Don’t let these averages knock down your hopes if they’re out of your budget. Remember that in all averages, there are a ton of great deals on the low end, even in the downtown area. San Francisco apartments are old AF, which means landlords are willing to rent them out for less than market.

Heat map displaying the neighborhoods with the highest price differentiation when looking in rooms and shares. You can find good details in the Tenderloin, FIDI, and North Beach when looking on rooms and shares on Craigslist.

Tip #4: Be Chinese, or speak some, or bring a friend who speaks Chinese.

Would you believe me that most of the landlords in San Francisco are ethnically Chinese? Probably, I can’t prove it, but I do have a personal anecdote that I’ve gotten discounts from speaking Chinese. I’ve gotten first priority over a place because I spoke just a little Chinese. I’ve negotiated my rent down 100 dollars because the landlord only spoke Chinese. There are apartments in Chinatown, Richmond, Sunset, etc.. that are literally less than 500 dollars for a room. I’m just telling you they exist, now it’s your opportunity to find them.

Tip #5: A listed 3 bedroom might actually be 4 beds. And 4 bedroom might actually be 5 beds.

What does this mean? San Francisco has a law out there (or maybe California does), that a room is only considered a room if a closet exists inside of it. Given that there are many houses in San Francisco with additional bonus rooms, offices, etc…these rooms aren’t officially allowed to be listed as an additional bedroom.

Try reading some of the descriptions within Craigslist postings very carefully to see if they mention extra rooms. These rooms are generally pretty big and well-sized, will probably have a window, may or may not be connected to general heat, but you can be sure as hell someone would be willing to pay at least a 1000 bucks to live in it!

3. WEATHER

Mark Twain said, but actually didn’t say the summer of San Francisco was the coldest winter I’ve ever experienced and everyone still laughs and forgets and imagines SF as being equivalent weather-wise to Los Angeles. Not true, if you want pure California stereotyped weather, move to Palo Alto and join your baby-stroller pushing brethren. In San Francisco we brazen the cold and the wind.

Let’s get it straight, the highs are between 60 to 70 Fahrenheit degrees every single day in San Francisco regardless of what day of the year it is. Notice I say between 60 to 70 degrees, which means it VERY rarely hits over 70. Always one layer jacket weather.

Fuck Chicago, we’re the real windy city. And boy does it get windy here in the summer. This phenomenon really creates the effect of it being generally a bit too hot in the sun, and a bit too cold in the shade. You really can’t win in this city.

Also, observe the phenomenon known as Karl the fog created from the wind and other weather things.

This slideshow explains it really well why the fog comes into the city and how it’s generally formed. But one thing to note is how the mountains and hills like Twin Peaks and Mt. Davidson block a good amount of the fog. And so if you want to live in sunny San Francisco in the summer specifically, I would advise you to live east.

The fog line displayed by the encompassment of half of the city during the summertime.

That means neighborhoods like Downtown, SOMA, Potrero Hill, Mission, Portola.

The fog in the summer will generally roll into the city in the morning, burn off by around 10 or 11am, and then seep back into the city by 4 to 6pm. This means that if you have a regular 9–5 workday commute, you may rarely see your neighborhood filled with sunshine in the summer.

Neighborhoods like the Sunset are really good for not seeing the sunset. Basically anything east of Divisadero, Northeast of Twin Peaks, and hell even Visitacion Valley and Bayview will probably be sunny most of the time. And wait, why do I add judgement to those two neighborhoods.

4. CRIME AND SAFETY

Crime heat map of the past five years. Play with the data here

Crime usually has to be talked about with an asterisk just because everyone has a different perception on what kind of behavior constitutes crime for their comfortability. What is considered a dangerous neighborhood to one person may not be the same to another, and yet it still creates a bias that influences many different levels of politics.

Crime heat maps are also considered to be inaccurate because they get confused with population density maps. And that’s true to a point. Fortunately for San Francisco it seems like the entire city is generally more evenly dense compared to many other cities. But I feel like total statistics are a reasonable metric when you are a parent that wants a neighborhood where your kids can play around and feel safe. Crime rates in this city are represented by the cops documenting and writing up 911 incidents, and in my opinion, total statistics make way for reasonable neighborhood differentiation.

