down, but not out

one week ago, we were on a plane to our soon-to-be new city. with the intentions of looking for apartments and grabbing some naturally-occurring vitamin D in the sun’s rays, we were looking forward to sealing the deal and progressing with the rest of our move. while we were able to enjoy the sun (five days in a row of it, people. eat that chicago!), we failed at securing housing.

and though we failed at signing a lease, we did learn a lot about the san francisco rental market in a short amount of time.

1) up your budget. seriously. we went in with a number and sadly wasted two days of looking at shit. you people should be ashamed of yourselves for allowing these properties to exist at these prices. granted, chicago is guilty of this as well, but man oh man. i was utterly appalled.

2) only raising your budget by a slight margin will open huge doors for available and desirable properties. i only wish we would have realized this after day one.

3) narrow down your location. obviously, we couldn’t do this from chicago, so thanks to our hosts, judah and sonia, for driving our asses around and showing us some cool neighborhoods.

4) the internet is a powerful tool, but it’s only as good as the people behind it. craigslist posters, i’m talking to you.

5) my phone and people skills need to improve. if you want something, you need to call, you need to talk, and you need to act. i blame exhaustion and nausea.

the good thing is that everything we looked at steadily improved. by the last day of hunting, we saw some excellent prospects. and in fact, the very last property we laid eyes on, a loft, was exactly what we wanted it. it was not to be as the first-come, first-serve policy was in place, and the applicants before us passed their credit check (which ironically, is how we got into our chicago pad, bad credit from the first applicant).

so now, we’re attempting to line something up remotely. emails are a-flyin’, phones are a-dialin’. more than likely, we’ll be back out there closer to the end of april to continue the hunt. in the meantime, anyone have any ins to rental properties in SF? particularly dog-friendly lofts in the potrero hill/SOMA/dogpatch areas? i really need to add a real estate/leasing agent to my list of professional friends. it would help in times like these. ugh.

02 April 2009