-cost stuff like renewable energy.  I'm talking the "walk into a place of business and get a price quote" response.

Here's the "walk-in" price that caught my eye this week.  A friend of a friend is moving to Portland.  I know, I know–really? Now?  He's got remote work status until….. who knows when.  She can transplant her practice anywhere.  All that aside, the cost to rent a truck to move your stuff yourself to Portland today is $2,500.  The price to rent the same truck in Portland to drive to the Bay Area is…….wait for it, $300.  If I gave you my special 20 minute How-to-Negotiate class, I'll bet you could get them to pay you $300 to bring the truck back for them.  It would cover gas, lunch and the Golden Gate bridge toll.

Will the exodus continue?  Yes.  Will it last more than a couple years?  Maybe.  Will it reverse within the next five?  Doubtful.  I'm glad I'm not all-in on a high-density, all-electric$$, bird cage with a minuscule courtyard, 6' x 6' elevators and no balcony that I will need to sell for $650,000 to break even.  The old saying "don't fight the Fed" only applies if you have to get in the ring.

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51 responses to “Bay Area Exodus? How Big? How Long?”

  1. Cassandra

    Joe- like the “all-electric” snap.
    The electricity was out on the Avenue for the second time this month. Bet the restaurants and bakeries were glad they had natural gas.
    The City Council needs to keep us safe and fix potholes. No more virtue-envy of Berkeley’s wokeness.

  2. Barking Dog

    DMV appointment Monday November 9th @ 930a in Reno. Officially becoming Nevada resident.

  3. Joe

    +13% after-tax income. Congrats.

  4. Joe

    Interesting piece in the WSJ on Wednesday about Google going to work at home until at least July 2021. It notes a Santa Clara County regulation requiring each workspace to be 250 square feet! Thinking back to my office days, that seemed like senior executive-style space. Indeed a search yields this:
    By 2010, the average office worker’s space had gone from 90 square feet in 1994 to 75 square feet, Time magazine reports.
    If your company plans an office redesign, it’s likely that new cubicles will measure 6 feet wide by 6 feet deep — that’s 36 square feet — or maybe less — perhaps only 5 feet by 5 feet, or a mere 25 square feet. Cubicles are generally sold in pods of six or more. While the smaller cubicle gives you less elbow room, it’s better for the environment. Less space improves an office’s carbon footprint. While the average office worker might have less room in which to work, that’s not true at the executive level. Time magazine reports that executive work spaces have actually grown — but these employees are probably not working in cubicles.
    ————–
    So the latest in Covid regulations means a 7-10X increase in per worker floor space? Don’t expect that to become the norm in Silicon Valley. Austin, Salt Lake City, Denver, Boise—the techies are coming! I wonder if San Mateo County is similar?

  5. Peter Garrison

    From the screenplay for the 1960 film The Alamo. Written by James Edward Grant, delivered by frontiersman and former Congressman Davy Crockett, played by John Wayne-
    “Republic. I like the sound of the word. It means people can live free, talk free, go or come, buy or sell, be drunk or sober, however they choose. Some words give you a feeling. ‘Republic’ is one of those words that makes me tight in the throat – the same tightness a man gets when his baby takes his first step or his first baby shaves and makes his first sound as a man. Some words can give you a feeling that makes your heart warm. ‘Republic’ is one of those words.”

  6. Barking Dog

    https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/tahoe-real-estate-homes-for-sale-pandemic-15449660.php

  7. Joe

    Thanks, BD. Being a 20+ years owner in Tahoe, I will be interested to see how the new owners who may think they want to be here full time adapt to poor cell coverage, sketchy internet from Suddenlink, snow, sleet and wind driven power outages, etc. Should be fun on the roads in Jan/Feb too. “What are snow tires?”

