New Job in SF, looking for a place to live (San Francisco: sublet, affordable apartments)

[makken]

Hello,

I just accepted a job offer in SF. I'm currently in the Sacramento region, so I intend to relocate down there, and relatively quickly; I will be starting on the 25th.

While I have a general understanding of the Bay Area, I'm not too in tune with the specific areas, so I'm looking for advice on where to focus my housing search. Thus far, I've been mainly looking in the Berkeley / North Oakland area.

My requirements are:

-I am single, non-smoker, and petless, so looking for a studio or 1BR apartment.
-Looking to keep rent at $1200/month or below.
-I am 99% sure I will be taking BART to and from work, so I will need quick access (walking distance would be a huge +) to a BART station.
-Will be bringing a car (need parking), but would like to rely on it as little as possible.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[mayorhaggar]

In Oakland: Rockridge, the Temescal, Piedmont Avenue, and the Grand Lake area are the best bets. Berkeley can be expensive for apartments but it has more roommate listings than Oakland. In Berkeley mainly try to avoid the southwest corner of the city, mainly areas south and west of the Ashby BART station, this is the cheapest area of Berkeley but it's a bit seedy. You might be ok with it though but IMO even if you look past the grime there's not much to do around there compared with downtown Berkeley or the nice parts of North Oakland.

In North Oakland mainly stay east of Telegraph, areas to its west are seedy though they are far from the worst parts of Oakland so your mileage may vary. You will see a lot of cheapish apartments listed in the Temescal that are west of Telegraph.

Rockridge is cool especially if you are near College Ave where all the restaurants and grocery stores and bars are, and it has a BART station. Downside is there aren't many apartments for rent there but you will find places here and there so you have to swoop on them, like these which look decent:

Small private studio cottage

Walking Distance to BART, CCA

The Temescal is very similar to Rockridge but slightly more down market and cheaper, it has a cool but small strip of restaurants on Telegraph from around 45th to 51st streets.

Piedmont Ave area is cool and its commercial strip down Piedmont is really really long so there's a lot of stuff to do locally. Should be more rentals than Rockridge, but BART is a mile or so to the west on 40th at Macarthur so if you live very far north of 40th it could be a hike. Transbay buses to SF might be a better option than BART if you want to minimize walking.

Grand Lake/Lake Merritt is pretty cheap but it can be a hike from BART, again Transbay buses might be a better option. Lots of restaurants/shops on Grand north of the lake, and you'd be near downtown which has a lot of stuff to do, and the lake is awesome. The areas north and east of the lake are the safest, you will see a lot of affordable apartments to the south and southeast of the lake, but if you go to view them take a while to walk around and see if you feel comfortable there. Maybe ask Nineties Flava here if he can recommend which streets to the S and SE of the lake are the cutoff before you start getting into dicey territory.

[makken]

Thanks for the detailed response!

I'm currently thinking about subletting something in Berkeley for the summer while spending more time to really look around and get a feel for the area before committing.

Also, any opinions of the CCSF / SFSU area? A couple of my friends recommended I sublet around there instead of Berkeley.

[mayorhaggar]

Well those are pretty much the cheapest parts of SF, but they're also super foggy, spread out, and while they are generally safe areas they're kind of run down and there isn't much going on there. You won't really get the San Francisco Experience there, it will be more like the Daly City Experience. Also if your job is in downtown SF, getting there from the SFSU area will be a pain in the ass, the K/L/M metro lines are pretty pokey and you always risk getting stuck in the tunnels which happens all the time and is no fun if you're claustrophobic at all or if your boss doesn't like you to be late. I'd say it's about 45 minutes to get from the end of the line to downtown SF, but more like an hour or so on a bad day.

BART is way faster per mile traveled and way more reliable than Muni and from Berkeley it's probably faster to get to downtown SF than taking the M from out by SFSU, the ride itself is about 25 minutes. BUT...BART is really expensive, like $140 a month probably from Berkeley, while with Muni you can get a monthly pass for about $70 or something like that. Best thing in SF you could do is live fairly close to the Balboa Park BART station and ride BART, which would be like a 15 minute ride I think.

So just compare rents between Berkeley and the SFSU/CCSF areas and compare the cost of a Muni pass versus the BART cost, it might end up being close when you total everything up.