Where are the best cheap apartments in San Francisco?
Not to sound pessimistic but good luck is all I have to say.
San Francisco’s absolutely terrific but it’s mind-bogglingly expensive. Apartments start out in the thousands and they go up. I lived there so I’ve seen how expensive it is. But a couple recommendations I can make is:
craigslist.org
sfgate.com
You’ll find a veritable cross section of apartments but what I’ve found is that the cheapest apartments usually aren’t the best ones because they’re either in an unsafe neighborhood or they’re far too small or both.
I’d probably expect to pay at least 1K a month if you want to find a place. But there are places you can find, but they won’t be in the place you’re expecting. So if you find yourself in a nice neighborhood like Nob Hill or North Beach, don’t expect to be getting away with murder on the rent. It’s pricey and the only way I think someone could live there is if they had roommates.
My brother used to live in an area locally known as the Tender Nob, designated between the Tenderloin (bad area) and Nob Hill (good area) and he pay $800 when he moved there in 1996. But the rents got higher and higher and he paid $1300 by the time he moved out, which was four years ago. Comparatively, he’d probably be paying twice that if he were living there now, giving you an indication of how San Francisco has changed economically. My aunt and her husband purchase a house in the city’s North Beach neighborhood, which is absolutely attractive and glorious. This was at a relatively cheap price over thirty years ago, today their house is worth over $1,000,000. Suffice to say, SF is expensive. The farther you go out of the city, the chances are that it will be cheaper. Either in San Francisco or just outside of San Francisco. Other places I’d recommend checking out is South San Francisco or Daly City as potential alternatives if you don’t find what you want here.