  8. Joe

    Every once in awhile I actually bother with NextDoor. Tonight I find a classic case (head case) named David Katleman from San Mateo saying:
    Such a NIMBY topic, don’t you dare build more housing near me. I raised three children who are in their twenties now, all moved out of state because it’s too expensive here. Heck, if I sold my place I’ve had for 30 years, I would have to move too. I gladly invite more dense housing near rail/BART. I’ve had enough of NIMBY owners trying to keep others out, it’s revolting.
    ….If the mysterious censors on ND remove my response, it will still be available here:
    I’ve had enough of people thinking they can call someone a NIMBY and they are done with the conversation. I’m a NIMBY-deal with it. Idiots like Scott Weiner don’t know anything about the Peninsula lifestyle WE Bought Into and don’t care so why should we give a care about the development addicts?

  9. Cassandra

    Most of us started small and worked and saved to move here.
    10, 20, 30, 40 years of hard work and the blessings of good health and stable family life.
    Others are welcome to the same challenge.
    If the character of our town changes enough, people won’t want to move here and we’ll move away.
    If it works, don’t fix it and especially don’t use other people’s money to fix it for people who don’t want to work and save.

  10. Joe

    More back and forth with David Katleman:
    Really? When you bought your home, it came with a guarantee or promise that more people wouldn’t move into “your” Peninsula, or something like that. Don’t recall any such promises, nor would I expect that. Saying you bought into a lifestyle and oppose any change near you is exactly what NIMBY means.
    From me:
    It came with zoning laws–ever heard of them? R1. Height limits. FAR. Declining height envelop. You don’t know what you are talking about and are a clueless fool and should move to be near your kids. Leave the rest of us in peace.

  11. Barking Dog

    https://www.sfgate.com/living-in-sf/article/For-sale-homes-in-San-Francisco-hits-15454894.php

  12. The Techxodus is Real

    The techies can and will lead the exodus especially from San Fran as the Chronicle notes. Their love of the cool factor was waning before Covid as the quality of life degraded and they aged into adult life. Almost forgotten is how business unfriendly the city has gotten. Many traditional big employers have left or plan to leave.

  13. Fugit All

    I can’t think of a more Boomer thing than paraphrasing a Nextdoor thread on a blog, so congratulations, Joe. If nothing else, these comments will serve as a time capsule of pre-pandemic, trickle-down economics, Capitalism first Burlingame values: when membership to a community and belonging to a place was premised on the purchase power of the consumer and nothing else. How quaint.
    I appreciate the historian aspect of your work here, Joe, but maybe you should have called it Burlingame Gentry.

  14. Joe

    How quaint that you feel entitled to call direct quotes, cut and pasted from ND, “paraphrasing”. And yes, they are a time capsule since the nameless blog-police (being polite here) at NextDoor took the whole 50+ comment thread down by morning. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it…” You know, it’s “the thing”. So fun paraphrasing Sleepy Joe.
    But I do like the “Burlingame Gentry” moniker. I’d use it, but you would accuse me of paraphrasing. Fugit.

  15. Concerned

    Copying an inane, rude exchange from NextDoor to your own blog, and naming the other guy, is classy, Joe. Real classy. We expect better from you.

  16. Chris

    The big draw here has always been the high paying jobs and entrepreneurs starting the next big thing. As long as we continue to have the jobs, we will have the housing shortage and high prices. The exodus from SF is a product of the pandemic and will end when the pandemic ends. Right now, a lot of younger workers are moving from SF because they can’t go out to restaurants, clubs etc, which are closed due to COVID. and, some have lost their jobs, and others don’t feel safe living in a densely populated city. These conditions will change once we have a vaccine. We had an exodus after the dot com bubble burst. If I had a lot of money, I would buy up rental property in SF over the next six months.

