Rents dropping like a rock in San Francisco

A Property Manager at a major San Francisco company is telling me Rents are dropping like a rock in San Francisco.

In his words "everybody that rents an apartment here is asking for a rent reduction. That is almost all I do all day is process rent reductions." And "some of these people signed leases a year ago and they were paying say $2,400.00 and now the current rents in the area are $1,900.00 sometimes even in the same building"

He went on to say "One woman they said 'no' to, actually rented the new apartment for the lower price and moved upstairs for $500.00 per month less. Well that cost them money to refurbish it and so now it is 'yes yes and yes'."

The above is in reference to residential rentals. Regarding commercial he said "Even commercial that I manage are asking for 50%, yes 50% rent reductions over in the sunset and they are getting them."

Back in January I found 13 residential rentals signs within 3 blocks. So I stopped into one of them on Chestnut Street over the weekend. The rental agent told me she had been trying to rent the unit for over 2 months and the landlord was refusing to budge on the rent. She figured it was $300 over priced.

Meanwhile a rental agent in my office told me normally they have about 15 rentals, but now they have 400. She claimed rents had NOT gone down, only that instead of taking 2 to 3 days to rent a place it was taking 30 to 60 days. Per the above, I'm guessing they'll be singing a new tune the next time I ask.