Who's Really Buying Property in San Francisco?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

TECHNOLOGY
Who’s Really Buying Property in San Francisco?
A lot of software developers, according to an unprecedented new analysis.

ALEXIS C. MADRIGAL
APR 19, 2019

Updated on April 19 at 1:28 p.m. ET.

There has never been a town like the one San Francisco is becoming, a place where a single industry composed almost entirely of rich people thoroughly dominates the local economy. Much of the money that’s been squished out of the rest of the world gets funneled by the internet pipes to this little sliver of land on the Pacific Ocean, jutting out into the glory of the bay. The city now sits atop a geyser of cash created from what the scholar Shoshana Zuboff calls “behavioral surplus”—the natural resource created from your behavior, which is to say your mind.
....

But precisely because the tech industry has become so ubiquitous, blending in seamlessly with the old-line wealth generated by hometown firms like Bechtel, McKesson, Levi’s, various banks, and more obscure fortunes, it’s been hard to disentangle what all those engineer salaries and options are doing in the world.

At least until Deniz Kahramaner got interested. He’s a 20-something Stanford-trained data scientist turned real-estate agent, and he wanted to understand who was driving the local housing market. When he founded Data Bay Area, a real-estate group affiliated with the unicorn start-up Compass, he came into a common data set of property records. Title companies, which are the internal machinery of the real-estate market, generate business for themselves by giving away the data on who owns all the properties in a city.
....

But, taking all that into account, Kahramaner’s team ultimately found industries and companies for 55 percent of the home purchasers in San Francisco in 2018.



Which industries’ employees are purchasing homes in San Francisco (Deniz Kahramaner)

Fully 51 percent of them worked in software. They bought in specific, desirable neighborhoods closer to San Francisco’s tech companies, as well as the highways and train lines that lead south into Silicon Valley. They were less likely to buy in the foggy Sunset, which is the worst commute to tech businesses.



Where tech employees purchased in San Francisco in 2018 (Deniz Kahramaner)
....

[NBachers]

1. I'm at lunch right now from my hardware store job in San Francisco. Thank you for posting this.

I'll have to come back and read it after work.

Our whole neighborhood is being knocked down and turned into high-rises. I wonder how long the new trendy residents will put up with delivery semi-trucks at 6 a.m. and working people coming in and out all day long. We'll probably be driving down their Realtor rated "Strolling Walk Score."

[wryter2000]

2. I wish someone would do the same analysis for Oakland

Our real estate market is insane. And downtown is filling up with huge, expensive apartment complexes.

Maybe it's for rich people who aren't quite rich enough for San Francisco.

[Auggie]

3. It's one "Big One" away from changing.

Very few S.F. residents have lived through a large earthquake centered under they're very noses. I had the joy of being awakened by a 6.0 five miles from the house a few years back. Never been that close to a quake of that magnitude. It shook the hell of out me, BTW. And I gained a whole new level of respect for them.

When we get an 8.0 on the Hayward in Alameda -- or along the San Andreas in San Mateo County or the ocean -- it's going to change a lot of people's perceptions about earthquakes. It's also going to scare many away.