  17. Barking Dog

    10’s of millions of square ft of office space available for SUB LEASE in SF. Tech and others looking to unload their leased space now as working from home is more efficient for them and cheaper…

  18. Joe

    @Chris, you may very well be right. In some ways I hope you are. Certain things have changed since the last time–mostly in the technology tools arena.
    @Barking Dog, I just randomly met a mobile notary from Northern Nevada who is stunned–floored–by how many Californians are flying in, writing real estate checks and flying back.
    @Concerned. Sorry, I have to respectfully disagree for a number of reasons. There is no expectation of privacy on ND (or most anywhere else with on-line commentary). I have read 1,000s of on-line pieces that include Twitter screen grads, etc. It’s stabdard stuff.
    Katleman and I were engaged in a two-way conversation. If someone were to paraphrase or selectively edit that would be uncool, but that didn’t happen here.
    And ND’s crazy policy of deleting whole threads (this one was 50+ comments ling already) is Orwellian. People spouting nonsense–or worse pure misinformation–need to be called out. “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it”. I’m sure you recognize where that originate.

  19. resident

    https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/for_andrew_cuomo_waking_up_and_smelling_the_socialist_coffee_is_a_bitter_whiff

  20. Anna

    Thank you for trying to keep Nextdoor honest. You may be facing an uphill battle but I appreciate it. I am disappointed with what it has become.

  21. Barking Dog

    https://www.sfgate.com/ontheblock/slideshow/Condo-inventory-spikes-with-price-reductions-206546.php

  22. Joe

    A full-length piece in yesterday’s WSJ about the Silicon Valley exodus notes all the same things as I did here, but ends on a nice local note:
    For Carolyn Guss, 44 years old, coronavirus sped up her long held dream of living in the mountains—something she thought wouldn’t happen until her children, 8 and 10, were in college.
    “I had this idea in my head that the Bay Area is the center of the tech universe and if you don’t live in the Bay Area, you can’t really progress your career,” said Ms. Guss, a vice president of marketing for a software company.
    In March, she drove with her family to their condo in Park City, Utah, to ride out the pandemic. They soon realized they didn’t want to leave. The lack of commute, affordability of housing, access to ski slopes and Utah’s lower tax rate all argued in favor of making the move permanent, she said.
    One day, the CEO of Ms. Guss’s company asked if she was still in Park City. When she said yes, her boss asked why she’d bother coming back.
    “I said, ‘Well that’s funny you should mention that,’” said Ms. Guss.
    Her company approved her request to make her relocation permanent, and she and her husband bought a home in Park City that’s twice the size of the house they owned in Burlingame, Calif. for the same price. Their old house had a garage so small they didn’t park their car in it. The garage in the new one fits four cars.
    When Ms. Guss and her husband listed their California home, which sold for under asking, their real-estate agent said people were eager to buy homes with yards outside of San Francisco proper. Would-be buyers expressed interest, but there was a catch: Too many people were trying to sell in San Francisco. During the first week of August, property listings in the city of San Francisco were up 96% compared with the same week last year, according to Zillow.
    “We realized they couldn’t sell their place in San Francisco,” said Ms. Guss. “When did you ever think that you would say the sentence, ‘Yeah, I can’t sell my place in S.F.’?”

  23. Barking Dog

    https://youtu.be/QrEK5hgr3vY
    Pushing to tax you for 10yrs after you leave California

  24. Barking Dog

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/californias-next-tax-increase-11597445360?st=po07cy83q687d5j&reflink=article_email_share

  25. Cassandra

    Waiting for the next school bond to “help the children” held back by the virus (of teacher unions).

  26. Fugit All

    Hard to say which is worse: reading regurgitated (sorry, Joe! QUOTED) ND threads or the tale of a tech exec decamping to her 4 car garage, Park City abode with access to the ski slopes while maintaining her gig all thanks to this little pandemic most people are suffering through.
    It’s a bit “qu’ils mangent de la brioche” at this moment.

  27. Joe

    The good news from my perspective is I’m not trying to satisfy even a minority of the people a minority of the time. If you don’t like it, don’t read it. IDC. And you can QUOTE me on that :-0

  28. Barking Dog

    https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Pinterest-terminate-SF-office-lease-88-Bluxome-15525421.php

  29. MBGA

    I like the quote “A more distributed workforce will give us the opportunity to hire people from a wider range of backgrounds and experiences.”
    Like maybe there are some downsides having everybody on your aposemetic staff cheering on the fall of western civilization?

