Self Employed, young couple looking to move to central SF on a budget...is craigslist the only option? (Stockton: apartment complexes, rentals)

[Chloe75]

My boyfriend and I are both primarily self employed-I am fully self employed and he makes half of his money from his minimum wage job, then makes tips and does freelance work on the side. Depending on the month, we make between $7,000-10,000 together but very little of it is in the form of official pay stubs.

We are looking to find a 1 bedroom in central SF for $2,000. It doesn't look like many of those exist. We don't mind living in the TL, but there just doesn't seem to be that many available apartments for <$2,000. Shouldn't a lot of these apartments be rent controlled? Are there any additional sites (we are willing to pay for a site like apartmenthunterz as long as we know it's legit) that have more listings? We are worried that since we aren't the most "ideal" applicants we may have to apply to many apartments before getting one. Would it be worth it to just start walking up and down streets and inquiring at all of the buildings?

Also, is it worth our time to look at some of the big corporate places? Would they have stricter requirements about income? I see Trinity Management has a lot of terrible reviews on yelp and they seem to always have ads on craigslist, would a place like that be worth checking out?

[wooliemonster]

My understanding is that rent control only limits to annual increases to about 2%, not the initial rate.

[mayorhaggar]

Rent control doesn't do anything until you sign the lease, then it limits how much the rent can go up each year. If you're signing a new lease for a new apartment the landlord can charge whatever rent the market will bear.

[HockeyMac18]

Originally Posted by Chloe75

My boyfriend and I are both primarily self employed-I am fully self employed and he makes half of his money from his minimum wage job, then makes tips and does freelance work on the side. Depending on the month, we make between $7,000-10,000 together but very little of it is in the form of official pay stubs.

We are looking to find a 1 bedroom in central SF for $2,000. It doesn't look like many of those exist. We don't mind living in the TL, but there just doesn't seem to be that many available apartments for <$2,000. Shouldn't a lot of these apartments be rent controlled? Are there any additional sites (we are willing to pay for a site like apartmenthunterz as long as we know it's legit) that have more listings? We are worried that since we aren't the most "ideal" applicants we may have to apply to many apartments before getting one. Would it be worth it to just start walking up and down streets and inquiring at all of the buildings?

Also, is it worth our time to look at some of the big corporate places? Would they have stricter requirements about income? I see Trinity Management has a lot of terrible reviews on yelp and they seem to always have ads on craigslist, would a place like that be worth checking out?

Rent control only applies to buildings built before 1979. As well, it doesn't protect you until you've signed the lease (as Mayor mentioned above). At that point, your rent can only go up so much a year (I think 2%). However, since it doesn't protect you until you move, your at the mercy of "market rate". That is, after the previous tenant moves out (at, some low rent-controlled rate), the landlord can raise the price as much as he/she wants to "market rate". What you're seeing on craigslist in the older rent-controlled units is this effect when these units are re-rented out.

Keep in mind, though, rent control only applies to older buildings, so most/all of these larger corporate places are all going to have been built after 1979, and won't be subject to rent control. That means you sign a year lease with a place at "market rate" and then in a year your rates could jump up to whatever they want to raise it to. I've heard horror stories from some people I know that used to live in these kind of places in SOMA. One friend I know lived in a $1500 a month 1BR and that jumped to $2500 if he wanted to renew...and they tried to tell him they were cutting him a break because that was below "market rate." Places in that complex are now going for above $3000 a month.

Unfortunately, for the last ~2 years, rents in SF (and the Bay Area) have skyrocketed. There's been much discussion on why/what's causing it (e.g. influx of people making too much money and not know what to do with it, low supply of units, landlords holding units off of the market, apartments being turned into air bnb units, and some people have blamed rent control itself...), but the bitter reality is that SF in many areas has become as expensive/more expensive than even NYC. For obvious reasons, this has been a hot topic in the news and here on City-Data:

https://www.city-data.com/forum/san-f...et-insane.html
https://www.city-data.com/forum/san-f...ket-crazy.html
https://www.city-data.com/forum/san-f...t-sfs-hot.html
https://www.city-data.com/forum/san-f...al-market.html
https://www.city-data.com/forum/san-f...-2017-1br.html
https://www.city-data.com/forum/san-f...11-2012-a.html

If you moved here a year or two ago, you could have possibly found something in "central SF" for around your price range. But, unfortunately, this is the current reality of renting in these areas of SF. It's just a bad time to be moving here...

And lastly, yes Craigslist is pretty much your only bet for finding rentals in SF. Steer clear of most of the other sites (like apartmenthunterz). Many of those are either complete scams (they just will take your money and not you find you anything) and often they just relist old craigslist ads anyway. Since most landlords in SF are small-time, they tend to choose the cheapest ways of advertising, which is either craigslist, or even by not advertising online at all and relying on word of mouth/"for rent" signs. Since there aren't many large managed complexes in SF-proper, you won't get much out of using sites like apartments.com.

I'd recommending using a tool like paddmapper to help you map out craigslist ads. It also does a good job of illustrating what areas of town are cheaper/more expensive. You might notice that you could live in the outer areas of SF and find much cheaper places (although $2000 might be unrealistic even there). And, since most of those places are older, you'll get that rent control protection (even though, I personally wouldn't want to be locked in at these 2012 prices...).

