How do I find decent housing in San Francisco?
Hi everyone! I’m a Senior graduating in May and I’ll be moving out to San Francisco around July from the east coast. Housing is absolutely insane. I’ve come across listings charging insane rent for something the size of a closet. I’ve been trying to find decent places through PadMapper, Trulia, and Zillow but haven’t had much luck.
Is there a better way to find decent housing in San Francisco? For those who have made the move, I’m open to all advice on how to handle the housing process.
Find roommates on Craigslist. Don't sign a lease. Just pay them. Move whenever you want.
This is what I do
This is 100% what you need to do, OP. Things happen quickly; for a July 1st move-in date, the ads will pop up on Craigslist in the middle of June. You will find a decent place with reasonable roomates in a neighborhood like Russian Hill or North Beach or the Marina. DO NOT end up living in a managed building one-bedroom for $2,500 in the Mission.
I like to list units 60 days out and maintain pretty much zero vacancy. What's funny is when yuppie white chicks emails me and ask a million questions on a listing with a Feb 1 vacancy and then just casually throw in that they want to move in June and are surprised when I tell them first come first serve. Dude honestly, casually rejecting entitled people is one of my favorite things.
Another example: Wrapping up rehabbing a two-unit in Pilsen. The top floor is a 4/3 duplex I listed for $2,650 'cause Goldie get above pro-forma rents (even if only by $50). Two weeks ago, this soft little white boy consultant character in tight pants and fucking chelsea boots he got on Gilt.com comes to a showing alone. Likes the spot but says he doesn't have roommates and will get back to me once he finds some. Goldie was even a mesnch and drove this chump to my next showing, showed him that too, to spare his little pocketbook a couple sheckels on the uber.
Anyway, whatever. My next batch of showings had a quality applicant - mid-30s couple, lawyer and some other shit, with twin 2-year-olds. Wife makes 2X what hubby does. Bet their sex life requires lots of contraptions. So I signed a lease with them. Couple days later, ConsultantBoyyo leaves me a message, a text, and an email like yo I found some roommates we are all highly qualified working professionals and are ready to sign. I'm like sorry dawg it's gone, but here's some spots nearby I have listed. He still hasn't relented. He keeps offering incrementally more money for rent and explaining how great and qualified of tenants they will be. Then he starts teaching me how to run my shit telling me how, 'You should rent to us because we're young working professionals and we'll be moving on soon enough and this area is booming and you can jack rents.' LOL. Boyyo, that's called turnover and I go to great lengths to avoid it. I can jack rents on existing tenants just as easy. lol anyway
Another funny example from the same building, but the downstairs 2/2 unit: I was in Texas for 9 days at the end of December for purposes of remembering the Alamo, test driving Ram trucks, frequenting truckstops to purchase various spiced bagged pickles, and avoiding my family. I was doing a couple hours of work every morning just to stay afloat. So I wasn't even calling back VMs - just texting and shit. I realize now that I know what I'm saying next that those details were irrelevant. But the pee can't come out the pool so you're welcome.
I get an inquiry to one of my listings. I reply by text and email with my boilerplate shit with info about it, qualifications, and when next showings are. This dude replies, "Call me to discuss." No hi, no bi, no thank you. I go to great fucking lengths to avoid phone calls with randos. I check my voicemail once a day and don't call back almost everyone. People wanna ask a million dumbass questions and make special requests and we have enough renters where I can just ignore snowflakes.
Anyway, I see this guy is a broker at garbage @Properties. This property wasn't even on the market and I figure he's trying to go above and beyond for his clients and find them off-market deals. Like dude you know we're not paying you, right? So I ignore hims "call me" email 'til we get back from Texas. Cause it's off-market dawg. Move on. Every few days though, he clicks my links again and I reply with the same boilerplate email with the next showing times. Mind you, I have agents doing showings for my shit while I'm away. So he's missed like 4 showings now while asking me to call him and calling me, all the while not giving me a reason he wants to speak. When a stranger tries to summon me, they better provide a reason or I'm not doing shit. That's some entitled garbage to think I owe you a second of my time.
