By TIM REDMOND
OCTOBER 16, 2023
It’s too early to know what the local news media will do about a Board of Supes committee deciding today to once again delay Mayor London Breed’s extensive changes in local housing approval rules.
But based on a big piece in the SF Standard today, we can guess: It will be all about the Nimbys continuing to slow down changes that would allow more housing in the city and bring down prices.
By TRD Staff
OCT 11, 2023, 11:30 AM
The market for luxury condominiums in San Francisco has fallen into the doldrums as demand fades during an oversupply from hundreds of luxury condos flooding the city in the last five years. Fewer of the city’s new fancy condos in Downtown, where more than a third of the offices stand empty, find takers. The sluggish sales may be blamed on higher interest rates, which have forced local and foreign buyers to hit pause on purchases.
Butte County is best. Santa Cruz is worst.
By JONATHAN LANSNER
October 11, 2023
”Survey says” looks at various rankings and scorecards judging geographic locations while noting these grades are best seen as a mix of artful interpretation and data. If you want a quasi-affordable California home, look far from the coast and the big cities. My trusty spreadsheet reviewed third-quarter homebuying affordability stats for 578 big US counties – including 35 California counties.
By Gaetan Lion
ABAG’s projections use 2015 as the most recent year of actuals.
ABAG’s projections to 2022 (most recent actual data) show how much ABAG dramatically overshot the Bay Area’s population growth. While ABAG projected that during this period, the Bay Area population would increase from 7.6 million to over 8.1 million, it actually decreased to under 7.6 million. ABAG overestimated the Bay Area population by 7.6%. This is a huge error this early in this forecast.
By Joe DiMento
Much ink has been spilled in San Francisco about a proposed development at 2700 Sloat Blvd. that would create a 50-story condo in the Outer Sunset, a neighborhood with no buildings over six stories tall. The development likely received its death blow when the Board of Appeals voted down the appeal of the Planning Commission’s rejection of the project.
By THOMAS ELIAS | Columnist
PUBLISHED: August 8, 2023
On the same July day that California Attorney General Rob Bonta issued a stern warning to cities and counties around the state about alleged misuse of local “urgency” zoning rules the rebellion against those very laws formally began. This happened when Bonta’s own office received a new initiative designed to make local governments — not the state — supreme in setting housing policies and patterns.