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Comment on The spectre haunting San Franciscoparent

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On the other hand, you're a fool if you think that the sweetheart deal that the established Google engineer enjoys (almost certainly as a result of city rental ordinances) will be an ounce of comfort or of any material benefit to the next person who needs to find an apartment, engineer or no. Believe it or not, landlords don't lower their asking price for an open apartment just because the guy who moved in downstairs five years ago is paying peanuts. :P

I am pretty sure you are confused as to what you believe my point to be, considering you just restated what I have been saying.

Rents in SF will keep going up until another bubble bursts.

Okay. I see you technically have a point, and maybe I should be stupidly pedantic again:

You know the numbers that show up on Craigslist when you search for a given set of apartment configurations in any one particular neighborhood? New housing, even luxury housing, will cause these numbers to go down and not up. These numbers are also what most people are talking about when they talk about "the rent is too damned high" and that's also the number that everyone in the market for a rental actually cares about.

Yes, rents will almost certainly keep going up, that's true, because the new construction in San Francisco is pathetically small. But prices for a new rental of each and every extant apartment will be lower than they would if there were no new construction at all (or if there was negative construction).

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