The San Francisco Business Times said it best in their Viewpoint article published on December 26, 2009- If San Francisco wants to create intelligent income streams the Condo Conversion Lottery needs to be cancelled ASAP.
" Home ownership, by and large, tends to improve communities. Homeowners are more invested in the city and neighborhood where they live-emotionally as well as financially. And with the stability that ownership provides, they are more likely to get involved in making things better, from neighborhood parks to local schools. This is generally accepted civic wisdom-except in San Francisco where progressives have enlisted the Board of Supervisors in an idealogical quest to squelch home ownership whenever possible..... There is no better example of this than the condo conversion lottery, San Francisco's annual game of chance in which just 200 lucky owners of tennancies-in-common win the right to convert collective ownership of a building into individual ownership of a unit.
Go to www.bizjournals.com to read the complete article regarding the challenges of Best San Francisco real estate agents. Seems like buying a single family home or an entire building maybe the best solution for a while.