Living in San Francisco Vs. Marin County: Which Bay Area is BEST?

San Francisco's landscape is changing rapidly in the post-pandemic environment with companies like Apple, Meta, Salesforce, law firms, consulting firms, and a bunch of other industries all calling their workers back to the office. If you're one of the thousands of people relocating to the Bay Area post-pandemic who need to navigate the fast-paced, constantly changing environment, a tough choice for you to make is whether living in San Francisco next to all of that industry is the right choice for you, or whether living across the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County is a better option for your lifestyle. San Francisco has its share of heavy hitters in the AI space and a ton of headquarters for other tech companies and law firms and financial firms. So it's great to be near all that, but there are definitely some downsides that come with living in the city that you don't have living in Marin. And conversely, in Marin, there are downsides of living there as well and things that you have to give up that you would love to have in the city if you live in Marin. This is Austin Klar, your lawyer and real estate agent in San Francisco and Marin County. I moved to the Bay Area over a decade ago to work as a lawyer at one of the biggest law firms in the world, and now I help people relocate to San Francisco and Marin County from all over the country. And in this video, I'm going to pit San Francisco and Marin County against each other in a bunch of different categories— things like food, schools, nightlife, walkability, architecture, cost of living, and several other categories. So if you're thinking about relocating to the area and trying to decide whether SF or Marin is the right neighborhood for you, the right area for you, you have all the information you need in one place. And if you're thinking about relocating and want more information about the San Francisco lifestyle, the Marin County lifestyle, current events, activities, new developments that are coming soon, definitely subscribe to my channel because I make videos about that stuff every single week. Now let's get right to it, and we're going to start with schools because that's one of the main drivers of families relocating to Marin County over San Francisco. Now both areas have their fair share of really awesome private schools, but those schools are going to be, you know, $30,000, $40,000 a year, sometimes even more than that. Because those are equally available in both areas, I'm going to set the private school system aside and focus on the public school system because they're very different from each other. San Francisco is hit or miss with public schools. There are some really great public schools and some not so great public schools. The really tricky and unpredictable part about the San Francisco public school system is that it's based on a lottery system. It's not based on where you live. You're not going to a school that's, you know, in your jurisdiction per se. Instead, you rank all the schools that you want to send your kids to, or that you're, you know, okay with sending your kids to. And based on availability and how many other people also rank those schools, you might get chosen, or your kid might get chosen, uh, to attend one of the schools on your list. But if there's more demand, more people trying to get into a particular school or all the schools on your list, you might actually end up with a school that's not on your list at all, and it might be all the way across town. So the San Francisco public school system is pretty unpredictable, and there are no guarantees involved. In contrast, the public school system in Marin is a more traditional public school system. The schools that you're going to go to are going to be based on where you live. So if you want to prioritize what school to send your kids, you can move to the areas that have the best schools for kids at that particular age level or grade level. Marin County is consistently ranked for having one of the best public school systems in the entire state, and I've helped several clients relocate from San Francisco specifically and from other parts of the country to Marin County specifically because of the school system. It's great to take advantage of free, high-quality education, especially because private schools are so expensive. So in the battle for schools, easy win for Marin County over San Francisco, at least based on public schools. The next category is food and nightlife. And just like schools were major win for Marin County, food and nightlife is going to be a big win for San Francisco over Marin. Marin County's food scene has definitely improved over the past several years, but it is still light years behind where San Francisco is. Marin is a suburban area. It shuts down pretty early. So if you want a wide array of food available to you later into the night, don't move to Marin, move to SF. If you want all different types of food within walking distance or a