I Lived in SoMa San Francisco But Left, Here’s Why

Michelin-starred restaurants within walking distance, hotel-like amenities in new construction buildings, and arguably the best weather in all of San Francisco. Sounds like an ideal place to live, right? I'm Austin Klar, your lawyer-turned-real estate agent in San Francisco and Marin County, and I'm talking about the SoMa neighborhood where I spent years living while I was working as a lawyer in downtown San Francisco. But I moved out of SoMa over 4 years ago and never looked back. And in this video, I'm going to give you all the reasons why I left. So let's get right to it with reason number 1, the traffic. I lived at the Beacon Building, which is on Townsend Street between 3rd and 4th. It was a really convenient place for me to live. It was walking distance to downtown San Francisco, which is where I worked. It was also really close to the highway, so it was really easy to get to SFO. When I was working as a lawyer, I would travel a ton. Even though I was based in San Francisco, most of my cases were outside of the area. Places like Delaware, Texas, New York, Indiana, Ohio, Alabama. I was traveling all over the place during peak times for depositions and hearings. I was traveling at least twice a month. So being close to the highway and having convenient access to the airport was really important to me. But that became a huge hassle during baseball season. The Beacon is right across the street from Oracle Park where the San Francisco Giants play. And during baseball season, which is half of the year, the traffic is insane. It's unlike anything I've ever seen. And I say that having lived in both New York City and living in Southern California. I didn't own a car when I lived in Soma because, you know, work and grocery stores, all that were all walking distance. So I rarely ever needed to drive except when I had to travel. So I Ubered pretty much anywhere that I needed to go if I needed a car. call a car. And during, you know, the peak of baseball season, when you call a car, sometimes it's a 20 to 30 minute wait for the car to even get to you, even if it was only a few blocks away. And then once you get into a car, it could be 30 minutes up to an hour to even get a few blocks because the traffic is basically gridlocked. So for half the year, the traffic around that immediate area is horrible. And it's getting even worse because there's a lot more coming to the area. You have places like the Chase Center that just opened up and a ton of business moving into the area. and the, you know, road infrastructure and public transportation hasn't quite caught up with that yet. So traffic there, generally being so close to the highway, it's very, very busy. I love everything that's coming to the area. I think it's made the area a lot nicer than it's used to be, and I'm excited for all the things that are coming there, but it does come with some downsides, and one of those things is traffic. So when the pandemic hit and I didn't need to be close to the airport or the highway anymore because I wasn't traveling and neither was anybody else, I left. I didn't need to be in that location. It wasn't a convenience for me anymore. So I moved to Pacific Heights, which is a far less congested, less heavily trafficked area than the SoMa area where I was living. And by the way, if you're relocating to the city and having trouble figuring out which of the almost 90 different neighborhoods in San Francisco is the right neighborhood for you, definitely reach out to me. I moved to San Francisco from Orange County over a decade ago without really knowing much of anything about San Francisco and all the different places to live. and I've lived all over the city, so I'd be happy to help you. My contact information is in the description below, so just reach out. And if you want to learn more about what day-to-day life is like in all of these different neighborhoods and how the cost of living differs across these neighborhoods, I make videos about that all the time. I post every single week, so make sure to subscribe to my channel. Now back to why I left Soma. The second reason I left is I wanted a different style of living. When I lived in Soma, I lived in a high-rise condo building. I was on the 10th floor of the building, had beautiful north-facing views, unobstructed views to downtown San Francisco. My building had a gym, had a pool, hot tub, catering kitchen, residence lounge, had a doorman, a ton of great amenities. It was really, really convenient. It also had a grocery store downstairs, so I didn't really have to walk much to get to the grocery store. Very great place to live. But after a few years, I kind of got tired of the high-rise lifestyle. I didn't like having to go up and down the elevator and spend a lot of time in the elevator. I didn't like not having my own outdoor space. There are a lot of high-rise condo buildings where, you know, you might have like a small terrace or a balcony for your unit unless, you know, you're living in like a $10, $12 million penthouse and have like an entire rooftop you know, huge deck to yourself. But for the most part, if you're living in this area, you're really gonna be limited on outdoor space, you know, private outdoor space at least if you have any at all. Most of it is going to be common area outdoor space, and I wanted my own. When you live in these high-rise buildings, you also kind of feel like you're in a hotel. It's great from like a community standpoint, especially if you're, you know, single and wanna meet people, but you know, you're surrounded by a ton of neighbors. It's not a very private way to live. I wanted more of a, a house with a yard. I wanted more of a walkable neighborhood with some architectural charm. I wanted like small coffee shops and boutiques and