https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/style/uber-ipo-san-francisco-rich.html
Good for homeowners and the new millionares, RIP to everyone else in San Francisco.
SAN FRANCISCO — Big wealth doesn't come in monthly paychecks. It comes when a start-up goes public, transforming hypothetical money into extremely real money. This year — with Uber, Lyft, Slack, Postmates, Pinterest and Airbnb all hoping to enter the public markets — there's going to be a lot of it in the Bay Area.
Estimates of Uber's value on the market have been as high as $120 billion. Airbnb was most recently valued at $31 billion, with Lyft and Pinterest around $15 billion and $12 billion. It's anyone's guess what prices these companies actually will command once they go public, but even conservative estimates predict hundreds of billions of dollars will flood into town in the next year, creating thousands of new millionaires. It's hard to imagine more money in San Francisco, but the city's residents now need to start trying.
Welcomed finally into the elite caste who can afford to live comfortably in the Bay Area, the fleet of new millionaires are already itching to claim what has been promised all these years.
They want cars. They want to open new restaurants. They want to throw bigger parties. And they want houses.
One recent night, in a packed room with a view of the Bay Bridge and an open bar, real estate investors gathered. Standing at the front presenting was Deniz Kahramaner, a real estate agent specializing in data analytics at Compass.
"Are we going to see a one-bedroom condo that's worth less than $1 million in five years?" he asked the crowd. "Are we going to see single family homes selling for one to three million?"
No, he said, not anymore. The energy rose as he revealed more data about new millionaires and about just how few new units have been built for them. San Francisco single-family home sale prices could climb to an average of $5 million, he said, to gasps.
As the idea of the coming I.P.O.-palooza took on currency, sellers started pulling their houses off the market. The broader California housing market has softened, and home sales are down, but here's one fix for that.
"Even if just half the I.P.O.s happen, there's going to be ten thousand millionaires overnight," said Herman Chan, a real estate agent with Sotheby's. "People are like, 'I'm not going to sell till next year, because there are going to be bajillionaires everywhere left and right.'"
One of those is his client Rick Rider, a 61-year-old C.E.O. who decided not to publicly list his Bay Area house until some of the I.P.O.s have happened.
"Our particular house is not a family home. It's a Double Income No Kids sort of home," Mr. Rider said. "So it would potentially play well for a lot of the people that would be benefiting from the I.P.O.s."
Good for homeowners and the new millionares, RIP to everyone else in San Francisco.