But really, you should be checking it out on your own. Granularity on a data scale can only go so far. So besides knowing that the Tenderloin is where the homeless shelters are and the known place for crack addicts to hang out, most other neighborhoods in San Francisco are generally safe.

The area around Civic Center Bart, Bayview, and Visitacion Valley get a bad rap. So does East Mission and near the 16th and 24th street Bart station.

What about homelessness, San Francisco’s biggest problem? Generally you probably don’t want to live near tent city. Avoid living next to bridges and the highways that run throughout the city notably 101 and 280 on the eastside.

But honestly, make an intuitive and educated guess when you check out the area. Each person has their own safety standards and what constitutes unsafe in their own frame of mind. It’s not something that can be determined on a numerical scale nor on a statistic.

5. COMMUTE TO WORK

There’s generally three main commutes if you live in San Francisco.

To Downtown SF (maybe Mission, maybe Dogpatch, maybe UCSF) To the Peninsula/South Bay Unpopular case of to Oakland/East Bay or Sausalito/North Bay

To Downtown SF

If you’re commuting into downtown, generally you can live anywhere in the city and have under a one hour commute without having to drive.

BART and MUNI map

If you live within a 15 minute walking distance to either the MUNI line that starts at West Portal station or the south BART station of City College/Balboa Park, your commute will max out at 45 minutes granted no delays. The West Portal station is the last MUNI station that goes underground and therefore travels at appropriate speeds without getting blocked by ridiculous SF drivers that interweave through the train tracks in an effort to beat the train.

But here’s how the breakdown goes:

Commute Time = walking to stop: (max 15) + time on train/subway: (max 15) + walking to work: (max 15)

Tweak that formula as you wish but I think that 15 minutes is the max walk time before you would take a bus instead. Also you can live anywhere in the city and be within a 15 minute combined walk + bus time to a MUNI or BART stop. And if you aren’t, then there’s probably a bus that takes you to your workplace in under 45 minutes unless for some reason you’re living in the Presidio and commuting to Excelsior and which I suggest you to just straight up move to the Excelsior. No real reason for you to do a tour of San Francisco on the bus every single day.

And let’s just look at this map of BART in 2050 to dream of when the time comes.

To the Peninsula or South Bay

There’s three ways to get down south.

Driving in a car Caltrain Bart to Caltrain Shuttle bus by mammoth tech company

Driving

If you decide to drive, I would very much encourage living by the freeways or at least in a neighborhood that is close to the freeway entrance. The farther south you can go, the more you’ll avoid the SF traffic. This does not mean highway 1, this means 101 or 280. Recommended neighborhoods: Potrero Hill, Dogpatch, Bayview, Portola, Glen Park, Excelsior, MAYBE south mission. Just try not to live somewhere with a lot of non-optimized traffic lights between the freeway entrance and your house, which is everywhere in the city.

Tangent: Owning a Car

I would not pay for a parking space in this city. Truly, it’s not worth the 300 dollars a month minimum all of the apartment complexes charge. But at the same time I would not be willing to move my car every two days because of street sweeping.

If you can, live in a neighborhood with only single family homes that have a driveway or parking space with street sweeping hopefully only once every two weeks. This situation is even better if you choose a neighborhood that doesn’t get too crowded with cars so that you don’t have spend 15 minutes driving in circles trying to find a place to park. Generally the rule of thumb is also that the further away from commercial real estate you are, the easier it is to find parking.

What is commercial real estate? Well check out this picture of SF from Google Maps.

All of the areas that have tan colored hotspots are essentially zoned for commercial real estate. This means metered parking, parking cops, and lots of millennials phone zombies to accidentally hit while you’re too focused on finding parking.

Recommended neighborhoods: Potrero Hill, Dogpatch, Richmond, Sunset, Glen Park, Twin Peaks, Noe Valley, Castro, East Mission, Cole Valley.

Caltrain

There are only three Caltrain stops in San Francisco. I would advise you to live within 15 minutes walking distance of them if you don’t have a car and need to commute to the South Bay. It’s truly debilitating if the MUNI bus breaks down and then the Caltrain ALSO breaks down. At least if that happens on the BART and you’re commuting into the city you can get out and order an Uber that doesn’t cost 100 dollars.

