Crime often comes up as a decision factor in residential real estate, but it is just as valid a concern for commercial properties. San Francisco has become a center of controversy and coverage of its crime rate. Now, statistics from the city's police department suggest that most crime types, including violent, have been fairly level since before 2010, with larceny and theft being what had surged into 2017, dropped some by 2020, went up again in 2022, and is coming back to levels reminiscent of the early 2010s.

But even assuming the numbers are accurate, it almost doesn't matter. Perception is key to human reaction, and people perceive the city as being highly unsafe. That perception can easily turn into reluctance to take an apartment — or office, retail, hotel, multifamily, and other commercial space. Some major store closings in San Francisco have included Office Depot, and Anthropologie since 2020. Nordstrum left in May, citing slowing foot traffic and the "dynamics of the downtown San Francisco market."

Trepp recently worked on developing a way of measuring valuation impact of crime on CRE properties with San Francisco as the case study, but an obvious pertinence to any city that finds itself, if not in national headlines over crime rates, at least local ones.