Tag Archives: Berkeley

Shrinking Bay Area Apartments

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Apartments are getting smaller and smaller in San Francisco and Berkeley. As a general rule, the newer the building, the smaller the rooms. 8′ x 8′ bedrooms are now common in new buildings, including expensive ones. And now, micro apartments measuring only 240 square feet are popping up all over San Francisco. Not to be outdone, the city of Berkeley has given permits to build 160 square foot apartments, and construction of them will begin soon. 160 square feet is the size of a one-car garage. These apartments are so small that every room has to serve multiple functions. For example, in the micro apartments scheduled to be built on Shattuck Avenue near Berkeley Bowl, the kitchen table will have a foot pedal underneath it. When you press down on the pedal, it will lower the table. Then you can cover the table with a mattress that is stored in the wall. Although micro apartments are small, they are not cheap. Most of the ones in San Francisco rent for over $2,000 a month. Would you pay $2,000 a month for an apartment that is so small that you have to sleep on the kitchen table?

LivingRoom1Rooms in existing buildings are shrinking too. Many landlords are moving walls within apartments in order to create more bedrooms. They take space from other rooms, usually living rooms. I have seen recently remodeled apartments in downtown Berkeley with living rooms that are only 5 to 6 feet wide. You can touch the 2 opposite walls by stretching out your arms.

How Many Chemical Element Were Discovered in Berkeley?

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An astonishing 16 elements on the atomic chart were discovered at the Berkeley National Lawrence Lab including Berkelium, Californium, Americium, Einsteinium, Fermium, Curium, Nobelium, Neptunium, and Plutonium. And how many elements were discovered at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, and Stanford? Zero!  Berkeley Lawrence Lab

San Francisco is Now the Most Expensive Rental Market in the U.S.

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Manhattan has long been the most expensive rental housing market is the U.S., but now it’s San Francisco. The average 1 bedroom apartment in downtown San Francisco is now $2,800 a month – and that’s just the average. These high rents are due to the explosive growth of dot-com jobs in San Francisco. Up until recently, most internet jobs were at the south end of the bay in Silicon Valley: Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Clara, etc., but now, a lot of the new internet jobs are in San Francisco. The reason for this is simple. San Francisco is where well educated, 20-something, computer savvy people want to live and work, so the internet companies are moving jobs to San Francisco in order to get the people they want and need. Of course, some internet companies were always based in San Francisco, including Craigslist, Twitter, Salesforce, and Yelp; and these companies are growing too. The rental housing supply in San Francisco simply cannot keep up with all these new jobs. It’s created a seller’s market for landlords.

The high rents in San Francisco have spilled over to Berkeley. At Berkeley’s newest apartment house, Berkeley Central, 1 bedroom apartments rent for $2,500 to $3,000 a month, and 2 bedroom apartments rent for $3,000 to $6,000 a month. The owners are not having any difficulty finding tenants. On the day their rental office opened, people were waiting in line and down the sidewalk in order to turn in applications and put down deposits. Gee, when I first got into this business, I was renting 2 bedroom apartments in Berkeley for $150 a month! They were nice apartments too, but I didn’t have a free chocolate room back then.