{"id":479305,"date":"2026-09-29T11:31:19","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T11:31:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/479305\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T11:31:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T11:31:19","slug":"this-sf-renter-is-trying-to-beat-the-ai-fueled-housing-boom-with-an-analog-approach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/479305\/","title":{"rendered":"This SF Renter Is Trying to Beat the AI-Fueled Housing Boom With an Analog Approach"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past nine months, Harlow Srain has reached out to more than 200 landlords and property managers. In search of a deal, she\u2019s determined to stay in San Francisco<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After nearly a decade bouncing between couches, cars and shoddy apartments, the 28-year-old finally found the perfect place: a one-bedroom in Bernal Heights with access to a backyard that she shares with her now ex-partner. After they broke up late last year, they\u2019ve continued to live uncomfortably together while Srain looks for a new place.<\/p>\n

But Srain said it\u2019s been a difficult search. The AI-fueled housing market<\/a> has sent rents soaring, up more than 25%<\/a> over the past year. Even with a roommate or two, Srain said she\u2019d have to stretch her budget to stay in the neighborhood she\u2019s grown to love.<\/p>\n

So, she decided to do something unusual: cold-call landlords and property managers to appeal to their humanity and possibly get them to lower the rent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI know these people are probably making a stupid amount of profit,\u201d she said. \u201cWhy not just ask to have them cut that back a little bit?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Harlow Srain\u2019s (not pictured) plants line a shelf in the backyard of her complex in San Francisco on June 9, 2026.<\/p>\n

\"\"Harlow Srain\u2019s (not pictured) view from a balcony in her complex in San Francisco on June 9, 2026.<\/p>\n

San Francisco\u2019s rental market has \u201calways been a pressure cooker,\u201d Redfin\u2019s chief economist Daryl Fairweather said. The land-constrained city\u2019s scant supply of homes has long been outweighed by intense demand. But now, as more companies require employees to return to the office and investors pump billions of dollars into AI, Fairweather said the fight for available housing has become even more competitive.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople, when they have money, they wanna spend it on a better, nicer place,\u201d she said. \u201cIt goes into the real estate market and drives up both home prices and rents.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Those prices have spiked so swiftly that earlier this month, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie declared a \u201crent emergency\u201d and introduced a $30 million package<\/a> to forestall evictions and protect existing tenants from displacement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t address Srain\u2019s problem, however, since her landlord isn\u2019t evicting her. She\u2019s competing for a limited supply of apartments with people who have a lot more money to spend. According to a June report from ApartmentList, an online rental marketplace, just over 2% of San Francisco\u2019s multifamily housing<\/a> is vacant.\u00a0<\/p>\n

JJ Panzer, the owner of Real Management Company in San Francisco, said that if Srain had been looking to get a good deal on an apartment, she might have found one during the pandemic, when rents dropped by more than 20%<\/a>, and San Francisco\u2019s apartment vacancy rate reached nearly 11%<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Srain never reached out to Panzer. But if she had, he said her pitch would have been a \u201chard sell\u201d in today\u2019s market. His company manages more than 700 units across the Bay Area, though mostly in San Francisco. He owns three buildings himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"JJ Panzer, president of Real Management Company, in front of their offices in San Francisco on Aug. 13, 2026.\u00a0(Beth LaBerge\/KQED)<\/p>\n