very short drive from where you live, also probably not a good idea to move to Marin, move to San Francisco. In SF, there are some very food-centric neighborhoods, places like the Richmond for Asian food, the Mission for Latin food, uh, North Beach for Italian food. But there is great food in almost all neighborhoods of San Francisco, or very close to all neighborhoods of San Francisco. In Marin, it's more spaced out across different towns. So you might have really good Thai restaurant in one town, but a really, really good Mexican restaurant that you like in another town, and it could be 20 minutes away from each other. So it's a lot more difficult to get that wide array of food very easily in Marin compared to San Francisco. SF also just has better quality food on the whole. There are 28 Michelin-starred restaurants in San Francisco. There's only one in Marin. But I'm not just talking about Michelin-level food. I'm talking about like casual food, street food. There's so much different good food at all different levels in San Francisco. San Francisco, not as much available in Marin. So there's no question if you're a foodie or you're basing your decision in part on having a bunch of different food options very close to you, SF is a no-brainer here. And the same is going to be true from a bar scene. There are some bars in Marin, you know, some dive bars here and there, but for the most part it's going to be restaurant bars. So if you want to go out to a bar, you're probably going to go to a restaurant that has a bar. Now that's not always the case. There are some standalone bars. There's some in Sausalito, there's a good one in Larkspur, Mill Valley, but for the most for the most part, you're going to restaurant bars, whereas in San Francisco, you have a very robust bar scene, a very robust club scene. It's just a much different type of nightlife in SF compared to an almost nonexistent one in Marin, which makes sense because Marin is the suburbs. So if food and nightlife are a focus for you, maybe you're young and single, or maybe you're not single, but you just love going out, definitely think about SF over Marin. The next category is architecture, and this one is more of a close call, and it's certainly going to depend on, you know, your particular preferences. For me, I'm a sucker for, you know, historic Victorian and Edwardian homes. I love the shotgun hallways, the 11-foot ceilings, the double parlor living rooms, and there's no better place for that than SF. You've got century-old homes in Cole Valley, Haight-Ashbury, Presidio Heights, Pacific Heights, Noe Valley. There are so many different areas with a bunch of great historic architecture. I also think there is just much broader variety than that in SF. There are neighborhoods with great Spanish style and like Mediterranean homes in St. Francis Wood, for example. You've got colonial style homes, Marine una-style homes and some modern homes as well. In contrast, Marin has, you know, a much smaller share of those historic homes. There are historic Craftsman homes in places like Larkspur and Mill Valley, for example, but for the most part, the housing stock in Marin is much newer than in San Francisco. A lot of Marin was built in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, so it's just a different character of housing there. Now, to be fair, there is a good variety in Marin. You have, you know, shingle-style homes in Ross. You've got mid-century homes in like the Belvedere Lagoon and in San Rafael. You've got old Craftsman in Mill Valley and your share of moderns throughout all those different areas. But on the whole, I think SF just has a much more interesting architectural housing stock. There are some really beautiful homes in Marin for sure. Just for me personally, I think SF wins that battle. But where I think Marin outdoes SF is the particular locations of those homes. So in Marin, you can have homes that are literally on the water. In San Francisco, you can have homes that are like across from the water, or, you know, overlooking water from afar. But in Marin, there are a bunch of places where you can live literally on the water, have a boat dock as your backyard, for example. So if that's something you prioritize, maybe, you know, you're really into boating, for example, maybe Marin is for you. But from an architectural standpoint, at least for me, I think SF wins out. And that really speaks more to the outdoor amenities than the architecture, as I said. And I do think Marin outdoes SF in terms of outdoor amenities. San Francisco's park system was ranked the number 7 park system of the top 100 park systems in metropolitan areas in the entire country. Every resident in San Francisco lives within a 10-minute walk of open park space, which is awesome. Parks here are very accessible, and a lot of them have awesome views of the bay, of the city, and some of them are massive, like Golden Gate Park, which, believe it or not, is 20% bigger than Central Park. Um, you've got the Presidio, which is a national park. It's