If it does rebound, it might not be until the next generation of startups reaches mid to late stage on the other side of the current lending crunch, presuming they don't exclusively work remote or choose NYC as their primary hub.
> If it does rebound, it might not be until the next generation of startups reaches mid to late stage on the other side of the current lending crunch,
Building boomed in SF during the GFC (2008 et seq) so there was extra capacity as things recovered, and eventually space was at a premium again. The real estate glut helped early stage startups.
> presuming they don't exclusively work remote or choose NYC as their primary hub.
I love NYC, and am even on a couple of boards of actual tech companies in NY, but c'mon it doesn't make a lot of sense for tech businesses, except I suppose some fintech. Advertising, online retail, sure, I suppose, but those rarely need bespoke technology, much less anything novel. But California's level of investment last year slumped to only 3.5X NY...it has a long way to go. And much of that slump was in SF -- SV held up much more strongly, as you could also see in the real estate article posted on HN today (NYC commercial vacancy rate isn't as high as SF's, but is higher than SV).
These hot spots thrive on network, and nowhere are the networks more intense than NY, but on the tech side the biggest, most active network in the USA, err, world, is still in the Bay Area.
My casual observation that drove that thought, which was admittedly off the cuff, is the people who really want to go back in-office are new grads who want to live in an exciting city, and NYC is way more livable and exciting than SF. That urge to live and work in SF, instead of the suburban Valley, was part of the gravity that brought big companies back to the city 2010-2020. Secondary NY hubs seem to be doing much better than pre-2020, though to your points, making the leap to NY primary is a much higher bar.
De-regulating downtown zoning for conversion and tax breaks (https://sfstandard.com/business/mayor-breed-introduces-tax-b...) are both likely to be tried, though what impact it will have seems limited in the near term.
If it does rebound, it might not be until the next generation of startups reaches mid to late stage on the other side of the current lending crunch, presuming they don't exclusively work remote or choose NYC as their primary hub.