[wooliemonster]

One of the few nice things about Houston is that it's easy to build large apartment complexes. They pop up like mushrooms whenever the economy is doing OK.

[Isebiel]

Originally Posted by Chloe75

Also, is it worth our time to look at some of the big corporate places? Would they have stricter requirements about income? I see Trinity Management has a lot of terrible reviews on yelp and they seem to always have ads on craigslist, would a place like that be worth checking out?

It's worth checking out, IMO. They may or may not have stricter requirements, but corporate landlords can at least tell you what they want to see. My experience (similar, with difficult to document self-employment) was that every complex had different requirements, and they were all something I could do. Good credit rating + money in the bank seemed to be widely accepted as good enough. After all, retired people rent sometimes too.

[mayorhaggar]

Most landlords in SF are private individuals who own just one small 3-floor building or maybe a handful. It's not like a lot of other parts of the US (or other parts of the Bay Area) where it's often a lot of big private companies that own a lot of buildings. And buildings in SF are almost all small, it's not like more suburban areas where it's a lot of big sprawling complexes with dozens and dozens of units--a typical building in SF has somewhere between 3 to 10 units.

So generally you'll be dealing with individual landlords. There are some big private property companies that lease out buildings, like CitiApartments. I think they often get a bad rep because some of them bought some old flophouse buildings, and never did anything to refurbish them, so they got infested with bedbugs and criminals and so on and the company never did anything about it--I know CitiApartments was involved with a building like that. But they have a lot of units so it might be worth it to go see some of their places and they might have some other units in other buildings that aren't listed yet. Just take a good look at the apartment and take note of if there's anything sketchy about the building like bad smells or weird people hanging around, and if you have a good feeling about it still go online and see if anyone has reviewed the place online--San Franciscans love to ***** about stuff online. So if you read a lot of recent reviews mentioning bedbugs or lack of maintenance, that's a big red flag.

Keep in mind though that private companies like Citi will just about always still list their apartments on craigslist.

[Chloe75]

Thanks for all of the responses. Our friend actually offered us his apartment because he got relocated to the south bay but had a lease till November. The rent is good ($1400 which may include his old parking spot), 700 sq feet, 1 bedroom...but it's in the sunset. The outer sunset, I believe. I don't know the exact address but I think he said it was either on 22nd or 32nd and Irving. He said that the N-Judah was really convenient for him, but I'm still worried.

It's not a done deal yet because he needs to talk to his landlord first, but it looks like this is our best option. Since the lease ends in November, if we hate the sunset we can try to find a place downtown then, but we told our current landlord we'd be out by the end of the month so we don't have much time to consider other options now.

Can anyone shed light on the N-Judah or other routes that pick up in the 20s or 30s close to the park? My boyfriend commutes to North Beach (right by Chinatown, not near fisherman's warf) at noon and back around 7. I work downtown Market st. and SOMA in the evening/night, and I have the option of driving but I'm interested in busing there and cabbing back at least part of the time. Is the N Judah (or other similar lines) always packed, slow, and unreliable? Could my boyfriend get to North Beach in a reasonable amount of time?

One last thing- would you recommend bikes for us? I'm not much of a biker but my boyfriend had one for awhile while living in the East Bay and didn't mind the moderate hills at all. But SF has some pretty insane hills. Would it be reasonable for my boyfriend to bike to North Beach/Chinatown everyday?

[7x7er]

Originally Posted by Chloe75

One last thing- would you recommend bikes for us? I'm not much of a biker but my boyfriend had one for awhile while living in the East Bay and didn't mind the moderate hills at all. But SF has some pretty insane hills. Would it be reasonable for my boyfriend to bike to North Beach/Chinatown everyday?

You could actually map out a relatively flat route to cycle all the way from the Sunset to North Beach. Get to Golden Gate Park, then take Page eastward, then take the Wiggle to get to Market St (google it for more info), then Market up to Polk, Polk to the Broadway tunnel to Chinatown. Or from Market, instead of taking Polk northward you could take Stockton and through the Chinatown tunnel.

Definitely not a ride I'd want to do every day though....unless you are a hardcore cyclist I would imagine that could get tiresome.

[pch1013]

Originally Posted by 7x7er

You could actually map out a relatively flat route to cycle all the way from the Sunset to North Beach. Get to Golden Gate Park, then take Page eastward, then take the Wiggle to get to Market St (google it for more info), then Market up to Polk, Polk to the Broadway tunnel to Chinatown. Or from Market, instead of taking Polk northward you could take Stockton and through the Chinatown tunnel.

Definitely not a ride I'd want to do every day though....unless you are a hardcore cyclist I would imagine that could get tiresome.

I imagine the Chinatown tunnel would be very scary on a bike. Plus it's uphill northbound.

Another way to bike from the Sunset to North Beach would be to go via GG Park and Arguello Street. There's one steep hill on Arguello right before the entrance to the Presidio, but after that it's all downhill to Crissy Field and mostly flat from there to North Beach.

The ride home, however, would be a totally different story...