Ben Bega

@Amritpa1 @rohindhar A weekend open house is essentially the busiest the street will ever be outside of special events

@BenBega @rohindhar Yeah, I love the Sanchez slow street. Huge improvement to Noe valley post-pandemic. Visiting an open house on it is very different from day-to-day living though.

Noe Valley in San Francisco Is just blowing by the $2000 per sqft mark

@rohindhar I walk past this place pretty often, at first it was somewhat compelling to me, but the more I go by, the more obviously impractical it is. You have to have good transit access or parking, this place doesnt really have either.

How are sellers feeling about the San Francisco real estate market? Well this guy just raised the price after 435 days on market so pretty good

@rohindhar When did they require that change? I saw the house when it originally went on the market and it was really weird, with the main level split from upper ones. Now its all connected, and both front doors enter into the same space

This one actually had a pretty normal layout originally. The ground floor and upstairs levels was the main unit. The basement was another, smaller unit (like an in-law). And then the Dept of Building Inspections strolled through at the end and said this is no good, it has to two *equivalent* units. So the builder has to change everything around after it was already built. Now the ground floor and basement is one unit. And the upstairs is the second unit, with a retrofitted kitchen it what was originally the family room. So the layout is really strange, but wasn’t the builders original plan that was signed off on by planning.

House in the Noe Valley neighborhood of San Francisco sells for $1MM over asking price after four days on market

@emissionite 24th and Church in Noe being 1-3 stories is insane. Some of the strongest public transit connections in the city, in a great location, and we just dont let people live there unless they are insanely wealthy

Rich people will always get whatever housing they want, cash. Housing scarcity does not impact them. Middle-class families who don’t qualify for any subsidy (affordable loans, BMR) are the victims of this scarcity.

@rohindhar Them blaming Lyft racks for lack of parking is so funny. There are like 25 max in the entire sunset district, with ~12 located on Irving or the great highway

Even in San Francisco, supposedly a city, the residents are crazy for cars😅

@Deserteon @SASBoomstick @Scott_Wiener So exactly what this bill does?

@BenBega @SASBoomstick @Scott_Wiener You know what would streamline permitting? Cutting out all the useless permitting rules.

BIG HOUSING NEWS: Our bill allowing more housing near transit stations (SB 79) just passed the Assembly Housing Committee! SB 79 will make transit-oriented development the norm in California — building the homes we need, increasing transit ridership & helping our climate goals.

@SASBoomstick @Scott_Wiener If the agency owns the land, they should get to dictate what they want. Ideally we make it extremely easy to rent out the land to developers so they can collect money, like in Japan

@maxdubler Bozeman needed it so bad, the rental market was awful

“Real estate experts largely agree that a glut of newly built apartments in the city is driving down rental prices across the board, especially in new construction.” montanafreepress.org/2025/06/23/has…

@JConrBOrtega How do you think they are misrepresenting them specifically? What do you think isn’t being talked about clearly. It is a comparison of average weekend numbers from the same periods of time across two years. Really not much room for interpretation

@BenBega They most definitely were and no doubt, BART misrepresents their numbers.

What they don’t tell you is Saturday and Sunday, San Francisco had baseball games, otherwise this bump wouldn’t exist.

@ErikaEcho23 @JConrBOrtega This happened last year as well

@JConrBOrtega And it's Pride month every weekend is some Pride event that closes a few blocks on Market

@rohindhar Thought this was crazy at first but the general idea that every driveway removes a parking permit the city can sell + reserves the spot solely for the homeowner checks out after thinking about it. Not my favorite thing but definitely seems reasonable

On brand

@maxdubler @cathasach4bikes See: Bozeman, MT

@cathasach4bikes Unfortunately, blocking new market rate apartments does not actually stop the influx of rich people into your neighborhood. Instead, it turns housing into a zero-sum game that poor people will lose almost every time.

It's impressive that YIMBYs say this and are clearly implying that they're against racism when really they don't like that some people don't want a huge influx of rich people and the problems that comes with that. They call you xenophobic and nativist for opposing gentrification

@rohindhar How are condos doing? There are a handful of condos listed in Noe that have seemingly low list prices, assuming they will also sell above asking?

78% of single family homes for sale in San Francisco sold for over asking price last month

@pitdesi This downward trend was already considerably in motion before the mayoral change. Lurie has had good optics so far, but he hasn’t done that much fundamentally different.

Remember everyone who told you that it wasn't London Breed's fault. "It's the Supes (or Sacramento), her hands are tied" "Fentanyl is a federal problem" "Mental‑health laws won’t let us force treatment" "Actually things are totally fine in SF" good leadership matters.

The Real-Time Investigations Center (RTIC) is a turning point for public safety in San Francisco. This center brings together data from drones deployed during an incident, public safety cameras, license plate readers, and more—and pushes that information directly to officers on the ground in real time. That means faster decisions, quicker response, and safer outcomes for the public. And it’s already producing results. RTIC has assisted in over 500 arrests, supporting our historic drop in crime. It is helping prevent high-speed chases by tracking suspects remotely. It’s helping locate missing people—including people in crisis—more quickly and safely. And it’s giving our officers critical information during dangerous situations, improving their ability to respond while reducing risk. We saw that just this weekend, when a drone from RTIC gave the Fire Department a real-time aerial view of an active fire in Nob Hill. This technology is the future of policing in San Francisco: officers using their training and judgment, supported by the best tools available, to keep our communities safe.

@TimSweeneyEpic @balajis Where are your investments in this space? You are denouncing the exact things your wealth is built from

@balajis Yes! Do invest in building new factories! Venture capitalists funding ad tech garbage to profit from worsening the world should instead direct capital into manufacturing. Investors in up-and-coming nations do this, investors in Tesla and Space X do it, etc.

Ironically, one symptom of deindustrialization is that many commenters have never actually managed a physical business. So. Suppose your US company imports $1M of high quality parts, and adds in its own components to produce finished goods sold for $1.2M per batch. Your gross profit is $200k per batch. But wait! Suddenly a new 30% tariff is imposed on that $1M of parts. You now have to fork over $300k to customs before you sell anything. That’s cash you probably don’t have. Oh, and even if you do sell everything, you’re now losing $100k per batch. With a sinking feeling, you realize your profitable business which you somehow managed to keep in America all these years has suddenly become unprofitable. You post online about how bad this is but get shouted down by an angry mob, convinced that capitalists like you should die. You can’t tell nowadays if they’re on left or right. Moreover, you don’t have the time, money, skills, or tools in house to build that $1M of parts yourself. You are being asked to do the equivalent of growing a maple tree when all you needed was a little maple syrup. So now you are faced with several tough choices. (1) First, you may need to go into debt or fire people to quickly come up with the $300k in cash to pay for these surprise tariffs at customs. Even if the tariff might go away, it might not, so you have to get the cash somehow or risk having your shipment impounded. (2) Next, you might need to reduce quality to stop losing $100k on each batch. You could order the lower quality $750k parts, grimace and pay 30% tariff at customs, and hope you can build and sell for the same price of $1.2M per batch despite the lower quality. (3) Alternatively, you could keep the quality parts at $1M and instead raise prices to $1.5M per batch to get back your original margins of $200k per batch, which you need to pay employees after all. But that’s a big hike that your customer will probably not welcome, given that he’s likely dealing with his own tariff shock. So: these tariffs don’t really give an incentive to build in the US. Because it’s far more expensive to build a screw factory than to pay even high tariffs on a foreign screw. Instead what they likely mean is debt, layoffs, lower quality, and higher prices for any US company that buys parts abroad. Just to understand how common that is: