Where to live-couple in late 20s working in the financial district (Los Angeles: apartments, rentals)

[esc302]

I know that there are so many 'where to live' threads in this forum, but I really need some advice from local experts! My husband and I are from Los Angeles, moving to San Francisco for our new jobs. We currently have a temporary housing near Inner Sunset and while we like this area so far, we are still looking for a place where we plan to live for the next couple of years. I'd really appreciate your input to find the right neighborhood for our apartment hunting!

-Our budget is around 2000+ but not exceeding 2500 for 2BD
-Commuting time to the financial district around 30 minutes max
-Safety, of course!
-Don't need much night life, but restaurants and shopping are a plus
-Coming from Los Angeles, we would like to have more sun!
-Oh, and I'm afraid of earthquakes, so area that is less dangerous when it comes to earthquakes would be even better

Is Inner Sunset still the best option? I'd love to have at least a couple more neighborhood alternatives...If you have other suggestions, please post. Thank you so much everybody!

[blue04]

Both Sunset and Richmond district are cold for the most part. I would say live closer to downtown in SF or move south like San Mateo. SF in general don't get sunny and when it does, its still kinda cold compare to LA.
I'm in SD right now but will plan to move back to the Bay next yr. Careers in SD are lacking compare to the Bay for sure. Given I enjoy the warmer weather, I will not be living in SF but areas like San Mateo or even Sunnyvale where its much warmer.

[Chrysopylae]

San Francisco lies between the San Andreas and Hayward faults, both of which are generally acknowledged to be the source of a major quake sometime in the next 30 years. The 1989 quake that made such an impact on San Francisco and Oakland occurred 50 miles away in the Santa Cruz Mountains. And ironically, despite the media attention given to the dramatic events in the Marina district, there was severe damage to structures in the Inner Sunset and Forest Hill neighborhoods.

That being said, the Inner Sunset is one of my favorite neighborhoods. It has everything you are looking for except perhaps the sun. My suggestions:

- The aforementioned Marina. It has a bit more sun and has lots of activity on its commercial strip, Chestnut Street. Parking is impossible. Many of the homes and apartment buildings have been reinforced since the quake, but many "soft-story" buildings remain that have not had the required bracing on the ground floor. Your main public transit will be the 30-Stockton, an entertaining 30-minute commute.

- Noe Valley. Good weather, good shopping on 24th Street, good transit options to downtown. Many of the buildings have been renovated and the Edwardian exteriors belie the high-tech interiors (and earthquake retro-fitting). The Genentech and Google shuttles have regular schedules here.

- There is a sweet spot between the high rents of Noe Valley and the density of the Mission (which has the best weather in the City), a place sometimes called Baja Noe. It extends from 30th to 18th Streets, lying between Valencia and Dolores Street. You have wonderful Valencia Street in this corridor; the J Church streetcar, and housing that runs the gamut of prices and styles. Like Noe Valley, many of the homes and apartments here benefited from retrofitting in the past ten years.

- Potrero Hill. Some may question its safety but it has great weather and you can see the financial district from your back yard (or front window).
A lot of newer buildings are among the older, and many of those have been retrofitted.

- Mission Bay/SOMA. This neighborhood offers more great weather and more night life than shopping. Crowds attending nearby AT&T park make a big difference on game or event day. Mission Bay is virtually all new and built to code.

- Cole Valley is right around the corner from the Inner Sunset, and that corner (which is a shoulder of Mt. Sutro) can hide some of those fingers of fog that work their way toward UCSF. Cole and Carl streets have lively commercial blocks, and Haight is just a few blocks further away. Unfortunately you'll be in the middle of the N-Judah line and will never get a seat going inbound. Cole Valley also has many unpatched soft-story buildings, so check older apartments there carefully.

[mayorhaggar]

I'd never heard of that part of SF called Baja Noe. I guess it's the area between Noe Valley and Duboce Park and the Mission and the Castro? This area doesn't really have a name but it's one of if not the nicest parts of the city.

Inner/Outer Sunset and the Richmond are nice and a good value for rentals but commutes can be long because Muni is set up pretty stupidly, there are express buses though but they only stop in certain areas and the stops are far from one another. From the Inner Sunset and Cole Valley your commute might be around 30 minutes on a good day on the Muni Metro but the Metro gets stuck in the tunnels a lot so you never know how long it will take.

I would also mention Hayes Valley which is about 10-15 minutes from downtown SF. I live there and it's a little noisy and feels isolated because it's stuck between the Tenderloin and the nasty part of the Western Addition and the highway, but it's a dense little area with some decent restaurants and shops and again it's very close to downtown.

Glen Park is also quite nice and has a nice little downtown sort of area near the BART station. You can hop on BART and get downtown in definitely less than 20 minutes, it's much faster and is a lot more reliable than the Muni Metro.

Overall though it's hard to pick a neighborhood to live in in SF because apartments are expensive and usually in such high demand, so most of the time you kind of have to pick the neighborhoods you DON'T want to live in and go with what you can get, but maybe with the economic downturn things are easier.

[Chrysopylae]

I don't know how widespread the term was, but I lived on Dolores Street between 20th and 22nd for eight years and my friends and neighbors learned it from somewhere.

I live near Glen Park now, which for me is a little ironic because my first SF apartment was in Glen Park ten and twenty years ago. Thanks for mentioning it; I love it here. A full-freight Fast Pass will let you take BART downtown; the J Church is nearby, as well as the 44 and 23. Access to Interstate 280 is very easy, and it is home to Gialina Pizzaria, where I would eat once every week if I wasn't stopped first by El Farolito. Almost all of Glen Park's housing is on some kind of a slope, and gentrification has resulted in quite a few of the homes undergoing retrofits. They are also pretty eclectic, with a lot of different styles. Take a walk along "Architect Row" on Laidley to see what I mean. There are a couple of apartments on this residential street.

[zitsky]

Originally Posted by Chrysopylae

San Francisco lies between the San Andreas and Hayward faults, both of which are generally acknowledged to be the source of a major quake sometime in the next 30 years. The 1989 quake that made such an impact on San Francisco and Oakland occurred 50 miles away in the Santa Cruz Mountains. And ironically, despite the media attention given to the dramatic events in the Marina district, there was severe damage to structures in the Inner Sunset and Forest Hill neighborhoods.

That being said, the Inner Sunset is one of my favorite neighborhoods. It has everything you are looking for except perhaps the sun. My suggestions:

- The aforementioned Marina. It has a bit more sun and has lots of activity on its commercial strip, Chestnut Street. Parking is impossible. Many of the homes and apartment buildings have been reinforced since the quake, but many "soft-story" buildings remain that have not had the required bracing on the ground floor. Your main public transit will be the 30-Stockton, an entertaining 30-minute commute.

The OP does not want to live in the Marina if they are worried about earthquakes. Some houses in that neighborhood may have been reinforced. The Marina itself was essentially built on top of landfill after the 1906 earthquake. Anyone living there should expect major damage in the next large earthquake due to possible liquefaction. It's not clear whether reinforcing buildings addresses the underlying instability of the landfill itself.

[esc302]

Thank you so much, everyone! This is really helpful.

[bellalunatic]

Originally Posted by zitsky

The OP does not want to live in the Marina if they are worried about earthquakes. Some houses in that neighborhood may have been reinforced. The Marina itself was essentially built on top of landfill after the 1906 earthquake. Anyone living there should expect major damage in the next large earthquake due to possible liquefaction. It's not clear whether reinforcing buildings addresses the underlying instability of the landfill itself.

Yep. the liquefaction is a huge deal, all the shear walling and "retrofitting' in the world aren't going to help you there...

Mission Bay is also built on landfill and is an extreme liquefaction hazard zone as well although it is newer construction so I guess you've got a sporting chance

Alamo Square, however, bedrock.

And it's true The Mission has the warmest sunniest weather generally.

[jade408]

Downtown Oakland or Uptown or Old Oakland. Sunny, safe and urban. And BART rides to FiDi of 20 min or less.

The new apartments the Uptown are pretty nice.