massive. And you also have much smaller, more intimate parks like Crane Cove Park, Ina Coolbrith, and the China Basin Park, Alta Plaza Park, Lafayette Park, Dolores Park. There are literally dozens in the city, all of them very different from each other. I've got separate videos about my favorite new and classic San Francisco parks. I'll link those up top, the description below. Definitely worth checking out if you want to learn more about my favorite parks in San Francisco. Marin has its fair share of parks too, but a lot of them are more, you know, child-oriented, you know, play areas, sports, than a lot of the parks in San Francisco, again, because Marin is more suburban. So if you're focused squarely on parks, I think San Francisco wins. But if you're into more than just If you're more into the great outdoors, nature, hiking, biking, then Marin definitely wins out. Marin is one of the best places in the entire country for hiking and biking. Awesome trails leading to some beautiful beaches. You've got Muir Woods, Mount Tamalpais, the Marin Headlands. You've got waterfront trails, you name it. If you're into nature, Marin is the better option. But again, if you're not super into nature, if you're not really outdoorsy, you just wanna have a cool picnic and lounge around with your friends with some cool views, then I think SF has Marin beat. The next category is walkability and serenity. San Francisco definitely wins this one. If you live in Marin, you might be able to walk to your city's little downtown if you're fortunate enough to live closely to that area. Marin has some really cute downtowns like historic downtown Larkspur. You've got downtown Mill Valley, downtown Tiburon, and San Rafael, like very quaint, cute downtowns where, you know, the food and, you know, what little bars are there will be concentrated. But for the most part, you're going to be relying on a car for day-to-day activities. If you need to drop your kids off at school, very likely you might have to drive them there. If you need to go get your groceries, chances you're probably not going to walk to get groceries. But for the most part, you're probably going to be relying on a car for day-to-day activities, and you'll be driving every single day, whether it's to take your kids to and from school or soccer practice or having to go get groceries, or if you're going to go hang out with friends, you're probably going to need a car and you're almost certainly not taking public transit, which isn't very robust in Marin. Also, if you live in Marin, you probably don't work in Marin. So at a minimum, you're going to need a car to commute. Or you could take the ferry from Larkspur Tiburón, or Sausalito. But unless you live walking distance to the ferry terminal, you're going to need a car to get to the ferry terminal. So bottom line is you're going to need a car in Marin. You can't rely on walking. And I think it's the opposite in San Francisco. You can definitely get by without a car. The Muni system, which is the bus system, is very robust, can get you pretty much anywhere in the city. There's also the BART system, but BART only, you know, runs on a small portion of San Francisco toward the south side to the Embarcadero and further south into the city. So you can't really take BART to get, you know, north into San Francisco, but the Muni system will pretty much take you anywhere you want to go. There are also a ton of places you can live where you will be within walking distance of grocery stores, restaurants, bars, anything that you could possibly want, like parks I mentioned, anything you could possibly want. Chances are you'll be within a short walk, if not a very short drive to. I have a car right now because I need one for work. I drive all over San Francisco and Marin to look at a bunch of houses and take people around to those places. But before I got into real estate, I didn't have a car. I lived in San Francisco for years without a car. I was a block away, 2 blocks away from multiple grocery stores, from my gym. For the first 5 years that I lived in San Francisco, I walked to work every single day from North Beach. And then for the 2 years after that, I walked to and from work every day from SoMa. It was a relatively flat walk, 20 minutes door to door. Mm-hmm. Very, very easy. Now, to be clear, not everyone in San Francisco can live without a car. It is going to depend obviously on where you work and specifically where you live. There are some neighborhoods, especially on the more outskirts of SF, that, you know, if you want to get downtown or you want to visit people, it's not really going to be super walkable to get anywhere you want from anywhere in San Francisco. But on like a day-to-day basis to have your necessities, a lot of SF is very walkable. And I will say, even if you do live in SF, still nice to have a car. Like you might want to go on a day trip to like Napa or Sonoma or Carmel. Take advantage of all the awesome places we have around us outside of San Francisco. You know, if you don't have a car, you