Moving from Chicago to San Francisco (San Jose, San Mateo: budget, for sale, apartment)

[beni78]

Hi!
My husband and I are moving to California this August. His office is in downtown San Francisco, however, he is a consultant and travels 4 days out of the week and spends just one day at the office. We were looking to rent a 2 bedroom place, an apartment or condo and my budget is $2000. Is that too little? I was looking at places like San Mateo, Burlingame. I would love to live in or close to downtown, however, I realize that I would have to make that $2000 into $3000. So, my question is, does anyone know of any places or agencies that help someone like me find an apartment or condo? For example in Chicago we have this company called ApartmentPeople. How it works is that I go to them and tell them my preferences, budget and desired area. They have a huge database and they take me to all the places that meet my requirements. This is a free service. I've come across a lot of paid websites which offer something similar. Has anyone used any of these. The listings look to good to be true, like 2 bed 2 bath in SOMA for $1300 and many more of the same!!
Thank you.

[tomcatmoving]

go to craigslist classifieds: jobs, housing, personals, for sale, services, community, events, forums (pick the SF region). You should find housing there. There is also a San Jose craigslist forum too.

[sonarrat]

There are ripoffs on Craigslist all over the place. Almost anything with 2 beds under $1000 is either a scam or not in the Bay Area.. but there are of course plenty of legitimate listings too, and you'll find a lot of smaller complexes that don't have any other effective way to advertise.

A 2-bed 1-bath can be had for $1500 in good areas, $2000 in great areas. Any more than that and they're just trying to rip you off, I'm sorry, I don't care what anyone says. At that point you should at least be getting a second bathroom and parking.

[skyao]

unfortunately i do not know of any services (with a decent footprint of SF/Bay Area) that will find an apartment for you. The best option is to hopefully get your husband's work to get you a placement service or to pay for your corporate housing.

The reason is that the SF/Bay Area rental market is extremely tight and landlords have more than enough demand for the better places - in general landlords do not need to pay apartment placement services like Apartment People to find tenants for them like they do in other cities with plenty of rental stock.


Finding a place to live in the Bay Area can be daunting, so i definitely recommend Craigslist as a starting point. You may just have to make a few trips out here to get a place.