Nice apartment complexes? (San Francisco, Orange, Marina: real estate, apartment complex, rental)

[randocalrissian]

I've been looking online at some apartment complexes in the Russian Hill/Marina/North Beach/Nob Hill/Pacific Heights areas and have found some ones that look good and have gotten good reviews. I've seen two by the same company, Grosvenor Court and Grosvenor Atrium. Do you guys know of any other good ones?

[mdwstrnkid]

Depending on your budget, you might want to consider looking at condos as well, since there are many of them in those neighborhoods. Craigslist is a good place to start for condo listings.

[mayorhaggar]

I don't know how familiar you are with SF, but there aren't that many apartment complexes in SF like in places like Orange County or the suburbs where there's big named apartment complexes with multiple buildings everywhere. SF is mostly small old buildings owned by a landlord or a property group. And real estate is always in demand so you can't really say "I want to live in this building" because they'll have so few vacancies and so many people applying to them that you won't be able to depend on getting an apartment there. There are some new buildings which try to brand themselves but they're often condos.

Maybe you know what SF is like, but I often see people here asking about recommendations for apartment complexes in SF and I think maybe they think it's like newer suburbs which do have a lot of branded complexes.

[randocalrissian]

I've never been to SF before. Where I'm living now there are a bunch of apartment complex type places (gated, parking, on site management, etc).

[mayorhaggar]

Yeah you won't see that too much in SF. It's mostly 3 story buildings with about 3 to 10 apartments owned by a landlord. Bigger buildings are a bit rarer but again they're mostly old so they aren't branded like suburban complexes are.

[clongirl]

Originally Posted by randocalrissian

I've been looking online at some apartment complexes in the Russian Hill/Marina/North Beach/Nob Hill/Pacific Heights areas and have found some ones that look good and have gotten good reviews. I've seen two by the same company, Grosvenor Court and Grosvenor Atrium. Do you guys know of any other good ones?

Generally speaking, any of the large apartment complexes are run by awful super large property management companies and horrible slumlords that own many of San Francisco's larger buildings. I would focus on accommodation that is independently owned if possible--like a smaller building or "flat".

Most of the City is comprised of rental accommodation so it's very difficult to know what specific apartment buildings you are looking into since the names aren't really obvious to those that don't actually live there (if that makes any sense). I would just go the craigslist route and not seek specific property names.