San Francisco Dwelling Costs Soar Regardless of Rising Property Crime
Mayor London Breed (Getty)
Boarded up shop windows. Brazen robberies. proliferation of tent camps. To outsiders, San Francisco sounds more and more like the dystopian Detroit from the 2028 sci-fi classic RoboCop. But here’s the rub: Many San Franciscos who have survived the pandemic are wealthier than ever. Instead of fleeing the city, they’re doubling down on larger, more modern homes that fit the lifestyle of Zoom rooms.
The numbers are frightening. Home sales by volume in every price bracket increased 41 percent in 2021 from pre-pandemic days, according to Compass data. Luxury home buyers were even more voracious, snapping up 85 percent more homes that sold for between $3 million and $5 million. Sales of homes over $5 million more than doubled. Single-family homes are selling for nearly $1,100 per square foot, compared to about $900 in early 2019.
According to Compass chief market analyst Patrick Carlisle, new San Francisco residents tend to be wealthier than those leaving, and many who were already wealthy before the pandemic are now wealthier thanks to a buoyant stock market. Although average home prices have risen nearly $200,000 over the past year, the percentage of homes that find them “affordable” has remained unchanged at 19 percent.
“Who would have thought that a pandemic, that wild card out of nowhere, with all its weird implications, would result in one of the wildest markets in history?” said Carlisle.
Wealthy buyers have typically committed to staying because they either have ties to school communities or simply prefer city life to the slower pace of the suburbs, said realtor Nina Hatvany, who often handles high-end sales. They mostly earn two incomes while working at home, so they need space for two offices and a home gym. They also seek a private outdoor space where their children can play and entertain guests.
The amenities add up, especially given that “they tend to buy fully renovated homes, which are by definition more expensive,” Hatvany said.
All of this upsizing comes against a grim backdrop.
“Who would have thought that a pandemic, that wild card out of nowhere, with all its strange implications, would result in one of the wildest markets in history?”
– Compass Chief Market Analyst Patrick Carlisle.
An East Coast couple visiting their new grandchild in the mission had their rental car broken into twice in two days. A family in NoPa, as the North of Panhandle neighborhood is known, didn’t realize their dog had scared off a robber until they found a crowbar he’d left behind. In response, a neighbor installed a deadbolt in her garage to protect against burglaries – the first since she moved in 10 years ago.
According to SFPD data, property crimes such as burglary, theft and auto theft rose 11 percent this year to nearly 42,000 cases by mid-December. But that’s down from 54,000 in 2017, when the city had the highest per capita rate of property crime among the 20 most populous U.S. metropolitan areas, the FBI says.
Yet perceptions are everything. When stronger fortifications aren’t enough, some residents have turned to private security firms to keep an eye on their expensive homes. The city just passed a law allowing storekeepers to hire off-duty proxies in hopes of stopping retailers from citing theft as a reason for closing even more stores.
More help can’t come soon enough.
In a coordinated attack just before Thanksgiving, thieves ambushed Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Burberry and Dolce & Gabbana. Within minutes, they had jumped into getaway cars and driven off with hundreds of thousands of dollars in designer goods. Video images of the brazen smash-and-grab in Union Square, where many businesses have already closed during the pandemic, went viral.
Mayor London Breed, a lifelong resident who grew up in council housing, is furious.
It’s time, she told reporters at a recent press conference, to “become less tolerant of all the bullshit that has destroyed our city.”
Breed announced a series of measures to combat shoplifting and the sale of stolen goods, as well as a push to combat open-air drug sales and use. She even declared a state of emergency in the Tenderloin, a neighborhood hit hard by theft and drug overdoses.
The liberal city deserves its reputation for compassion, she said. Acknowledging her push for a tougher stance on crime will anger people, she added, “I don’t care.”
“We’re not a city where anything goes,” she said. “We’ve passed the point where what we’re seeing is even remotely acceptable.”
Even before the mayor’s announcement, some residents of the Tony Marina neighborhood had hired private security guards. A security guard told KPIX his neighborhood customers more than doubled from 70 to 150 during the pandemic.
“We don’t feel safe in our neighborhood,” Katie Lyons, a marina resident, told the TV station. “We have an alarm, we have cameras on our property, but we want the added security of someone keeping an eye on our apartment.”
Hatvany, the high-end realtor, says there’s some truth to the notion that quality of life issues are forcing some longtime residents to reconsider life in the city.
Vendors bemoan what they call an “epidemic of car and home burglaries, parcel theft, the visible homelessness problem and the number of people on the street who are obviously mentally ill and can be unpredictable and therefore alarming,” she said.
High-visibility crimes like the events in Union Square happen throughout the Bay Area, not just in San Francisco, she said. “But they don’t make the city look good for people who are considering moving here or who need one last excuse to go to another state,” she said.
It’s time to “become less tolerant of all the bullshit that has destroyed our city”
– Mayor London Breed
Low-level crime was at the heart of the 2019 district attorney dispute, which was won by former assistant public defender Chesa Boudin, whose progressive vision included no prosecution for offenses such as public camping, public urination and begging. His main rival was longtime law enforcement officer Nancy Tung.
“Property and low-level crimes shrink the space for ordinary people and expand it for the people who commit them,” Tung told City Journal ahead of the election. “As we continue down this path, we will see more people leaving San Francisco.”
While Tung’s vision of a mass exodus has yet to materialize, Boudin faces a recall vote in June over what critics are calling his inaction in prosecuting crimes.
Meanwhile, the rich could just keep buying bigger houses.
The less affluent, who exited when they lost service jobs last year, may not be able to afford rent-controlled housing that has been reset to market prices, said Carlisle, the Compass analyst. People who have managed to cling to homes could also be displaced after evictions for non-payment are back on the table following a pandemic-related moratorium.
“Will this lead to further exodus of low-income residents from the city?” he said. “I hope not, but I fear so.”
