Those of us who live in SF have to put up with more nonsense that people can imagine. We pay $1M for a shack in my town.

CA is on Mars!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

dont we have to have a purpose?

To be fair, it's an incredible unit with a great location. The beam is needed for earthquake retrofitting when it was converted from a warehouse.

Listing

The median sale price for condos in San Francisco is currently $1.1M. And that includes lots of stock that hasn't actually been remodeled. The median sale price for single family homes is $1.7M. And depending on location, it can be much higher. I have seen a "tear-down" in a desirable location that went for $3.5M.

It's just an incredibly competitive market with high demand and not much ability to expand geographically. You can't compare with other markets. For example, it is now officially the world's most expensive rental market.

$1M for a fully remodeled unit in a desirable location is most likely a discounted price in that market.

Wow! I have never seen that before. I'm so glad we don't have to deal with those crazy obtrusive beams. I probably be tripping over those things. Good grief.

At least in Helen's photo the table, shelving straddling the beam is a good start. But it looks odd when it hits into the cabinet line.

Having the beams intruding into the main walkway & through cabinets, omg! There's got be a better way.

Any Pro interior or kitchen designer that specializes in incorporating, better designs around those beams, would be so worth the investment to fix that in that area.

It's supply (limited) and demand (high). Basic economics. Or real estate. Bry911 will be along to explain...

Is that actually code to leave a serious trip hazard like that? Ugly as it it I prefer the one corralled by a railing.

Beam us up, Scotty!

I admire the listing's down to earth language. F***k Yeah! Telling it like is, b*tch!

( I have forwarded it on to my agent for immediate emulation.)

Really not a bad price and includes parking. HOA fees are steep, at $600+ mth. DD1 lived in SF for a decade during and after college. After 2 years of no car, she bought one. Parking space in her Pacific Heights building was an additional $300 per month. DS was in Chicago for a decade, and bought a condo when he saw he was staying after college. His came with a parking place, but it was valued at $30K/purchased for $15K at closing. He later sold it for the same to another couple in the building when the buyer of his condo didn't need a parking space.

$600 is a steep HOA for a $1M apt? I guess because that's a cheap apartment for the location it is a steep HOA fee.

If the refrigerator were in a different location, it would be more workable....

I guess it's not, considering it is a small building. I Googled to see rest of units. I've never owned a 1M apartment, only homes. $600 is $200 more than we are currently paying. I wonder how much of of their HOA fees go into a reserve of some sort, to avoid possible assessments. Our current neighborhood has their own sewer treatment facility, and we voted to redo instead of join the crooks at the waterworks board. $15K per house, which isn't that bad, considering the current facility has last since the neighborhood was developed in the mid-80s. Our last neighborhood puts half of the POA fees into reserve for future road work and paving.

The amount of the assessment seems on the high normal size for a metropolitan condo. It would include all maintenance which probably means at least one full time maintenance worker/cleaner. I would also think it includes utilities - garbage pickup; water, insurance, maintenance of the roof deck as well as I think internet and cable.

Brings new meaning to 'work triangle'.

OMG, I just spit out my coffee laughing. Thanks Mark. Now I have to clean my keyboard and screen.

It is a design safety feature ... no one will walk into your DW or open hot oven.

Next time someone post a kitchen plan and people tell them that the DW or oven are in the walkway and a safety hazard we can now suggest one of these new safety beams. Imagine all the new layout possibilities! ;-)

CA is on Mars!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Being from the east coast, I often scratch my head at happenings on the west coast, but this ^^^^^^^ explains SO MUCH!!

The listing is wonderful.

Yup, $1 million in San Francisco may means a condo and a big beam you trip over ever damn day. Vancouver maybe it gets you a tear down shack. In Texas you may be able to buy 2-3 McMansions for the same price. Markets are wildly variable.

That listing above is hilarious!

In my neck of the woods you could buy my entire county.

Missi, is it for sale? ;-)

Actually buying large tracts of land is quite hard. The first few are easy, but once people figure out what you are doing then it gets much harder. We have a friend that helped purchase land for an expansion at the place known as the happiest on earth. They had "fake" companies set up to do the purchases so people wouldn't figure out who the buyer was. It took years.

