Developments in Development: Are we happy yet?

San Francisco’s renters are giving the city top marks – in everything except affordability, of course, where they give it the equivalent of blowing a raspberry. That’s according to a renter satisfaction survey from Apartment List. Interestingly, the other thing renters in the survey were particularly unhappy with is the quality of schools. Also surprising: Respondents were more or less happy with commute time, but find the city pet-unfriendly.

The highest scoring area on that survey was “job opportunities” – perhaps reflective of the fact that employment is at an incredible high, according to SocketSite.

Median rents  continue to not move much, putting more or less everything outside the grasp of people earning reasonable salaries. One heat map has the Mission’s median rent for a one-bedroom at $3,420 a month.

Remember, though, that these are medians and vary from realtor to realtor – a quick Craigslist browse indicates that you can still get one-bedrooms for $2,800 or so in the neighborhood, and maybe $3,400 is more of a two-bedroom apartment. So rejoice! Then talk to your friends/family/etc in pretty much anywhere else in the U.S. besides Manhattan and have your weekly internal crisis about living here. What, you don’t have those? Just me? Alright alright…  

Let’s have a brief sojourn into the world of sale prices too: Socketsite notes that this glass house dropped $1 million in asking price, putting it just inside what I imagine is standard going price for a stack of giant marble shoe boxes. I wonder if that asking price includes curtains.

Here’s something new: Dandelion Chocolate apparently is hoping to add a multi story construction next door to its space on 16th Street. With a rooftop pool. So says Socketsite, which also notes that the plan is to connect 14,000 square feet of PDR space in the new building to the existing space in the Dandelion building, and add 13,000 square feet of office space.

Lastly: Brace yourselves, because ads parodying the passive aggressive Airbnb ads of yesteryear are coming to a bus stop near you. ShareBetterSF, the political group that has long advocated and lobbied for tighter regulations on short term rentals, has shelled out $51,000 to pay for space on Muni. The new ads that emulate the infamous ones the homesharing company rolled out to oppose a ballot measure that would have added restrictions to short term rentals.

The new ads include gems like, “Dear Airbnb: You told us not to spend your tax payments ‘all in one place’ but now you’re making us spend taxpayer money on defending your frivolous lawsuit?” Coupled with our dictionary-weight local ballot and the messiness I’m sure we’ll see at Monday’s presidential debate, this election is gonna be just so much fun.