/biz/ - Business & Finance

>Owners of San Francisco’s office towers, shopping centers, hotels and homes are flooding the county with appeals to slash their property assessments — and tax payments — as real estate prices sink in the beleaguered city.
>Some of the world’s biggest landlords, including Brookfield Corp. and Blackstone Inc., have filed for assessment cuts. The volume of such appeals have doubled in the three years since the pandemic. Assessments for this fiscal year went out in early July, and new appeals are expected to surge before a Sept. 15 deadline to request reductions.
>The city already faces a $780 million budget deficit through 2025, forcing Mayor London Breed to raid her reserves and leave vacant jobs unfilled, among other belt-tightening measures. San Francisco's latest budget assumes the city will be forced to refund $167 million to property owners over the next two fiscal years due to appeals.
>For San Francisco, the property forecasts are even more dire: Prices for office towers may plunge as much as 60% from pre-pandemic levels, according to Boston Consulting Group. Owners of the city’s largest shopping mall, two of its biggest hotels and two office buildings controlled by investment giant Pacific Investment Management Co. stopped making mortgage payments this year rather than hold onto money-losing properties.
>Meanwhile, the median San Francisco home price sank 16% in June from a year earlier, and residential sales volume dropped almost 17%, according to the California Association of Realtors.

https://archive.is/M3K1X