On seeing the pic, I thought, "But it won't fall down in an earthquake!" I used to work in a 1872 building that had extensive retrofits after the Loma Prieta quake. Beams in strange places is par for the course.

Build an expensive home in a frequent earthquake, tornado, or hurricane, or flood zone. No thank you. Natural events are known to be repetitive.

Is there a good reason to design a kitchen like this? Grade F? A bad student experiment? :-)

Ex-husband had great job offer in SoCA circa 1980. We went out to view homes. "NO WAY am I giving up my 2,000 sq ft brick 3/2 on a half acre". He passed on the job offer.

chispa, ha, I dunno, maybe!

An obstacle? Maybe. An impediment to efficient cooking? Yeah. But where is the creativity one should expect from posters on this forum? Am I the only one who thinks it could be put to good use as a good downhill skiing simulator? Maybe install a saddle a la Urban Cowboy? Come on, folks, it's not an obstacle. It's an opportunity!

Plus it keeps the building intact in the next Big One..!

If these are warehouse conversions, why did they build the kitchen around the beam? I would hate that beam in the middle of the kitchen. I would be tempted to swap the kitchen and the bathroom space and incorporate the beam into a wall (pantry or closet) if I bought this place. Also, it would be nicer to walk into a foyer with a closet/bathroom then straight into the kitchen.

I wonder how many folks will walk up stairs to a third level to reach a "sitting room"? Nice try, Mr. Developer...

It's easy to fuss about the housing situation in my city, but this is a good reminder that it could be so much worse.

They needed to post here first; I'm sure folks here would have come up with a layout that somehow worked those beams into a closet or pantry or... something.

That listing is hilarious!

I can think of a better layout, but I am afraid my vocabulary may have to expand (well, bring words out of retirement).

This would be a good project for students to use their magnations making the design flows better.......

It's easy to see what happened and the sequence here.

1. An old (perhaps abandoned) existing building was retrofit in response to seismic portions of the building code;

2. The design of the condos was done based on dimensional layouts, i.e., how many units can be fit on a floor;

3. The existing "new" seismic bracing wasn't considered in the design of the individual condo units;

4. Construction began and the challenge was "make the plans fit the building"...

Any other option just takes too long and cost too much in architectural and engineering time and fees...

A friend of mine in Manhattan held the lease in a rent-controlled former tenement for many years, and ten years after they moved out.

There were two apartments which, while they had their own toilet, it was reached by the hallway outside the apartment, behind a locked door, early tenement style. His toilet was reached inside his apartment, but by little more than a doorway sized hole broken through.

My friend was paid just shy of $1M to relinquish the lease on the apartment, so god only knows what the owner was paid for the building itself.

People will put up with quite a lot in VHCOLAs.

LOL! That is nuts!

Stuff like this is why giving advice on houzz needs to take location in to consideration. What would be insane in the rest of the country will fly no problem here (although 1M for that apartment is a bargain!).

artistsharonva, we don't have frequent earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, floods, or even thunderstorms here.... just very infrequent earthquakes. It is very easy to build to withstand earthquakes and even the house across from mine withstood the 1906 quake (which was as bad as it could get). LA, San Diego, Seattle, Vancouver, Memphis, and Charleston all are areas at risk of a big earthquake. At least here we have good building codes that are forcing retrofits. Hence the ridiculous beam!

my daughter and son in law are currently apt hunting in SF. i wish them luck.

My husband works in tech and HQ is in the bay area. He has to travel there regularly, but we'd never consider trying to jump into that real estate market. Bananas.

I can't imagine that they could not have designed a better living space around those beams. I don't care how crazy the market, I'd never want to live there.

I lived in the Bay Area for 2 years and loved it. If it wasn’t for the crazy cost of living I would still be there. Too many other things to spend $ on to pay those prices though!

That beam makes people’s blood pressure go up. It’s a magic place for patients with low blood pressure. They could do a better job to hide the beam, there must be a cheap way to do it.......

What about building a fountain to hide the beam? Cooking next to a fountain sounds wonderful ........or grow a few potted gardenia trees under special lighting ( line up 2-3 trees on the beams)......a fragrant kitche! :-)

Is the sitting room the 2nd bedroom? With the bathroom on the first floor?

From the listing: Both bedrooms are separate levels from main level for privacy.