  30. Barking Dog

    https://www.sfgate.com/living-in-sf/article/Monterey-county-real-estate-booming-15528516.php

  31. Barking Dog

    https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/coronavirus-taxes-homeless-los-angeles-celebrities

  32. MBGA – fat chance

    Moving to Monterey county? How does that fix anything for them? They’ll still be stuck under the same leadership. Sadly I see no way this can correct itself because Californians are never going to swing back. The problems of SF will come to Monterey, after they’ve screwed up Burlingame and the peninsula.
    I’ve been asking former friends if there is a “woke breaking point” and they don’t even understand the question.

  33. Barking Dog

    Sept 6
    11,101 SF apartment rental ads on Craigslist. Another 2500 in shares and sublets.

  34. MBGA

    I’ve been up to Boise three times in the last year and I like it a lot. But Northern California has been my home my whole life and the situation looks really bad for the future here unless things change radically.
    I forget the exact numbers from the 2016 election. I think San Mateo County voted Democrat somewhere in the high 80%. Is there any reason to believe that it will be less this time? If it dropped down to a 50-50, or even 60-40 D/R there might be hope enough to stay put.
    In some now rare conversations with former friends I am trying to get a feeling for whether there is a woke breaking point and I am rather discouraged that I don’t see that happening. I think they are going to vote for Hillary again. —— Point number two, (point number 1 is there is no woke breaking point) Point 2: I think Joe Biden won’t be the candidate. I actually suspect Hillary will be called back for a do over. Don’t ask me how that works. I have no idea what happens to already printed and mailed ballots, but I can’t see that guy making it another six weeks. He looks completely gone.

  35. Joe

    Wandering around town over the last few days I notice there are more “For Lease” signs than I remember seeing in a loooooong time. Looks like the market forces are at work–way more efficient and “fair” than the heavy-handed regulations some socialists in town prefer.

  36. PhyrigianCap

    And the empty properties are in prime locations on The Ave.
    We’ve had the windows on The Ave boarded up and now the stores are empty.
    Can you imagine wanting to build a small business this year or the next? People are getting used to being regulated and not taking responsibility for their own welfare: Socialism.
    Time for government to get out of the way.
    Time to open up the economy.

  37. Barking Dog

    Prop 15 passing = lost more vacancies coming on Ave/Broadway, businesses abandoning leases(trying to sublet) on office space and leaving California all together.

  38. Libertarian

    It is a total lie that Prop 15 tax increases will go to public schools.
    Just as was the case for past gas tax increases promised to go to road improvements, this is not supported by the facts.
    The vast majority of these Prop 15 tax increases will go to support unfunded excessive public pensions.
    Our CA politicians are liars.
    Also, why is the wasteful High Speed Rail debacle still alive?

  39. Cassandra

    Like button.

  40. Barking Dog

    https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Report-SF-rental-prices-drop-20-percent-15613394.php

  41. MBGA

    The view of the avenue from Park Road.
    https://imgur.com/Oz90JIT
    That large black “FOR LEASE” sign on the former Gap building is a bit depressing. I wouldn’t think that’s the message businesses on the ave want to be sending at this point.

  42. Barking Dog

    https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/San-Francisco-apartment-rents-crater-up-to-31-15643514.php

  43. Libertarian

    San Francisco Rents down almost 50%!
    Free Markets work wonderfully.
    Cindy and Dumdum’s socialst policies have no positive impact and they have no idea how the world really works.
    Let’s hope that Burlingame can stop the Progressive decay from infiltrating us that has killed San Francisco.

  44. Cassandra

    https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/San-Francisco-apartment-rents-crater-up-to-31-15643514.php
    From The Chronicle- SF rents drop 31%.
    Trust the invisible hand of the free market.
    Rent control? Nope.

