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Microlocal rental data provokes confusion, comments

June 28, 2012 | Filed under: Lifestyle,San Francisco, CA | Posted by: Kombucha

If you’ve ever wondered how San Francisco’s skyrocketing rents and limited housing supply looks when it’s all laid out on some charts and graphs, a hyper local website based in the Mission district has provided just such a service with comparison rental data going back to 2009.

But what’s interesting to us is not the steady ascension of prices or the rollercoaster-like drops in availability, but the comments that people made about what it all means and what the implications are for the future of San Francisco’s rental real estate market.

Here are a few of the more interesting remarks that were made:

“I’m pretty sure this means that the world is going to end! And I’m also glad that I got my apartment in April of 2009 when rents had actually dipped.”

“Unless we start building more housing, there will be an even lower supply of rental units after the next wave of ownership conversions (to both Condos and TICs).”

“I think the data say housing crisis. But that’s just me.”

“The dropoff in apartments offered is to be expected coming out of a recession since fewer folks would be getting evicted/forced to move due to economic circumstances. Hence more people stay put. This analysis assumes Craigslist has maintained constant market share of apartment listings, though that seems reasonable however I’m not sure whether some of the new professionally managed buildings coming on line will use CL.”

That last comment brings up a very good point. More property managers are turning away from Craigslist because it is a source of spam and deviancy (usually just in the personals section, although sometimes it bleeds over into the apartment rentals, too). Expect to use a full devoted Internet Listing Service (ILS) the next time you have to look for a place.