By Meera Agarwalla
Raise your hand if you’ve been dumped on by the Bay Area housing market. San Francisco has been hailed as a modern-day Constantinople, given that it’s become a deep-rooted hub for e-commerce and digital goods; has an explosive arts scene; and is an expansive enclave of urban hiking and sweeping beauty. Millions flock to this mecca of opportunity, only to have their wings abruptly clipped when it comes time to enter the housing market.
Born and raised in southern Orange County, I was used to new Spanish-style tract homes, with palm trees lining neighborhoods off into oblivion. My first week of Bay Area apartment hunting was a rude awakening. Apparently, cracked paint and popcorn ceilings constituted “character”; no dishwasher or garbage disposal meant a place was “rustic”; and 350-square-foot studios were “charming.” And as if this weren’t enough, you were expected to arrive at these viewings equipped with references, credit reports, security deposits and your first born on a platinum platter — just to rent.
Three years, two moves and one long list of rental headaches later, my husband and I bought a house. For the rest of the country, home buying is something that we think we should do, a milestone of sorts. Society tells us that it’s the next big step of our adulthood. But for people in the Bay Area, home buying is the only way (apart from rent control) to lock in a rate in a dwelling that you don’t totally despise. Correction: this is the only solution for people who haven’t cashed out from a start-up acquisition or IPO. How do you go about this process in an area where some million-dollar houses are overpriced, decrepit shacks? Even more importantly, what kind of bubble and community are we fostering with these outrageous “norms”?
When my husband and I initiated our journey into home buying in the Bay Area, we were equipped with resources like Home Buying for Dummies and glasses that were way too rose colored. TV shows like House Hunters and Property Brothers tricked us into thinking we were going to get our dream home for under the asking price. Our realtor immediately fire-hosed those hopes. We still have a fond laugh when we remember how completely unreasonable our expectations were. In a city where some residents spend three-fourths of their income on rent, it’s hard to imagine how people with everyday jobs can even afford the monstrous down payments on these shantytown houses.
Home buying, as fellow Bay Area-ites are well aware, is not just painful from a price perspective; it eats up one of our most valuable assets: time. While we were house-searching, our weeknights consisted of browsing Redfin listings in every affordable area in the Bay Area (which kept expanding as the market grew exponentially). We learned to target at least $100K under our budget so that we would have room to overbid to win the property. Then we had to organize our listings in order of priority, timing and location so we could efficiently knock out most of them. We armed ourselves with binders, questions and big smiles so we would be remembered as “the cute young couple” so that the seller’s agent would convince the owner to go with our offer. We’d consider the pros and the cons. We’d get our hopes up by thinking, “This is it,” but then we’d see them dashed. We were tired and hungry, and we missed our weekends.
It’s no coincidence that astronomical real estate prices are tied to the astronomical salaries of tech giants and post-IPO start-ups. Real estate prices are also related to the fact that foreign investors are willing and able to pay for properties in all cash, with no contingencies. This creates a massive problem for the real people, those who don’t hold positions with “PM” or “UX” or “Back End” in their job titles.
What happens when these people get evicted, when their rents skyrocket and they are unable to afford to raise a family in what used to be a middle-class neighborhood? The influx of tech wealth has resulted in a diaspora for the Bay Area middle class. We have succumbed to capitalistic growth, inadvertently opening up our arms to foreign nationals who can flippantly buy US homes via an app — homes that then sit vacant and deprive the area of block parties and potlucks. Where will the teachers, police officers and firefighters go? Will they be phased out and be replaced by learning apps, robotic cops and self-driving fire trucks? Though these surges in technology and innovation are crucial to propelling our society forward, what will become of our community?
Our relentless home hunting finally resulted in our buying a house in (what we think is) one of the best-kept secrets of the Bay Area: Alameda. Though deemed a “less competitive” area, we still battled four offers, waived the property contingency, agreed to make up the loan delta when (not if) it doesn’t appraise and conceded a 21-day escrow.
Though our San Francisco friends jokingly refer to us as “bridge and tunnel,” we couldn’t be more thrilled. Our neighborhood epitomizes the middle-class Bay Area we’d feared was dead: we live next door to a postman on one side, a person with a PhD in philosophy from Berkeley on the other side and a police officer down the street. Our neighbor across the street welcomed us with fresh-baked banana bread. Though the road on our street is frustratingly unpaved and the front lawns are deader than SOMA on a Friday night, the schools are well rated; the people are friendly; and the town embraces family fun. While we may have escaped the insanity of Silicon Valley for now, it may be a matter of time before capitalism comes knocking on our door.