Bart to Caltrain is a little tricky because the two systems don’t really have overlap with each other.

to Anywhere Else

Just move there. There’s no hope for you.

6. FOOD AND NIGHTLIFE ACCESS

Avocado toast that probably costs 15 dollars.

Nothing says you’re a San Francisco resident until you can sip on your six dollar coffee, buy an artisanal vegan donut, Instagram your brunch, all within a five minute walking distance from your apartment. Fortunately there exists many neighborhoods for you to do such activities.

Here comes my ranking of most bourgeois/trendy/millennial based neighborhoods

Hayes Valley: Nothing can really compare to this neighborhoods trendy wealth in which almost every variation of retail shop imaginable exists that would instantly fail if it were somehow relocated to anywhere else in the world. There is an artisanal chocolate store, a boutique backpack shop, three different ice cream shops that use either nitrogen or store an organic kale flavor, a Warby Parker pop up, a Google Home Mini Donut pop up, literally any kind of pop up is here! There’s also a couple of cool bars though. Pacific Heights: Quite possibly the wealthiest neighborhood in terms of home price, this neighborhood features not only the most expensive Victorian style homes in SF, but also a strip of commercial real estate that rivals Hayes Valley in term of underground boutique expensive clothing brands you have never heard of on Fillmore St. Also a little fratty and filled with white people if that’s your shindig. Valencia Street in the Mission: I specify Valencia street because it in itself is highly differentiable from Mission street. Some of the best food in San Francisco is on this street, retailed on commercial revitalized modern architecture. Dandelion Chocolate, a shop dedicated to Chai Tea, and Four Barrel Coffee stand out in this spot if we’re talking about specific drink shops that you couldn’t imagine having a sustainable market elsewhere. Honorable Mention: Noe Valley and Union Street in the Marina.

Bar Spots

Polk Street: Get wasted here, get in a fight, break shit.

Get wasted here, get in a fight, break shit. 16th Street Valencia : Chill out, drink some good beer at Monk’s Kettle, go dancing at Double Dutch.

: Chill out, drink some good beer at Monk’s Kettle, go dancing at Double Dutch. The Marina/North Beach: Get wasted with white people.

Get wasted with white people. Upper SOMA: Pre-game for Temple.

Pre-game for Temple. Nob Hill: Get fancy with cocktails and middle-aged people looking for affairs.

Get fancy with cocktails and middle-aged people looking for affairs. Castro : Get wasted with the gays.

: Get wasted with the gays. Hayes/Haight : Get drinks with your friends that live there.

: Get drinks with your friends that live there. Mid-Market SOMA: Pre-game for Audio or Booty SF.

The funniest thing about San Francisco neighborhoods is how distinct each demographic is. It may not be as concretely grandiose as most cities, but it is definitely the city that has by far the densest population for how separated each demographic is.

Neighborhood demographic examples from personal opinion

The Marina: White people, 30 something year old mothers pushing babies in carts, and people from the Greek system.

The Sunset and Richmond: Old Asian families, people, and food in a sprawling suburbia with the Henry Doelger assembly line design of house

The Mission: Little Mexico

The Castro: LGBTQ

Haight Ashbury: Hippies and Counterculture

A couple less defined ones from personal experience.

Bernal Heights: Hilly, lots of now one way streets from cars parked on either side, stores and restaurants in the downtown that look like the first floor of someone’s house.

Noe Valley: You move here when you’re a newly married tech couple and want a kid.

Excelsior: You move here when you’re a newly married couple and want a kid and can’t afford Noe Valley. Also a historically old neighborhood that has resisted many of the gentrifications of it’s retail, eating, and other shops along Mission street. Aka very cheap for the city.

Dogpatch: Old manufacturing buildings now renovated into either apartment complexes, commercial tech space, or brunch spots.

And I’m done.

Conclusion

I hope you got something out of this. I wrote this for fun so I got something out of it. If you have any questions, maybe email me. Or check out my website. Or offer me a project. Or give me another job.