How to Find a Place to Rent in San Francisco
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Finding a rental in San Francisco is highly competitive due to high demand and limited housing inventory. Applicants should monitor listings on Craigslist, prepare a complete application packet, and arrive early to open houses. When viewing a potential rental, applicants should emphasize their strong qualifications like employment at major companies, no children or pets, homeownership, liking the neighborhood, and an ability to move in quickly.
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How to Find a Place to Rent in San Francisco
- 1. How to Find a Place to Rent in San Francisco Reza Hussein /@rezahussein
- 4. + High demand Limited inventory = Highly Competitive Situations
- 5. Rent in San Francisco
- 9. Craigslist Notification For Android Craigs Pro + For iPhone
- 11. The Open House Arrive early, be first in line Go in pairs Bring your Application Stack
- 17. Target located
- 19. The Closing Pitch work for Google no children or pets currently own a house love the location don’t entertain at home ready to move in
- 20. How to Find a DatePlace to Rentin San Francisco Reza Hussein / @rezahussein
Editor's Notes
- Hi everyone! My name is Reza Hussein and I recently moved from Seattle to San Francisco a few months ago, along with a few of my coworkers. in the next 5 minutes I’m going to teach you how to find a place to rent in San Francisco based on our collective experiences. All of the following stores are true!
- Let me tell you a bit about us. I work for Google and my team decided to relocate mostly everyone to Mountain View. We moved 800 miles south in February this year and began the earnest search for a place to live.
- The first thing I discovered is that finding a place to rent in SF is much harder than you think. In any other city, you find your rental in cragislist, make an appointment to see a place, take a good look around, then call back a few days later and maybe even negotiate a little on the rent. And then the place would be yours. Not so in SF.
- The first thing you have to know is that good places to rent are extremely hard to find. Plus there is a strong demand for rentals from people who are still afraid to buy a home. Finding a rental in San Francisco has become a highly competitive event and I’m going to share with you techniques on on how to effectively out wit the competition.
- First lets look at some stats about the rental market in San Francisco. As everyone knows, prices of real estate in SF is one of the highest in the country. The situation has gotten even worse in the last year. The average rent of a 2 bedroom apartment in Feb 2010 was about 1700 which has become the average rent for a 1 bedroom, a year later in Feb 2011. Unemployment is also higher than the national average.
- San Francisco is very diverse, there is something for everyone and many neighborhoods that will suit anyone’s budget or lifestyle. Here’s a map that will help you understand the finer characteristics of each neighborhood in the city.
- OK, seriously, the first thing you should know is that every landlord eventually lists their rentals on craigslist. There are many specialized real estate sites that either import or or add listings to craigslist. They provide good value add features such as useful maps that shows you the location of the property and email notifications when new listings appear. The problem is that homes move so quickly that sometimes the listings on these other sties get stale.
- So it’s imperative that you keep polling Craigslist for the newest listings. You have to keep checking the websites throughout the day no matter where you are, just so you can be the first to respond. All else being equal, some homeowners will prioritize renting their home based on who responded first. So, your options are to manually poll craigslist every 10 minutes…
- … or you can use technology such as these craigslist notifiers on your smartphone. I use the Android app on the left to notify me as soon as a new listing appears. As soon something interesting appears you have to call the to make an appointment. Be first. Or if it’s an open house note when it is.
- Before going to see the apartment or house prepare several application packets. Bring along a pre-filled application form you can download from the internet, along with your credit scores, your last 2 pay stubs,your bank statement and also a photocopy of your drivers license. No birth certificate necessary.
- There are 3 golden rules to being successful at an open house. First, you need to arrive early because there will always be a line. If you arrive just on time, you will probably find 10 people ahead of you. Second, don’t’ go alone, bring a friend with you. You’ll see why shortly. Third, prepare and bring along your application stack.
- Once inside the premises, have one person walk around assessing the property and taking pictures. The 2nd person should immediately locate the landlord or leasing agent and be first to hand in your Application Stack. This is is important because landlords will often rent to the first person who hands in their application. There is no cost to submitting your application as it is not a binding contract.
- After you have formally applied, now is the time to bond with the homeowner. Much like dating, you should shower your future landlord with compliments about his or her home . Don’t hold back and show that you have an eye for detail. For example, if the kitchen looks like this can you can say “I really love the open floor plan”. Or “it’s got great natural light!”
- Aside from the compliments, you also want to portray yourself as the ideal problem free tenant. Do not complain about the the discolored walls, or the dirty windows. You want to portray yourself as someone who will take the place as-is and stay there for many many years. You can bring up all the defects after you have signed the lease and moved in.
- What if are not local to the area and you could only rent based on these 2 pictures? My friend Matt had this exact predicament. He found a charming home in the neighborhood he wanted on Craiglist and all he had to go on the cross streets, a picture of the backyard, and a view from the living room. How do you make a quick decision on whether this was the right home to pursue?
- Well, this is where technology comes into good use. First He used the cross streets on the Satellite view of Google Maps to locate the houses. Then by using the red deck and the trees in the backyard he was able to pinpoint the house. To be sure, he also used Google Streetview and found the neighbor’s house directly across the street by the garage door.
- Finally, while still in street view mode he turned around and was able to look at the house from the front. And you can tell it was very nicely maintained and has a lot of curb appeal as well. Matt agreed to rent this house sight unseen.
- Now remember, that just like getting married, you have to continue courting your landlord until the lease is signed. My friend Fred, did just that. He brought the landlords out to coffee, and talked about everything, where they grew up, talked about their kids, and noted what they liked or dislked.
- If you don’t have the opportunity to meet the landlord in person consider writing a sales pitch that summarizes your qualification. Here are real keywords I wrote my “sales pitch” to my future landlord. It shows that I have a stable job, low maintenance, a responseible homeowner as well. I threw in the LinkedIn profile there because I knew my landlord was an attorney who liked to network with the tech community.