  45. Joe

    Here’s more anecdotal evidence from today’s WSJ:
    Tech companies in smaller cities are starting to see an uptick in applications from candidates living in San Francisco and New York—areas that have long had a grip on tech talent.
    Executives at tech startups and companies including Jane LLC in Lehi, Utah; World View Enterprises Inc. in Tucson, Ariz.; Starkey Hearing Technologies in Eden Prairie, Minn., and Zebra in Austin, Texas, say they are seeing an increase in applicants from San Francisco and, in some cases, New York.
    Since May, the nonprofit One America Works has launched four virtual fairs for employers based in Indianapolis, Pittsburgh and Columbus, Ohio. Of more than 3,800 job seekers, around 25% were from California and another 9% were from New York.
    Podium Corp., an 800-person Utah startup, also in Lehi, has hired six senior-level people from San Francisco-based companies including Lyft Inc. and Microsoft Corp. -owned GitHub Inc. in the past six months, and considered at least 600 Bay Area applicants in that time. That is two to three times the volume of typical years. Not all of Podium’s new hires plan to relocate to Utah.

  46. Growling Tiger

    Hey Barking Dog I just heard Cynthia the Socialist has left da building. Yep. Straight outa Burlingame. Maybe straight out of Cali. Wish I could tag you on this site. LMK that you see this.

  47. Paloma Ave

    Hey Growling Tiger – That is great news.
    Now if we could just get rid of Dumdum and Madeline.

  48. Barking Dog

    I wish her the best of health and happiness where ever she ends up. I don’t think anyone will miss her verbal diarrhea and written attacks on Burlingame residents, especially homeowners. My guess is she won’t go out without a final jab at Burlingame with a letter the to editor/editorial to the SMDJ. Blaming every other buzzword that currently is in the media, but never her fault. Stay classy as always Cynthia.
    “Palo Alto weather with the density of Manhattan would probably be the greatest city on Earth. If I were a deca-billionaire, I’d make that my life’s work.” – Mike Dunham Twitter Dec ’20
    While I can no longer vote in Burlingame, I hope future Burlingame voters can see that Mike has a very different future in mind for Burlingame than our current. Look how Adrien Fine’s tenure on the Palo Alto council went and his parting shot letter to his constituents/fellow council members. Dumdum is more extreme. Buffoon.
    Who knows, maybe Madeline becomes the new Cindy. She has all the ‘in’ buzzwords floating around the rhetoric she spews. Another upstate New Yorker with a 50k per year design school education, who thinks Twitter is news media. Buffoonette.

  49. Growling Tiger

    Oh my. Dunham has had some stupid quotes before but this one is epic. If we built out Palo Alto like Manhattan there might be some “climate change”. Is he still unemployed and hopnig to pick up EDD checks off the ground?

  50. Joe

    And the numbers are coming in on the exodus:
    Throughout the pandemic, we’ve heard the narrative of a mass exodus from big cities as many offices went remote, and people sought out more space and affordable housing.
    But new data from the U.S. Census Bureau gives us a closer estimate of how many people left than ever before, and San Francisco and San Mateo County are near the top of the list with the biggest decreases in population in counties with 100,000 or more residents.
    From July 2020 to July 2021, San Francisco’s population decreased by an estimated 6.3%, losing nearly 55,000 people in that time frame. San Mateo County was fourth, with its population decreasing 3.2% and a loss of nearly 25,000 people.
    https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/Only-one-U-S-county-saw-a-larger-share-of-people-17026658.php
    Only Manhattan lost a larger percentage
    And there is more to come with a Execu-dus.
    The WSJ reports:
    As more companies begin their return to the office, Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. is becoming more remote than ever before.
    The company’s management team, including Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, is scattering to locations far from its Silicon Valley headquarters in an extreme test of the limits of remote work.
    Having this many top executives spread across so many different time zones is a concern considering that the company’s most recent quarterly results seemed to call for more of an all-hands-on-deck situation, said David Heger, an analyst at Edward Jones.
    “Considering the juncture that the company’s at right at the moment, it may not be the ideal time to be experimenting with your top managers working remotely,” he said.

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