SF Techie Explains Why the World Should Revolve Around Bay Area Techies

Tue, 24 Sep 2013 20:03:53 +0000

Flickr/:rayWhat would we do without you?Last week technology reporter Farhad Manjoo wrote an impassioned defense of the city’s tech sector for SF Magazine. By chance our own tech-savvy correspondent, SF Techie, had written a very similar article, often using the very same words. We’re proud to present it now, in support of his well thought out case.

By SF Techie

I recently met a 23 year-old who’s launching a startup while living out of his car. As a young tech entrepreneur, on or off his meds, he represents San Francisco’s future, and he’s not alone. Hundreds of thousands of equally qualified people are all moving to the Bay Area.

They’re coming here to innovate. And is there anything more innovative, in this day and age, than being a twenty-something with an idea for a startup?

They have to come here. One of the great promises of the Internet, after all, is liberation from the petty constraints of geography. But in practice, that’s absurd — if you want to be anyone in tech, you have to be in the Bay Area. Which means that, this one time, the Internet didn’t actually live up to its promise to change something. But that’s the only time that happened, or ever will happen. That and ending racism. And raising the living standard of the middle class. It turns out the internet has failed to do any of that.

But that’s it. We should be confident that every other promise made about the Internet by tech-funded economists, tech-funded journalists, and tech-entrepreneurs, will come true. Why? Because: Technology. Disruption. New Economy. 2.0.

You can’t argue with that.

No other region is better positioned to take advantage of the new tech forces shaping the world than the Bay Area, except perhaps the Virtual Bay Area being constructed by Google. It’s where the Singularity will live, if it can afford an apartment. (Our best engineers are still testing whether the Singularity can create a real estate market it can’t buy into.)

Nowhere else besides the Bay Area has anything close to the density of funders, product managers, engineers, journalists, strategists, and data miners that you find here living out of their cars. And if someday those cars drive themselves, then we’ll have finally revolutionized homelessness, too.

All those brilliant and ambitious engineers and scientists working together with government support can only do good things, the way they once did in Motor City or Tuskegee. These were extraordinarily productive times for technology and innovation, and no one got hurt.

Which means there’s only one thing standing in the way of the Bay Area becoming a permanent capital of the next global economy: democracy. If the small minded, myopic, and reflexively antagonistic people who live here decide they don’t want to reinvent their neighborhoods for the good of the technology industry, and use their votes to prevail, then we may have to take their votes away, like we have so many minority-owned homes. Real estate, after all, is a meritocracy.

But don’t be pessimistic! As a tech journalist in constant contact with industry executives, founders, investors, and engineers, I’ve been struck lately by how giddy the techies have become — how often they seem to pause in slack-jawed awe at their industry’s potential to reshape our lives over the next decade. To be sure, many of these people are professional smoke blowers. And yet I believe them. That’s called “Journalism.” Or, at least, “Pando Daily.” And it’s never been wrong.

Study the roots of our new tech economy, and you’ll find that it differs in important ways from the Internet bubble of the ’90s. That blip was fed by the promise of future billions that we were certain to realize from the web economy. Today’s tech industry, on the other hand, is fed by the promise of future billions from the mobile economy.

It’s a completely different economy. And unlike the web, which never caught on, people actually use mobile devices.

The vast infrastructure created by personalized big data collection incorporated across biometric mobile platforms in no way cross-synergizes empty buzzwords the way the 90s tech boom did.

So what San Francisco really needs is more tech workers. Just as only technology can solve the many, many, problems created by technology, so only more tech employees can solve the many, many problems created by tech employees.

The fact that we deny causing them only proves how much better we’ll be at solving them than you.

Why should we assume that the thousands of new aspiring tech workers pouring into the Bay Area will decimate the arts, cultural diversity, tolerance, and neighborhoods of San Francisco, just because that’s what happened last time? Technology is about innovation. If the industry destroys your city the same way twice, it hasn’t done it right. We’ve obviously learned from our mistakes, the same way Wall Street has.

If you want to see the benefits that the tech sector brings to San Francisco, look no farther than Airbnb, which refuses to pay hotel taxes, and the ride sharing site Uber, which won’t adequately insure its drivers or accept the non-discrimination clause taxis do. They boldly show that the tech industry doesn’t respect your laws or your regulations, which is how you know they’ll be great neighbors.

Uber, it should be pointed out, is also greening the city by discouraging people from using public transit or bicycles. And you haven’t even thanked them.

So San Franciscans have to find new ways to accommodate the tech industry. The tech industry would be glad to find new ways to accommodate San Franciscans, too, but it’s busy innovating. That’s much more important than anything you’re doing. Trust us. We’re innovators. It says so in our mission statements.

These newcomers are not barbarians at our gates — these are people whose values largely mirror those of the city dwellers they are ruthlessly pushing out. They’re just like you, only whiter and able to live here. There’s absolutely no rational reason to expect you won’t enjoy knowing they’re living in what used to be your apartment.

What cities in the Bay Area need to do is to develop policies that better support young entrepreneurs: more Single Room Occupancy units, for example, that can be given to tech workers instead of actual homeless people. We’re not asking for a government handout, we just want the government to support the development of our industry through massive tax breaks and civic realignment without getting anything in return.

Which you have to do because, if you don’t, we won’t locate here. Except that we have to locate here, because if you want to be anyone in tech you have to be in the Bay Area. Which … hmmmm ….

Ah screw it, just give us the tax breaks and your houses, and let the trans-humans figure out why. They’ll be smarter than both of us put together, which is how we know they’ll agree with me.

The Bay Area has finally found a source of economic prosperity that will keep on going no matter who it hurts. Let’s not ruin that by worrying about unintended consequences. There’s no historical evidence to support such fears. When has a new industry ever had unintended consequences?