Because many San Francisco apartments are covered under state or local rent control laws, Panzer said landlords can only increase rents significantly after a tenant leaves. Once a new tenant moves into a rent-controlled unit, he said they often don\u2019t move out for years.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got to get as much as you can for that vacancy because you don\u2019t know when you\u2019re going to see that apartment come vacant again,\u201d Panzer said. \u201cThe better price I give you, the longer it\u2019s going to be before I get a chance to make that money back.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are also first-come, first-served laws that require landlords to approve the first qualified application they receive. And there are anti-discrimination laws that don\u2019t allow landlords to consider protected characteristics \u2014 including race, immigration status, familial status or source of income \u2014 when choosing a tenant, Fairweather said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou might come to your landlord and say \u2018I have small kids\u2019 or \u2018I have an aging mother\u2019 or \u2018I\u2019ve lived in this neighborhood forever,\u2019 and those all might sound like innocent things to say,\u201d she said. \u201cBut in housing, you\u2019re not allowed to give preferential treatment to people based on their family status or these other protected characteristics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul Griffiths, CEO and owner of Vesta Asset Management in San Francisco, a mid-size property management company, said today\u2019s rental market has so much demand that it encourages pricing homes above market so there are fewer applicants to sift through.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Harlow Srain\u2019s (not pictured) plants line a stairwell in the backyard of her complex in San Francisco on June 9, 2026.\u00a0(T\u00e2m V\u0169\/KQED)<\/p>\n

\u201cIf somebody calls me to say, \u2018Can you offer less money?\u2019 First of all, I don\u2019t even have time to call that person back because I\u2019m just scheduling the showings for 75 people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Srain understands the competition is tough, but can\u2019t help being frustrated by it. \u201cIt kind of makes me wonder, where\u2019s the line? Where does it stop?\u201d<\/p>\n

Srain grew up in Salinas, a mid-sized agricultural community about a two-hour drive south of San Francisco. She decided to move to the Bay Area in 2019 after she started dating someone in San Jos\u00e9. She was working as a DoorDash driver and found a room in a three-bedroom house in Fremont for $750 a month. A couple rented one of the other rooms, and another person slept on a mattress in the garage.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m freshly moved out of my parents\u2019 house in this giant city that\u2019s in a larger metropolitan area,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was really, really exciting until I figured out what it meant to be housing-stable.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Within a week, another person moved into the remaining vacant room and then a stranger started living on the couch. She began to feel like she was living amongst strangers and didn\u2019t have control over who entered or exited her home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is one of the first places I\u2019ve ever felt comfortable. I felt at home,\u201d she said. \u201cI know my neighbors, whether they\u2019re on this street or down a few blocks. I\u2019ve never had this before.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also got involved in advocating for tenants rights. Srain became a community organizer with the nonprofit Faith in Action, which champions tenants\u2019 rights, affordable housing and efforts to reduce homelessness. Earlier this year, she canvassed for a rent control measure the group supports that\u2019s headed to the November ballot in Redwood City<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Through that work, she spoke with small landlords and homeowners about the problems they face.<\/p>\n

\"\"Harlow Srain poses for a portrait on the balcony of her housing unit in San Francisco on June 9, 2026.\u00a0(T\u00e2m V\u0169\/KQED)<\/p>\n

\u201cI can understand that some homeowners are totally oblivious to the rental crisis because they have their own issues owning a home,\u201d she said. \u201cIt has become really expensive with rising property taxes, [insurance], PG&E. It\u2019s beginning to become unmanageable to own a home for some people.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She developed sympathy for small mom-and-pop landlords, who own just a building or two and face their own set of affordability issues. While cold-calling, she found they were more willing to explain how they set their rents and the profit they made on each unit.<\/p>\n

In one such call in January, Srain spoke with an older landlord who walked her through his costs to maintain a Pacifica apartment he was renting out, including details about his water bill, property taxes and how much profit he made.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was only around $100 to $200 [in profit],\u201d she said. \u201cI was like, \u2018Wow, this guy really walked me through this!\u2019 That\u2019s impressive.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

But not all landlords are willing to entertain Srain\u2019s questions. Of the hundreds she called, she said only around 50 actually picked up the phone and were willing to talk. Many times, she\u2019s found they were unwilling to divulge their experiences.<\/p>\n

Srain knows her best option might be to move out of San Francisco to the East Bay, where it\u2019s cheaper \u2014 something families have done for generations as the city has grown more expensive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But she said that reality points to a broken system.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are people living through so much worse right now in the Bay Area,\u201d she said. \u201cNo one deserves that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over the past nine months, Harlow Srain has reached out to more than 200 landlords and property managers.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-479305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}