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Comment by djb_hackernews | Hacker News Reader

I live in Boston and have visited SF a few times, definitely not connected to the SF rental market like I am to Boston. What I am curious about is how new and how large these 1 bedroom apartments are in SF. My hunch is your dollar probably goes further in SF than it does in Boston.

A 1 bedroom/1 bathroom in the Back Bay (nicer, while not nicest part of the city) will run about $2500/mo. But it'll be 100 years old, 400 sq ft, outdated, no laundry etc.

I wonder how that compares to apartments in SOMA, which appear to be newer buildings at least.

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At least anecdotally, having moved here from Boston, no question that you're correct. You definitely get more space for your dollar in SF than in Boston. The reason is simple - they simply didn't build things as small in SF. People from the East Coast would probably be willing to live in smaller units for less...if they existed - but they really don't, at least not as part of the traditional housing inventory. (Some fancy new apartment buildings are experimenting with them, but needless to say, they're pricey, and at that price/size combination many would prefer to commute from Oakland.)

Even the concept of "Boston" is much smaller than the concept of "San Francisco". If you walk across Boston from any of its edges for an hour, you'll wind up in another town entirely (Allston? Cambridge? Maybe even Somerville). If you walk from an edge of San Francisco for an hour, you'll be smack in the middle of San Francisco, with a lot more walking to go.

I think you're right. Even though, say, Allston is actually part of Boston the residents don't really think of it that way for the most part--certainly not in the same way that (my impression is) San Francisco neighborhoods think of themselves. And Cambridge and Somerville both are and feel like different cities which, at least these days, are more like each other than they are Boston.

I've had this conversation with a friend from Paris who made the same point.

The stats show that SF rents are as high as places like Paris and NYC, but it may be a comparison between a nice, new studio in SF and an ancient, tiny room that used to house a servant in Paris. It's another layer on top of the stats. (Or we need more stats for a full picture.)

In my experience, in San Francisco, there's no premium for new construction. You either get a place or you don't. The 60 year old victorian split into apartments is still $3,200 just like the modern construction 1 bedroom in SOMA.

The big difference of course is that buildings built before 1979 are rent controlled. Had a friend have his rent go from $1800 to $3200 after his first year.

This place is insane. I moved to sleepy Petaluma an hour north and have no regrets.

I have a friend paying $2200 for a 230 sqft micro-apartment in SOMA. It's like having your bed in a tiny kitchen.

I'm paying $1800 for a ~250 sq. ft. microstudio in Soma. It's very much like having my bed in a tiny kitchen, but it's by far the cheapest place within a 15 minute walk of work (FiDi) by myself with somewhat reasonable facilities.

Wow. I pay $2750 for a 2br in a hip neighborhood in Manhattan and I already find that hard to swallow. It's amazing that people can move to NYC (Manhattan no less!) to save money on rent.

My company makes a rent per sqft map that somewhat answers this question:

https://kwelia.com/maps/cbsa_census_tract/Boston-Cambridge-Q...

https://kwelia.com/maps/cbsa_census_tract/San%20Francisco-Oa...

Looking quickly, rents per sqft seem a shade higher in SF but not by a wide margin.

Nice.

(What's up Startup Chile!)

The thing to note is that the "one bedroom" statistic is a little misleading, at least for myself and my peers in technology. They definitely cost $3000-$3500, but I don't know anyone who lives in one by themselves. Last year I shared a huge (~950 sq. ft.) $3200 one bedroom Soma apartment with a colleague.

For comparison, I now live by myself in an $1800 ~250 sq. ft. Soma microstudio.

A quick glance looks like average would be around $3200/mo. The lowest I saw was ~$2800 up to ~$5000 for a 1 bed room. The majority of them were around the $3500 mark.

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sfc/apa?bathrooms=1&bedro...

I'm sure they could pull this data from the craig^H^H^H^H^H mysterious data source if they wanted.

For reference, I've lived in 2 1BR apartments which were around the median prices listed here and both were newer buildings, 600-700 sqft with laundry.

If you've ever searched for an apartment in these high rent locations, you would know that the data presented from the listings is super super dirty. Often they are lower than actual rent or not the actual apartment (bait and switch tactics).

When I moved to SF in 2012 I rented a new apartment in SOMA/South Beach (Carmel Rincon). My rent was $3300/mo for ~600sqft w/ no laundry. When I moved out they were increasing the rent past $3400/mo.

That seems a bit steep. In 2012 I paid $3200/mo (split between two people) for a ~950sqft one bedroom with laundry in a really nice building.

I'm not sure why they didn't do $/sqft at least. That should be a relatively easy way to normalize the data.

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