can rent one for the day. So you don't really need a car, but it is nice to have that flexibility. But bottom line, if you live in Marin, 100%, you're going to need a car. In SF, it's going to depend on your personal situation, but for the most part, you're probably not going to need a car. The next category is cost of housing. And I actually think you get more value for your money in Marin than you do in San Francisco. Over the past year, the average single-family home price in both San Francisco and Marin is about the same, just under $2.2 million. But the average per-foot price in SF is almost $100 a foot higher than in Marin. And on top of that, you actually get way more land in Marin. The average lot size in Marin is 4 or 5 times larger than the average lot size in San Francisco. So not only do you get more house for the same price, you know, on a per-foot basis, you get more land as well. In San Francisco over the past year, the average lot size is just shy of 2,900 square feet. Um, of the past 1,700 homes that have sold in Marin, only 33 of those homes have had lot sizes smaller than 3,000 square feet. So for the most part, you're going to get a house with a larger lot in Marin than San Francisco. Now these are just averages. Different neighborhoods are obviously going to vary and you know, there are extremes in both directions. At the high end in SF, you might have lots between a quarter to a third of an acre, which is a solid size, but often those homes will cost, you know, well north of $15 million in San Francisco. In Marin, you could have lots well over an acre for way less money than that. It just depends on where you're living and the type of home. And the same holds true for condos instead of single-family homes. Condos in Marin on average cost about $850 grand, about $650 a foot. SF,, about $1.3 million, about $1,020 a foot. So there is more value for condos in Marin than in San Francisco, and that's largely because most people who are moving to Marin tend to have families or tend to want to start families, and they don't necessarily want to live that condo lifestyle. They're maybe leaving SF to get out of the condo lifestyle, for example. So while condos are more desirable in SF, not as much in Marin, and that's why they are less expensive. So bottom line, On average, I think Marin has better value. Both of them are insanely expensive, but you get a little bit more bang for your buck in Marin than San Francisco. The next one is commuting and traffic, and this one's really going to depend on what you have to do on a day-to-day basis. The worst traffic in San Francisco is always going to be worse than the worst traffic in Marin County, especially around the Bay Bridge and downtown during rush hour. Like, good luck with that. You're probably going to pull your hair out. It is super frustrating to drive through. I would say there are also probably more areas in San Francisco that have bad traffic than there are areas in Marin County that have bad traffic. So Marin probably wins out on traffic, but from a commute standpoint, I mean, it makes way more sense to live in San Francisco unless you either work in Marin or you work north in like Napa or Sonoma. If you're commuting to the South Bay for a tech job, it's obviously a lot closer if you live in San Francisco. If you commute to downtown San Francisco, it's closer to live in downtown San Francisco, although there are a few places where in theory you could live in San Francisco that it would actually take you longer longer to get to downtown than it would for certain places in Marin to get to downtown. And as I mentioned earlier, there are areas in SF where you can just walk to work. You know, if you work downtown, you can live in North Beach, Nob Hill, SoMa. There are a ton of different places you can live if you work anywhere near downtown where it would be walkable to go to work every day. In Marin, your commute is almost always going to involve driving unless you live walking distance to a ferry terminal. As I mentioned, you're probably going to drive to the ferry terminal.. There are bus systems like shuttle systems. A lot of different tech companies have shuttles that will pick you up in Marin and drive you to their offices. But unless you live within walking distance of that shuttle pickup, you're driving to the shuttle pickup. So pretty much no matter what, you're either driving across the Golden Gate Bridge, you're paying bridge tolls, you're paying for parking in the city, or you're driving to a ferry terminal and then taking a ferry over, or you're driving to one of those shuttle pickups or bus pickups that I talked about. So just, you gotta plan on driving if you're in Marin for a commute. And for the most part, it's gonna take longer for you to get to downtown San Francisco, for example, or the South Bay, for example, than it would if you lived in San Francisco. So for commuting, SF takes the W, but for traffic, Marin's going to win out on that. The next category is weather, and most people are going to prefer