It’s never happened. I checked my Twitter feed.

People who are worried about how a boom industry that refuses to play by the rules of democratically elected local governments might lead to unintended consequences for their communities just don’t understand how the world works. They’re naïve, which is why the people who decided to come to the bay area and live out of their cars while pursuing a startup will crush them.

What I’m saying is: we will destroy you. But don’t worry about it. We’re just like you.

Benjamin Wachs is a Literary Chameleon

Article source: http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2013/09/sf_techie_explains_why_the_wor.php

Investors Pile Into Housing Even as Prices Rise

Fri, 03 May 2013 07:47:44 +0000

Los Angeles-based Colony Capital, which boasts approximately ten thousand single-family rental homes in its portfolio, had centered its investments largely in the Southwest and West, but is now shifting to other markets.

(Read More: US Pending Home Sales Tick Upward in March)

“In terms of our mix, less is going to Arizona and California today,” said Justin Chang a principal at Colony. “Our mix is increasing on east coast, Georgia, Florida, we’re active in Texas. I think over time some of the early markets will become a smaller part of our overall portfolio.”

Some investors are also starting to look at new construction, as home builders start to ramp up production again. The key is to find new product that is cheaper than replacement costs, which still is not that easy. So far investment has mostly gone only as far as distressed new homes, but as prices rise, that may change.

“On home building, there’s a lot of chatter about that. We are in some conversations with builders,” explained Chang, who admits the economics have not been compelling yet. “Over time you’ll see more and more of these transactions, and we may do one as well.”

Another potential strategy going forward is a consolidation, as investors turn away from distressed properties and focus on so-called “Mom and Pop” landlords, who may buy just one or two properties. There are an estimated 14 million single family rental homes owned by this cohort.

“If you think about all of the major institutions maybe owning 70,000 total homes compared to the market size of 14 million homes, the long term potential is enormous. Institutions are literally a fly on an elephant,” said Aaron Edelheit, CEO of The American Home, an Atlanta-based company that owns and manages about 2,500 homes. “We may look back and realize that the REO [real estate owned] to rental space was only the foundation for an exponentially larger industry with institutions owning hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of homes.”

(Read More: Next Boom? ‘Spec’ Homes Are Back)

There are 7.2 million more renters today than there were in 2004, and just 400,000 more homeowners, according to the U.S. Census.

Despite the recovery in home sales, the homeownership rate continues to fall, from an all-time high of 69.2 percent to 65 percent in the first quarter of 2013. As home prices rise and the employment picture improves, more people will come back to home ownership, and some of the new rental homes will inevitably be sold, but certainly not all of them.

“If you buy homes in areas with below-median income, I think the mortgage market is going to have harder time providing credit to these people, and it’s going to take longer for that to recover,” said Bloemker. “We think that these homes are more likely to be long term rentals, and those are likely to end up in the hands of institutional investors.”

—By CNBC’s Diana Olick; Follow her on Twitter @Diana_Olick or on Facebook at facebook.com/DianaOlickCNBC
—CNBC’s Stephanie Dhue contributed to this story

Questions? Comments? RealtyCheck@cnbc.com

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100700113

Housing Recovery Depends on Slashing Mortgage Debt

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 04:38:27 +0000

(Read More: Mortgage Deduction Is Popular, but Few Claim It)

“The prospect of being taxed on potentially tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional income may motivate more distressed homeowners to forgo a short sale and allow the home to be foreclosed,” said RealtyTrac’s Daren Blomquist in a release. “Additionally, if the mortgage interest deduction is eliminated due to the fiscal cliff quagmire, it would give many underwater and otherwise distressed homeowners one less reason to hang on to their homes.”

Banks completed 13,351 principal reduction loan modifications in November alone, according to a monthly report from Amherst Securities Group. That’s a 62 percent jump from September. Much of it is thanks to the $25 billion mortgage servicing settlement signed by the nation’s five largest banks early this year over so-called “robo-signing” foreclosure practices.

Banks have already given borrowers $6.3 billion in mortgage principal relief under the settlement, according to a report from its monitor, Joseph A. Smith, released last month. Bank of America recently ramped-up its relief, reporting 30,000 customers were approved or had completed first-lien modifications through September 30 providing $4.75 billion in principal reduction. Borrowers received an average $150,000 slash in loan balances.

(Read More: How ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Could Affect Mortgage Interest Deduction)

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100285754

Foreclosure Sales Centered in Few States, So Why Should We Care?

Thu, 26 May 2011 16:11:17 +0000

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Earlier this week, when we got the report of a bump up in sales of newly constructed homes, I cautioned that the home builders are still facing huge competition from distressed properties (foreclosures and short sales). Today we have some new numbers showing just how big and how widespread that competition is.

Foreclosed properties made up 28 percent of all home sales nationwide in the first quarter of this year, according to RealtyTrac.

That’s up slightly from Q4 of 2010, but not the record 29 percent we saw a year ago. More than 107,000 bank-owned (REO) properties sold, which is actually a drop from the previous quarter and a bigger drop (36 percent) from a year ago. Foreclosed properties sold at a 35 percent discount to their non-distressed counterparts.

So here we have fewer selling but making up a larger share of total sales. That’s not particularly healthy. We need to get more of these properties sold, because as I showed you on the blog Tuesday, there are hundreds of thousands of them and millions more in the potential pipeline.

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Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/43182211?__source=RSS*blog*&par=RSS

homesmillbrae.com » Hundreds Of Thousands

SF Techie Explains Why the World Should Revolve Around Bay Area Techies

Investors Pile Into Housing Even as Prices Rise

Housing Recovery Depends on Slashing Mortgage Debt

Foreclosure Sales Centered in Few States, So Why Should We Care?