re: San Francisco is officially the most expensive rental market in the country

My cousin lives there and pays over $3K a month for a tiny 1 bedroom he and his girlfriend live in. He makes well over $200K and his girlfriend makes close to that I imagine. He never did anything as a kid other than just tinkering with computers and teaching himself how to program. Pretty cool to see him be that successful at only 28. San Francisco is full of people just like them that can afford it.

San Fran is a great city but no way I would want to live like a college student if I was making over 200k a year.

Our rent for a large 1 bedroom in the Marina District when we lived there in 2004-2005 with parking inside the building was $1,900. It was in a great hood for young college educated professionals (i.e. yuppy scum) and a high rent district. We were "Marina Trash" as the residents were known.

I heard we'd pay at least $4k now.

Its out of control. I've been reading articles and hearing from my people there about the "tech bros". Tech workers wanting to live in the city and commute south to Silicon Valley. Twitter locating in SF and a few others having a new major presence there now are changing the city drastically. They have private buses that pick the workers up on the city bus routes and cause havoc on traffic, etc.

Edgier crowd, which give the city its personality, have moved to Oakland across the bay or other places that make living in Bay Area not worth it IMO. That was our dilemma when we left. Have kids there and not live in SF (what's point), or head home to be w/ people & the culture & get a nice house, live easier.

Longtime residents & lovers of SF are pissed that old dive bars, retail, etc. with character are all being redeveloped into coffee shops, yoga studios, and yuppie bars for the Tech Bros.

The whole situation is killing dreams of mortals who want to live there...but what can you do? Lenin/Mao are dead.

We always talk about moving there for a year/renting a place or whatever once the kids are grown. By then...no telling how crazy it will be.

A couple of earthquakes, god forbid, might temper the whole situation.

Although the owner of our building, from Portland, came in and bought the building right after the majority of the Marina, which is built ontop of landfill/debris/rubble pushed into the bay after the 1906 big one, pancaked in 1989 (world series quake). When there is blood in the Streets...Buy Property.

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East Bay prices are much more reasonable.

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and the commute is horrible like lsunurse pointed out. Everybody has started migrating to less expensive areas, and the traffic certainly reflects that.

Have a friend who lives by lake merrit in a one bedroom with his wife - it's about 600sqft and they bought it for $400K. She works in downtown oakland so no big deal. he commutes about an hour every day for a 20 mile drive.

We rarely go to the city, but we have found plenty of farmer's markets and events in the South Bay on weekends so we don't miss out on much of the city living, except for the $6/hr parking

It's crazy how these rent prices make you realize just how different people can be.

I'm all about having space and quiet. Not necessarily a big house or apartment, but I need at least a half-acre or so to call my homestead.

Honestly, I wouldn't live FOR FREE in one of those tiny-arse apartments that I hear my friends in NYC and San Fran talk about. Guess I'm just not the city type.

My sister lived in Lower Haight and was paying $3k/month for an 800 sqft, 1 bedroom apt. I thought she was nuts.

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Posted by East Coast Band
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San Francisco is officially the most expensive rental market in the country

I thought this was old news. Like its been the highest for decades.
SF is a small size city with water on three sides. No room to expand. With commuters living as far away as Sacramento, 90 miles east, you'd figure you could push out the do nothing losers in Oakland to make way for some high end apartments.

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It's also impossible to build up. You have to jump through serious hoops to get building permits for high rises, because people don't want their views to be obstructed. Des Amis, a restaurant in the Marina District, just shut down because it could no longer afford its 30,000/month lease.

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A lot of them are. Who do you think are driving the prices of these homes up?

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business owners - not their software devs. The devs are not really that ballin' foreign business owners as well are paying cash for homes.

Most of the neighborhoods listed on that flyer are the more desired areas. You can still find more affordable housing in other neighborhoods that are nice, just not the "cool" neighborhoods.

(Edited to add that rent control only applies on housing built before 1979, so a LOT of the city is rent-controlled)

I bought my house in SF 10 years ago...thinking about selling it and moving to Danville to be closer to work, but my friends are all in SF.

It is a beautiful place and the weather's great.

The next large earthquake should make it cheap again. LOL