Marin's weather over San Francisco's. For the most part, San Francisco trends on the colder, more foggy, and windier side. Uh, not all places in San Francisco are going to be like that. There are pockets of SF like Noe Valley and the Central Waterfront on the southeast side of San Francisco, near the San Francisco Bay. That trend warmer. They could be sometimes 10 degrees warmer than the far west side of San Francisco near the Pacific Ocean, like the Richmond and the Sunset. But generally speaking, San Francisco trends on the colder side, foggier side, windier side, and it'll be, you know, on average in the, you know, 60s. Marin is the opposite of that. It's more like Southern California weather, with the exception of Sausalito, which does get exposure to those cold and fog fronts coming in from the Pacific Ocean., but as you go north of Sausalito into central and especially northern Marin, it is much, much warmer, usually 10+ degrees on average warmer than San Francisco. And that's great because as I mentioned earlier, Marin is great for people who like the outdoors, likes nature, hiking, biking, jogging, playing in the park, all that stuff. You also have those larger lots in Marin that I mentioned, so it's better for indoor-outdoor living than San Francisco is. So weather,, you know, easily going to be, uh, a win for Marin, but that's not gonna be true for everybody. Me personally, uh, I'm from Southern California. Um, I think it's too hot in Southern California. I actually like the weather in San Francisco better. Uh, so for me personally, I prefer SF, but generally speaking, for the most part, people are gonna prefer the weather in Marin. The last category I wanna talk about is safety. San Francisco has been all over the news as some post-apocalyptic hellhole after the pandemic. It's not true. There are certainly places in San Francisco that are problematic. For sure. There are certainly things that need to get better in San Francisco, but in no way is that emblematic of all of San Francisco. The stuff that you see in the news for the most part concentrates on a very small subset of San Francisco. Places like the Tenderloin, the Civic Center, the Mission, Bayview. Those are the bad areas. You don't want to live in those areas, but those are just a few of the over 80 different neighborhoods in all of San Francisco, and most of them are beautiful, safe, clean places to live. That said, I think there's no question that Marin is safer. Than San Francisco. There's less violent crime, less crime generally in Marin than San Francisco. It's a suburb. But there are definitely places in Marin I also wouldn't recommend living. There are parts of San Rafael, there are parts of Novato that aren't the best areas, and you should avoid them. But as a general matter, if you are worried about safety, then live in Marin over San Francisco. So there you have it. Those are the different categories. Marin took the win for schools, outdoor amenities, cost of living, safety, and weather. And SF took the win for food, nightlife, architecture, commute, and walkability. At the end of the day, there are pros and cons to each, and it really is going to come down to, you know, your personal preferences, your personal lifestyle, and what your goals are. For me, as somebody who works in both San Francisco and Marin and who doesn't have kids, I actually prefer SF because I'm a foodie. I like going to concerts. I like going to events. I like going out with, you know, my friends to bars and restaurants and like those kinds of activities all the time. So moving to Marin would be a change in lifestyle for me. I prefer the SF lifestyle, but you know, I don't have kids, I don't have school-aged children, not something I need to worry about. So for people in that position, they might very well prefer Marin. I have a bunch of friends who've lived in SF for, you know, a decade, but you know, say they're about to start having kids or they have kids that are about to reach school age and they leave the city and move to Marin and they love it. No, there's definitely no knocking Marin. Both of them are great choices. If you're thinking about relocating and having trouble figuring out which area is right for you, definitely reach out to me. Like I said, I've helped numerous people relocate to both Marin and SF from all over the country, and I'd be happy to be a resource for you. And if you want to learn more about different neighborhoods in each San Francisco and Marin, I'll link in the description videos where I rank in tiers a bunch of different popular and some not so popular neighborhoods in each area. So you can see how they stack up against each other. You can see how much it costs to live in those areas and learn a little bit more about each of them. And if you like videos like this about San Francisco and Marin County lifestyle, current events, new developments, definitely subscribe to my channel because I make videos about that stuff every single week. I hope you enjoyed the video, and I'll see you in the next one.