San Francisco Era, plz help

[jvalioli]

Honestly you should tell us what your newly expected income is.

I moved recently (within SF) to what I consider the best SF neighborhood and pay a lot but not the exaggerated 4k 1BR posted above. I'm guessing that was for some new construction downtown. Those buildings always gouge because their occupants are people who move from out of state and don't know that the rental market here is different from other major cities.

 

[dc3k]

what should I know specifically about San Fran?

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For starters,

Don't move into the city, move somewhere further south/east and commute via Caltrain every day. My wife does the commute from Sunnyvale to SF every day.

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Don't listen to this guy unless you want to waste half your life commuting. You won't need a car in the city either (although you may not in the suburbs either, depending). Sunnyvale is about an hour on limited/bullet. More than that on a local. That does not include time spent getting to/from the station. Live as close to work as possible within your budget. I used to commute from San Mateo every day and it was horrible.

Other stuff that comes to mind:

Don't call it San Fran
People love to brag about being a "native" (I have never experienced this anywhere else, even in significantly larger cities with enormous immigrant/transplant populations. It's so fucking cringey and weird)
The income divide is incredibly easy to spot and gets really depressing after a while. There is an enormous problem with homelessness, open drug use, drug dealing, tent cities, petty crime. It's disgusting.
Tech company hoodies everywhere. They're like uniforms.

 

[guiloahhhhh]

BART is fine. You get some crazies aimlessly yelling at shit don't worry they don't hurt you or anything. I'd look at BART and Caltrain. Really hella reliable trains just know what the commute times are and how full the parking garages get. Sometimes they fill up super fast. Some people may disagree but it's not a 24/7 like NYC. It shuts down about 12 at night during the week so just be careful if your out super late. Most people aren't super dangerous but don't make yourself a target.

 

[Dreamwriter]

People who are saying take the train so you don't have to pay higher rent...the train is freaking expensive! The times I've taken the train from Santa Clara to either San Francisco or Oakland, it cost like $15 each way. That's like $900 you could be putting towards the higher rent. Unless you happen to work for a company that covers transit costs.

For commuting, the issue is there are only two main highways entering/leaving the city to the south, one bridge heading north and one bridge heading to Oakland. And to the south are where the huge tech companies are - Apple, Google, Facebook - and a couple universities, so you get a lot of people living in San Francisco commuting to/from those companies and schools. If hours are flexible you can work around it - one person at my job works from around noon to around 8pm to avoid the traffic.

Be prepared for high prices. More than just rent - income taxes are high, my car's license tab renewal next month is $300, my apartment's laundry room charges $2.25 to wash, $1.75 to dry, gasoline is $3.80 per gallon (it was over $4 a couple months ago).

 

[ApatheticDolphin]

Mission Bay is a nice area - all brand new. The apartments there should be new and updated but expect to pay a little under 3k for a studio. 2k-ish for a 2 bedroom for both of you with a roommate.

You will only need 1 car - if that. It's very easy to live here without a car and just take lyft when it's late and public transportation isn't working. Mission Bay is in kind of an isolated place in the city in terms of walkability though.

Generally, the more eastern parts of the city (SOMA, downtown, Mission Bay/Dogpath) have newer high rises - which tend to be more expensive and closer to where you would be working, while the western parts have smaller duplexes that are cheaper but the commute will take longer and be more unpredictable b/c of frequent train delays.

If you're new to the city, I would suggest trying to live near the center of the city so that you can get around more easily. Look in areas like Noe Valley, Duboce Triangle, and Lower Haight. The commute from these areas would be able 35 min.

In general, people are nice in this city. They are cynical but won't snap at you or straight up ignore you like they do in East Coast cities.

 

[carlsojo]

For starters,

Don't listen to this guy unless you want to waste half your life commuting. You won't need a car in the city either (although you may not in the suburbs either, depending). Sunnyvale is about an hour on limited/bullet. More than that on a local. That does not include time spent getting to/from the station. Live as close to work as possible within your budget. I used to commute from San Mateo every day and it was horrible.

Other stuff that comes to mind:

Don't call it San Fran
People love to brag about being a "native" (I have never experienced this anywhere else, even in significantly larger cities with enormous immigrant/transplant populations. It's so fucking cringey and weird)
The income divide is incredibly easy to spot and gets really depressing after a while. There is an enormous problem with homelessness, open drug use, drug dealing, tent cities, petty crime. It's disgusting.
Tech company hoodies everywhere. They're like uniforms.

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Yeah to be fair my wife works remote two days a week.

 

[dc3k]

Yeah to be fair my wife works remote two days a week.

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That'll do it. Also home ownership and so on. Lots of people don't mind that commute, just not for me.

 

[carlsojo]

That'll do it. Also home ownership and so on. Lots of people don't mind that commute, just not for me.

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Some people we know commute from Sacramento and that's just holy shit!

And across the bridge is just as bad to me. The Caltrain works for me since I just go to Palo.

 

[Miletius]

1) If you plan to have a car in Mission Bay you're probably gonna have to pay for a garage. That's an extra 200 a month or so, so keep that in mind. As a poster above said, you don't need 2 cars if you live in SF.

2) If you plan to live in the city Mission Bay and Dogpatch are nice. You're looking at about 3k a month for a 1BR, a little less for a studio. If you are looking to keep things walkable, I'd recommend trying out surrounding neighborhoods but really check out the area beforehand. The area can change rapidly depending.

3) The nice thing about Mission Bay is that it's close to both Caltrain and the BART (about 25 minute walk to BART). So, you've actually got a really good setup for commuting, which opens up a whole lot of real estate for you. Just don't drive, it's not worth it. The less time you spend in the car the better so look close to public transportation.

