San Francisco is one of the top cities for live-work-play apartments

A total of 4,700 mixed-use apartments have been completed in San Francisco since 2012, per a report from RentCafe, a nationwide apartment-search website.

Why it matters: Rental communities that include residential, office and retail space gained a foothold in the last decade, especially as the pandemic heightened renters' preference for having daily activities close at hand, the report found.

What they found: 22% of the units built in San Francisco between 2012 and 2021 were mixed-use, per RentCafe.

Zoom in: In the Castro neighborhood, a building housing a former real estate office is set to be demolished and replaced with a six-story mixed-use building, Hoodline reported last month.

• The building will contain 14 market-rate condo units, retail space on the ground floor, roof access for tenants and underground parking for six vehicles.

Of note: A vacancy storefront tax went into effect in January to tax property owners in 32 districts throughout the city.

• Retail vacancies occur when "a property owner or landlord fails to actively market a vacant retail storefront to viable commercial tenants and/or to offer the property at a reasonable rate," per the legislation.

Zoom out: The number of apartments in "live-work-play" buildings nationwide has quadrupled over the last decade, from 10,000 completed in 2012 to 43,700 in 2021, according to Yardi Matrix data.

The bottom line: Blending different types of real estate is one way cities are evolving in the era of remote and hybrid work.