Comments on: Pinterest, Palantir & harsh reality of SF real estate

By: Linus

Linus — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 14:05:08 +0000

Rent control & weed

By: Nick

Nick — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 12:17:11 +0000

How out-of-date is that San Francisco photo? Looks to be from the early 2000s at the latest.

By: Eric and Janelle Boyenga

Eric and Janelle Boyenga — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 20:18:56 +0000

The lower price per square foot in the city as well as Oakland/Emeryville will keep pulling startups to the urban centers, but more importantly it is the younger single workforce that makes the city/urban centers a much more amiable place to be for Startups. As firms mature it will become increasingly hard to sell their older married workforce raising children on the benefits of city living. Most of these young families will be drawn to the suburbs of Marin, Lamorinda, and Silicon Valley (Burlingame-San Jose) to raise their children. Which will only add to the skyrocketing prices in real estate and leases in those communities.

By: siliconvalleygal

siliconvalleygal — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 17:48:28 +0000

There are a few orchards left here but prob less than a handful, sad to say. C.J Olson Cherries in Sunnyvale still has a small orchard & fruit stand (although they sold off most of their land).

By: Craig Shell

Craig Shell — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 17:33:17 +0000

Go to Sunnyvale! I just rented a building near “Plug and Play” and AMD for $1.24 SQF. About half the buildings around here are vacant. The downside though is the lack of culture you will find in the S.F..

By: Steve K

Steve K — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 16:50:53 +0000

Just where is “Silicon Valley” anyway. Like a desirable development in a suburb, it’s borders seem to keep expanding as folks jump on the bandwagon. Silicon Valley started with Fairchild and aided by Lockheed and IBM. By the time the Fairchildren spread though Santa Clara and Sunnyvale giving rise to the term Silicon Valley, HP was growing south from Stanford pushing into Mountain View and Cupertino, so the region kind of got expanded to encompass all of that.

And now Belmont and even San Francisco is part of Silicon Valley? I’m sure the folks in The City love that (disclosure, I was born in SF) almost as much as they love being called a bedroom to Silicon Valley. The City has always been about finance, with some subsets of the artistic community and trying to develop things like biotech (and now some software folks). While San Jose though Mountain View was about making things, like silicon or gadgets derived from it.

Looking at the graphics, the solution is simple. There are tons of buildings around San Jose that Cisco and others put up in boom times that have never been occupied. And housing has always been cheaper than the peninsula. Plus, the rest of Silicon Valley, including the foundations, are there. No more cherry orchards in the boonies, just the folks who built the whole Silicon Valley legacy.

By: tylernol

tylernol — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 16:28:06 +0000

the Bay Area has bullet trains? Where are these so-called bullet trains?

By: SFModerate

SFModerate — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 13:46:37 +0000

Ugh, Ted Gullicksen? That poverty pimp is the reason why the middle class has been pushed out of San Francisco already. That trend has been going on long before the current boom in rents.

By: Jmassanari

Jmassanari — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 13:39:45 +0000

In my 20+ years living in Oakland – and working for start ups over the last 15 – employee’s do not want to work in high crime areas such as Oakland. If Oakland would get their act together this could be a real opportunity for everyone.

By: Brian

Brian — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 12:05:19 +0000

Nice infographics, i think pinterest is very fast growing business and has lots of surprises coming.