Depending on what kind of work you do natives will either love or hate you more. There are a lot of techbros so they get shit on a lot. If you're doing something more worthwhile i.e. public interest sounding then people will respect you more. So make sure you have something else to talk about if you're coming here as a software engineer for google =).

 

[NineConsonants]

Yeah it's really tough to give advice without knowing your income and your desired COL.

 

[Supercrap]

Mission Bay sucks. The warriors arena opening is gonna fuck traffic up. I work basically right there

 

[Deleted member 19070]

Heading to sleep in a few but will check for response in morning.

How much money will you be making per year? I'd recommend Inner Sunset or Inner Richmond area. $2300-2600 for one bedroom. I have a super nice one bedroom in that range.

You'll be next to Golden Gate Park and the beach. I go chill on ocean Beach all the time and it's glorious. About 1 hour walk to downtown or 30 minutes via public transit and the buses that go downtown from here are good and not full of crazies like the downtown buses.

High speed gigabit internet from Sonic for like $50 a month. Super chill area and barely any homeless. Highly recommend it over anywhere else in SF.

 

[Linkage76]

I live in Daly City and commute to Berkeley for work. It takes me an hour and half with public transportation. My company is moving to San Raphael next week. I'm going to hate myself

 

[Syriel]

This is good insight. Appreciate the post. Sounds like there's a tough time commuting and that's the crux of the issue.

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If you can afford to live walking distance from your job, do it. Commute sucks.

If you want to save money, you can live in the outskirts of SF and save quiet a bit - I'm talking Sunset, Excelsior, Ingleside areas. The commute will be 30 minutes to an hour though.

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30 min minimum is just for commuting within the City OP. And SF is a small (by area) city.

 

[Eye for an Eye]

Going across the Bay Bridge is a killer. If it was on the inland side, then there's plenty more options for living and cummuting. But commuting into SF is a nightmarish hell you can't explain. I mean traffic starts to build up at 3 am from the Valley to the Bay Bridge and the evening rush hour to the Valley starts at about noon. My longest commute was five hours to get back to the Valley from Daly City. Its crazy out there.

 

[Steven]

Thanks everyone. I prefer not to post my income, and I know that kind of limits the advice that can be given so I appreciate your posts anyway.

Let me just say that with our new combined income I would be able to afford to live walking distance from work and be okay. Despite some differences of opinion, the most common thing I'm seeing is that commuting sucks and for me, a bad commute is one of those few things in life that really gets under my skin lmao

I'd rather pay more and avoid the commute (my sanity is worth more to me than a little extra money).

So yeah, I'll most likely look to live in Mission Bay and be able to walk to work. My GF works remote. We also made the decision to sell one of our cars (we own both), pocket that money and take one with us just so that we have a car of our own. If we find we don't need it at all (like, ever) then we will reassess.

Outside of all the commute talk, some awesome tips in here. Thanks friends.

 

[Commedieu]

Where do you pickup goldleaf caviar dispensers?

You'll probably need one to fit in op.

 

[Steven]

Update:

We stayed in SF for a couple days. Initial thoughts:

• The weather was amazing. We come from Maryland and it's hot right now. Both the GF and I love fall weather the most and it looks like SF is like that all the time
• The food was even more amazing. My girlfriend is vegan and I'm vegetarian (95% of the time) and we went to Next Level Burger and it was fantastic.
• In general, the people are pretty cool. We aren't much for social activities but the time spent there was nice.
• We went to embarcadero Center and also a farmers market...
• ...so many places in SF city stink. We both thought we were crazy as we saw people eating outside where clearly it smelled like shit. This was in the embarcadero area. My goodness.
• The only place that didn't stink of the places we visited was Mission Bay where the apartment we want is.
• We toured the place and it was beautiful, quiet, clean. We locked down a lease immediately.

Thanks for the tips guys. The GF actually just got an offer for a position in SF paying double what her remote job was paying, and it's also walking distance from our new apartment just like my job will be. I think we are going to have fun. Our start dates are the same and we will move in to our new place in mid September.

The only negative is that the rent is high as fuck but we will be making enough to make it work (combined, we make more than 10k per month) - but it's worth it for both of us to be able to walk to work while living in a super clean location. We decided we are going to sell both cars as we won't need any.

 

[Pet]

OP 10k a month is not enough unless that's post tax.

TBH you and your partner, if unmarried, want to be pulling at least 200k combined, pre tax (~8k/month each). At unmarried tax rates, factoring in health insurance and 401k and state income taxes and federal income taxes, you'll only have about 50% of what your salary is.

I'm just basing it off my past salary - after all payroll deductions and whatnot, 100k a year translated to ~4.5k month (I live in California). Since apartments and housing easily turns out to be about 4k/month, you two will definitely want to earn more than that.

TBH it's not very hard in SF to command those kinds of salaries, but honestly you could get paid 20% less and pay 50% less for housing, anywhere else.

 

[Steven]

OP 10k a month is not enough unless that's post tax.

TBH you and your partner, if unmarried, want to be pulling at least 200k combined, pre tax (~8k/month each). At unmarried tax rates, factoring in health insurance and 401k and state income taxes and federal income taxes, you'll only have about 50% of what your salary is.

I'm just basing it off my past salary - after all payroll deductions and whatnot, 100k a year translated to ~4.5k month (I live in California). Since apartments and housing easily turns out to be about 4k/month, you two will definitely want to earn more than that.

TBH it's not very hard in SF to command those kinds of salaries, but honestly you could get paid 20% less and pay 50% less for housing, anywhere else.

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Appreciate the thought. It's more than $10k and that's post tax.

 

[Pet]

Appreciate the thought. It's more than $10k and that's post tax.

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Ah then you'll be fine!