After 35 years in business on Market Street, Streetlight Records is calling it quits. And while the owner of the store and property at 2350 Market had been looking for another tenant, and reportedly didn’t expect it to be a problem despite the current state of retail along the Castro and Upper Market corridor, the building quietly hit the market last week listed for $2.4 million, a price which has just been slashed by $500K to $1.9 million.
The two-story building sits on a site which is zoned for development up to 65-feet in height and includes the 1,750-square-foot store and a 1,500-square foot flat above, both of which are slated to be delivered vacant.
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The peak has passed. WSJ reported on housing prices in London finally coming down. That estate on Parrot Drive dropped $61M overnight. Enjoy the spoils and the vacation. I’d say we have 18 months at most before the sh!t hits the fan and inventories begin to swell. Relying in Chinese investors is not a sustainable business model..
I think the slow commercial market mentioned by the author is much more to blame; I can’t imagine there are many people clamoring for the opportunity to build housing next to a nightclub and retail space the neighborhood doesn’t appear need.
do you have any data that chinese investors are really a sizeable chunk of SF RE? I hear that over and over, but have never seen any data. Is it just a red herring?
Agreed, feels like we hit peak. But saying we hit peak based on prices in London coming down is dumb. Local factors play a bigger role in RE.
Yes, and there are many types of “peaks” – from stabilization at a “new normal”, to a bubble that pops and prices crash. This feels more like the former.
Also, it’s been demonstrated many times over that the market is not being driven by Chinese investors, neither here in S.F. nor across the country. Certainly not residential, and not even most commercial (other than a few headline-grabbing big acquisitions).
I didn’t say it was solely based on one WSJ article. You’d have to be pretty dumb to not see the signs everywhere and even dumber to expect me to list them all here. Did your parents spoon feed you until you were in high school?
I think it will be a percolating top. good stuff will always go easily. overpriced fixer-uppers will take longer to sell.
last I saw, tech cos are still handing out 6-figure jobs to everyone and SF is still a dreamy place to live.
Everyone, you say? This is categorically untrue. Engineers regularly achieve 6-figure salaries as a function of supply and demand, but “normal” (non-managerial jobs) are not paid at that rate.
SF is a shadow of what it was 10 years ago. All of the cool people left and now it’s a sea of poseurs everywhere you go. Throw a rock in a crowd and you’ll hit someone under 30 who moved here within the last 3 years. How can a city maintain any sense of cultural identity when everyone here is new? As far as the jobs go, that is a very temporary situation.
Contrary to popular opinion (here), not everyone living in San Francisco ever even cared if they or the people they knew were “cool” and even those who may have when they were “under 30” aren’t “under 30” any more and don’t care now. Big cities, including this one, are never made entirely of hipsters nor does most of the population have any interest in them
You’re only remembering that 10 years ago we had just come out of the phase where all the poseurs from the late 90s and dotcom crash moved out.
There are a few reasons that London prices may slow: the British government has finally decided that all human beings and corporations, not just Britons, have to pay capital gains tax on profits on British real estate. Until recently foreigners and non-doms did not have to pay, a unique situation in the civilized world. The category of non-domiciled is also being reviewed, with changes limiting how long one can hold that status.
Some politicians believe that this peculiar idea has contributed to the prosperity of London (if not the rest of the kingdom.) But even if so, the cost has changed the nature of London, making it more a city of Russian, Chinese and Arab people. One can walk down New Bond Street and not overhear a word of native English.
As for prices of real estate, per square foot it is at least twice the price of San Francisco. When we were there at the beginning of last month, a semi-detached house needing only a little work in Notting Hill sold for twenty million pounds sterling.
San Francisco is not really comparable to London.
they have a queen
and we have
many
Theres still no capital gains tax on sales of your house if its your main residence. At least, that was the cased (thankfully) when I sold my place in the UK.
But that applies to everyone, including English people, not just foreigners.
It would be cool to see skinny sites like these developed to their full height – imagine a 65′ boutique hotel here.
prefer a 130ft hotel with rooftoop
The SF assessor/recorder’s office only has these charming NOTICE OF SUBSTANDARD BLDG documents for this property. Perhaps this deficiency is related to the sudden drop in price.
That could be a plus- help justify a tear down so you can build a new 65 footer, eh.
how sad; I love patronizing this establishment. we will all soon be forced to patronize amazon. yuk.
UPDATE: Streetlight Records Building Sold for $1.85M.