cafes, something that was a little bit more, you know, quintessential San Francisco. And that's what I have where I live now in Pacific Heights. I live in a 160-plus-year-old house. It was built in the 1860s. I have great outdoor space. I'm walkable to multiple parks and shops and restaurants. It's very peaceful, very quiet, very safe, very classic San Francisco. It's also fully detached. I'm not on top of my neighbors. I have light coming in from every side of my house. It's great. And that's not necessarily something you're going to get in a high-rise unless you're spending a lot of money to get something that's, you know, full floor. And while I love the Michelin-starred restaurants that were within walking distance of where I was living in SoMa, I'm obviously not eating at Michelin-starred restaurants every day. Most people aren't eating at Michelin-starred restaurants every day. So, you know, if I happen to want to go to one of those for a special occasion, it's a 10-15 minute drive from where I live now. Not a big deal. I, you know, much more frequent the smaller restaurants and cafes and, you know, the boutique-y type, you know, mom-and-pop places. And I have way more of that where I live now, all within walking distance. The third reason I left is that I wanted to be closer to Marin County. My boyfriend and I were moving in together. It was the start of COVID and I didn't really need to be walking distance to work anymore because we weren't going into the office. So I was open to moving a little bit farther away. He works in Corte Madera, so it was commuting across the Golden Gate Bridge every single day. And him moving to SoMa, which is, you know, more on the southeast side of the city, would have doubled his commute time, not commuted at all. And unlike me, where, you know, we weren't going into the office at all for pretty much most of the pandemic, as soon as, you know, in-office restrictions were lifted for his work, they were back in the office. He's an architect. He needs to be in person pretty much every single day. So he was going to work pretty much every single day for most of the pandemic and needed to be within an easy commuting distance to Marin. So we wanted to live somewhere on the northern side of the city. And as I mentioned, SoMa gets really, really trafficky for at least half the year during baseball season, and now even more so during basketball season as well because we have the Chase Center down here, and that would've even more than doubled his commute. So it just wasn't gonna be feasible for him to move on the other side of the city. He also, like me, wanted more of a house-like environment, and so that's how we ended up in Pacific Heights. The last reason I left SoMa is the parks. The last reason I left SoMa is because of the lack of real open green spaces. There are a lot of really small parks in the area. It's just really, really dense with all these high-rises and all the traffic. There aren't really that many big open spaces like the Presidio and Golden Gate Park, Alta Plaza Park, Lafayette Park, Dolores Park. You do have the Embarcadero and the waterfront, which is great, but it's not big open green spaces. So I just wanted to be walking distance to one of those bigger spaces, and I have that now. There's definitely nothing inherently wrong with living in SoMa. I had a great time while I was there. I personally didn't experience, you know, any of the negative things you hear about SoMa. My area was very, you know, safe and clean. There are definitely parts of Soma that I would definitely recommend staying away from that are, you know, way more dirty and, you know, can be very unsafe. And if you wanna know what those areas are, definitely reach out to me and we can go over all that. But where I was living, it was totally fine. And I, you know, just personally wanted a change in lifestyle. And another benefit of living in Soma in one of these high-rise buildings that you don't get in places like Pacific Heights in most residences, for example, is security. You know, you have a 24/7 attended lobby. You need a key fob to get through the door. You need a key fob to get through the elevator and up to your unit. You have a much more safe and secure living space than you do, you know, even in like a $20 million house in Seacliff where in theory somebody can just come right up to your front door and knock on your door. You don't get that in these high rises. So, you know, a lot of people prefer that, you know, more private, secure lifestyle than living in a single family home. And I mentioned the food is great. The amenities in the buildings are great. It's like living in a hotel if that's what you want, it's a great place to be. But I was just ready for a change, and the pandemic provided a perfect opportunity to move to another part of the city where I could, you know, lead that different lifestyle that I was looking for. If you want to learn more about what it's like living in these high-rise neighborhoods in San Francisco, I made a video all about that. I'll link that up top in the description below. And if you want to see how other neighborhoods of San Francisco stack up against each other and compare to the neighborhoods that I'm talking about right now, I made another video about that as well where I ranked a lot of the popular and not so popular neighborhoods in San Francisco. I'll put that in the description below as well. Definitely go check them out. And if you're stuck figuring out what the right neighborhood is for you or having trouble navigating the very difficult and complex San Francisco market, definitely reach out to me. Contact info is in the description below. I'd be happy to help. I hope you enjoyed the video and I'll see you in the next one. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE]