SF: Tiny Studio, Big Pay Off?

Psst, hey you, jaded renter. You can in fact buy a place in this city for less than $280K.   That’s right: if you really want to get your foot in the door, these new Cubix studios might be perfect, though you may not be able to fit much more than your foot inside. These babies (they really are babies!) run 250-350 square feet. According to the Chronicle, “A San Francisco design and development firm has begun marketing 98 tiny condominiums….. at the Cubix Yerba Buena building in SoMa.”

The studios run $279K up to $330K, with HOA dues of around $270 per month. Somehow, their existance is supposed to mitigate the fact that ”by comparison, the median price for all homes in San Francisco was $749,000 in July.” The idea, optimistic in the extreme, is that studios like these will offer the formerly priced-put middle class buyer a chance buy, build equity, and move on to a larger home later– perhaps changing statistics like these:

Only 39.3 percent of city residents own their homes, the lowest level among the state’s counties, according to a California Budget Project report released in February.

Affordable housing groups, business proponents and city leaders alike have long lamented the shrinking middle class in San Francisco, a category that generally encompasses nurses, teachers, cops and firefighters. The number of people making less than $150,000 in San Francisco fell between 3.9 percent and 7.4 percent between 2002 and 2006, while those making above that amount surged by at least 40.1 percent, according to Census Bureau estimates.

But I’m almost 6 feet tall, barefoot. Accordingly, my shoes are big. My pants and skirts are really long. I’d have to sell most of my stuff to fit in a 250 square foot studio, much less living there with someone else, whom I’d probably kill if not be killed by first. Is a studio like this really a good step for me on the great ladder of homeownership in San Francisco?

Studios can be investments. For instance in Toyko, Japan, the typical one-room apartment is about 180 square feet. There is tremendous investment opportunity for non-resident owners to rent these studios out, as “studios owe their popularity in part to the large number of Japan’s young, mobile urban dwellers, who rarely want to get tied down purchasing homes and who rarely want to share larger quarters with a roommate.” So profitable are these properties that, to quote IHT.com, “studios are called toshi-yo mansions, or ‘for-investment apartments.’”

Does it work that way in SF? These units are meant to be single-residence, so the owners should be living in them, not renting them. The only investment then is in potential appreciation. But do studios appreciate? Especially tiny, tiny, tiny studios? Some people think so: Cubix opened its 766 Harrison St. building’s sales office this month and already “three of the first 12 released units are in contract or escrow.”

Here are some other studios, if you want to get your homeowner start the one-room way.

3953 24th St. #5: Noe studio for $349K.

295 Guerrero: Studio TIC in Mission Dolores for $239K.

2945 Baker St., #3: Cow Hollow TIC studio for $305K.

901 Bust St., #404: Studio condo downtown for $359K.

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