Average rent in the Bay Area:
- Shared apartment: ~1,000 USD
- Studio/1-bedroom apartments: ~1,600 USD
- >2-bedroom apartments/(town) houses: >2,500 USD
Costs of utilities:
- Often utilities come extra to the rent (e.g. water, gas, electricity, waste management, gardening)
- For a small house (2 bedroom place) the utilities cost might be around $180 -$250
- for an apartment you might look at as little as $70
Bay Area communities by descending price range & common desirability:
- Ridiculous: Atherton, Woodside, Los Altos Hills, Portola Valley
- Expensive: Palo Alto, Los Altos, Menlo Park
- Pretty expensive: Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Cupertino, Los Gatos
- Somewhat expensive: San Jose, Campbell, Redwood City, Foster City
- Not cheap: East Bay
- Developing: East Menlo Park, East Palo Alto (roughly the area east of US101)
Note: The times of East Palo Alto being the city with the highest homicide rate in the US are over (1992), but it's still developing, check the details on city-data.com, as mentioned below.
How to find the right place on Craigslist?
- Almost all accommodations are posted on Craigslist, brokers & realtors seem rarely to have unique offers
- Main rule: reply instantly if you find a potential match, good offers are usually gone within hours
- Example: you are looking for a 2-bedroom apartment within a 20 minute commute from Palo Alto
- Select the two relevant areas in separate windows:
- Peninsula: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/
- South Bay: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/apa/
- Select the applicable neighborhoods by clicking on '[+] all neighborhoods', to stick with the above example of around 20 drive from downtown Palo Alto:
- Peninsula: Atherthon, Belmont, Los Altos, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Portola Valley, Redwood City, Redwood Shores, San Carlos, San Mateo, Woodside
- South Bay: Cupertino, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara
- Check the Bay Area map on SFGate to see where the Neighborhoods are located
- If you're unsure, check the distance to your workplace from your potential future home using Google Map
- Select '2+ BR' to look for objects with at least two bedrooms (living rooms are not counted)
- Enter your max. rent to restrict the selection and even min. rent to throw out fake offers
How to find a place in San Francisco?
Hints:
- Get insights on average income, house prices, crime rates, etc. on city-data.com (example: Palo Alto)
- Always visit the the place before renting (at least for longer than just a few weeks), attractiveness of locations can vary drastically from street to street, Google Street View can you give you at least a first indication
- Helpful apps/websites to find housing:
- Take the traffic into account, when planning your commute - San Francisco has the 3rd worst traffic in the US (applying similarly to the whole Bay Area, e.g. US101): USA Today
