SAN FRANCISCO – It’s getting harder to fill up in San Francisco, as the valuable corner lots of gas stations are being snapped up by real estate developers for housing complexes. By 2017, the Bay Area will have 40% fewer gasoline stations than in 2007, KGO-TV reports. During the past six years, 23 gas stations have closed or will close in San Francisco.

In the greater Bay Area, hundreds of gasoline stations have stopped selling fuel since the turn of the 21st century. Jeff Lenard, vice president of strategic industry initiatives at NACS, told the station that the number of gasoline stations across the United States has been declining, largely because selling fuel isn’t profitable. “The average markup on a gallon of gas is about 20 cents, and after expenses—credit card fees, rent, labor, depreciation—you usually make about five cents a gallon," Lenard said.

“I was very surprised how slim the margins are on the gas,” added Brian Spiers, who has owned a gas station. Spiers had purchased one a decade ago to tear it down and build housing, but with the economic downturn, ran it as a gas station for a while. “I ended up developing that property into a 115-unit mixed-use condominium building,” he said.

Tom Radulovich, executive director of Livable City, thinks that updating building codes would allow gas stations to be relocated in a way that would meet the needs of today’s drivers. “There’s also a lot of restrictions on where you can relocate a gas station, so on the one hand, we say preserve them. But on the other hand, once they get displaced there is often no place for them to go,” he said.