So anyway, I got that unit leased while I was in Texas. He eventually calls me on like Jan 4 or some shit and I pick up because I was waiting for a call from Peoples Gas, so I was answering unknown numbers at the time. Long story short: This dude wanted to rent the place for himself, but none of my showing times worked for him and he wanted to go see it himself. Or he wanted me to drop what I'm doing and show him it on his schedule. He was like, "Is there no lockbox? Why can't I go see it?" Like lol there is but you can't have the code dummy. Then, as these types of people like to do, he starts teaching me to run my shit. "You don't understand how to maximize exposure. You're missing out on tenants." Tells me the fucking @properties schmuck trying to rent an apartment from me lol. This dude even added me on facebook lol. Funny part is I started ignoring him immediately once he said some entitled garbage. He just keeps going.
Also, I know I have some contradicting dates here, but I'm not going to go cross reference my shit. I'm bad with time. Just December January type shit. You know what I'm getting at. No second drafts
oh shit boys goldie's entering another mania. about goddamn time.
Goal is to keep rent and utilities under 2000. I ideally want to find a place around 1700-1800 (rent + utilities) if possible.
Go on craigslist and join this FB group https://www.facebook.com/groups/317688158367767/?ref=bookmarks
Buy a van?
There’s a website called seeking arrangement where you can find sugar mamas to help you pay rent / living expenses in exchange for dates and sexy time. This is what I would do in order to pay SF rent
quite impressed.. you're keeping consistent with the MILF theme. +1sb
This actually sounds really interesting.
Tenderloin. Is the cheapest area in SF
https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_rent/Tenderloin-San-Francisco-CA/20942…
A simple Google Street View explains why it's the cheapest area
No amount of Google Street Viewing is going to be able to relay the smell that hits you when walking through the Tenderloin
buy a Uhaul type truck...convert it into a studio apt (solar panel on the roof, camping toilet + camper sink + camper stove + camper fridge inside...etc...)...will end up costing you about 15k all in (10k for a used truck + 5k to convert into a livable studio)....but then you'll live for free (just need to find a safe place to park). 16 foot truck gives you ~120 sqft of living space.
Cant believe I have not thought of this.
I assume you could do this and find a nice spot in Carmel-By-The-Sea. Calabasas Malabu Atherton Palo Alto
Could always live on the street and shit on the sidewalks. This seems to be a popular thing to do in San Francisco.
It's not uncommon to have multiple roommates for one bedroom with a split rent.
Though the conversion of the UHAUL into a living space is something that gained popularity lately with the "tiny" homes movement.
Good luck!
After reading the above responses, why would anyone want to move to SF?
Cuz the weather is still nice?
In my city, they don't let me shit on the street.....so yeah I wanna go there for the liberal freedom.
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Guys, come out of the U-Haul, the Hedge Fund Vice President says SF is perfectly affordable!
To be fair, $3K is what shitty studios cost in NY, and plenty of analysts share an apartment with a friend (or two or three) for a couple years. That said, SF is a little out of control. I think it's objectively more expensive than NY or London on essentially every metric. It just wasn't purpose-built for housing the sort of population it currently has, and the city's yuppies seek to preserve its beauty through non-sensical zoning laws which ultimately crowd out even some of the techies, not to mention teachers, baristas, or anyone with a family. But a region built almost entirely on a transitory populace is resting on unstable foundations. SF needs to get its shit together.
Have you looked at his profile, he came out of the woodwork to post that. His last comment was from 09/12 when he says he was a junior in college and is asking about IB.
i read an article about guys who work at google and facebook and did the "convert a truck into a studio apt" thing....google and facebook didn't care...the guys saved a ton of money...took showers at the company gym...parked in the corp parking lot....and saved enough to actually buy a real apartment/house (with a mortgage)...and at the end, you can sell the converted truck at a profit.....so it really is living for free.
Check this website out https://bungalow.com/
I am not affiliated in anyway.
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