First off, what does a sub 200′ apt even look like?

Check out the image to the right.  As you can see, its pretty small, but when you imagine yourself in it, its not all that bad.  The key to making this work is to live very simply.  If you are the type of person that has lots of possession, and large possessions at that, like say a drum kit, then move on, this is not for you.  But if you have ever lived in a dorm, you should be able to pull this off as well. There is plenty of storage as long as you do not have large things. Small space living only works when you are living light and in a city that has plenty to offer to keep you from staying at home like San Francisco or New York.  Also, so you have a really long commute into the city. An even smaller cheaper version might make sense for when you need to stay late in the city and want to skip the commute home.  Yes this is an edge condition, but it could happen.

Tim Colen, executive director of the San Francisco Housing Action Coalition, a largely developer-backed nonprofit is behind this idea for San Francisco.  And odds are pretty good rezoning will be approved to support these small places.

Many people have been slowing getting back into the housing market, except for one small group. Those who were lucky enough to be in or invested in one of the many tech companies that have IPO’ed lately have been hitting the south peninsula hard!  The median price of single-family houses sold in Palo Alto, jumped 20 percent in May from a year earlier to $1.63 million according to the research company DataQuick. In Mountain View, prices rose 3.1 percent to $957,500, the ninth year-over-year gain in 12 months.

And its not done yet..

There are going to be many more IPO’s coming in 2011 and 2012 and if past performance holds, there will be a flush of new money coming into the valley. Given this success, there will be more VC money coming into the valley and that is going to drive prices up even further.