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Every thriving shopping district needs an anchor—a center of gravity for everything else to orbit around. Usually a grocery or department store, the anchor occupies the most space, attracts the most people and serves as a landmark for the neighborhood.
For the better part of a century in Union Square, that was Macy’s—until it confirmed Feb. 27 it intends to pull out of its flagship store in San Francisco.
If the retailer were to vacate the roughly 700,000 square feet it occupies today, a shocking 34.5% of the shopping district would be rendered empty and available, per real estate firm Avison Young. That figure would even outstrip the 30.2% total office vacancy rate that has functioned as a bright red flag for the health of the city’s downtown.
The sudden decline of San Francisco’s top shopping destination, paired with an unprecedented retreat from office use, is a novel trial for a city that has faced its fair share of challenges in recent years.
For Union Square and its environs, the changes have come rapidly. In 2016, less than 3% of retail space in the area was available for lease. That number spiked to 9.4% at the onset of the pandemic, which cut off daily foot traffic downtown. Fast forward to today, and that number has only gotten worse, now standing at approximately 22%.
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You got THAT right...They probably aren't worth a $1.
Give the $1 houses to the illegal invaders. See how they improve the neighborhoods.
The seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales of existing single-family houses, condos, and co-ops rose 9.5% in February from January, but that increase was smaller than the increase in February 2023 (+11.5%), and so the annual rate of sales at 4.38 million homes, was still down 3.3% from the already collapsed levels of February 2023, according to data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) today
And the rate of sales was down 26% from February 2022, and down 29% from February 2021, and down 19% from February 2019.
In other words, home sales remain at very low levels as the entire housing market has shrunk by 20% to 25% because homeowners with 3% mortgages are neither buying nor selling, so they have vanished as demand, and they have vanished in equal number as supply, and so churn is down, along with sales and supply, and Realtors hate it because they make their commissions off churn (historic data via YCharts):
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I'll have you know...I'm not far from Yellowstone.^^^^^^^
- holy shades of Yellowstone Batman!
- yes Robin, this is straight outta Yellowstone where they off peeps, drive them into Wyoming, throw them off a cliff and no one knows anything
- gee Batman, this is nuts
- yes boy wonder, hop back in the Batmobile and we'll hear to the Gotham Tavern. I hear there's a new drink called the Squatter's Last Ride.
- sounds great Batman........I'm in.
I'll have you know...I'm not far from Yellowstone.
I haven't watched it, but I'm told, a diner that was popular in an earlier era, Ruby's Cafe, is featured in several scenes and episodes. It's about eight blocks from me.
Ruby's, which has been made not-so-accessible by changing roads and traffic patterns, was closed for a year to be used as a field office and set.
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