Pacific Heights vs. Presidio Heights: Which is the BEST SF Neighborhood?

Year in, year out, the same two neighborhoods, Pacific Heights and Presidio Heights, top the list of the most expensive neighborhoods to live in all of San Francisco. Billionaires, athletes, authors, titans of tech and finance all flock there every single year and spend millions and millions of dollars on homes. These neighborhoods also happen to be right next to each other. They share a lot of similarities, a lot of the same amenities. So a question I get asked by clients thinking about moving to those areas all the time is, What's the difference between the two? Which one's better? How should I rank them and why? This is Austin Klar, your lawyer turned real estate agent in San Francisco and Marin County. I've lived in Pacific Heights for over 4 years and spend a ton of free time and work in both Pacific and Presidio Heights. And in this video, I'm going to break down how these two neighborhoods stack up against each other in a bunch of different categories: food, the views, the amenities, shopping, walkability, architecture, commuting, and of course, the the cost of living. So we'll answer once and for all which neighborhood, Pacific or Presidio Heights, is better. Let's get right to it with the first category, food. So which neighborhood has better food, Pacific Heights or Presidio Heights? The main area for food in Pacific Heights is on Fillmore Street, and it's a really good mix of like more casual restaurants as well as bars. Some of my favorite bars with also great bar food, Harry's Bar and The Snug. Some good quality like casual restaurants there. Taylor's Son, which is Italian, Showcase, which is French. You've also got Routier a few blocks away on California Street. And Pacific Heights is also home to one of the best bakeries, not just in SF, but the entire world, B Patisserie. Presidio Heights food is located on Sacramento Street. And in contrast to the food on Fillmore Street, the food on Sacramento Street, while there are some casual spots, is a lot more elegant. It's where you find Michelin-star restaurants and Michelin-level food in the area. One of my favorite casual spots, as quoted, "Really good breakfast brunch spot. It's gluten-free, but really awesome food. Don't let it deter you. If you're in the area, you should definitely try it out." And then some of the more elevated, like white tablecloth and Michelin-level food, you've got Garibaldi's, which is like an old-school Italian spot, Sociale, another Italian spot. You have Spruce, which is my favorite restaurant in the city, which used to have a Michelin star. It lost it. I don't know why. The food still tastes incredible. Definitely worth going., and then you have Michelin-star Sorelle there as well. And also, unlike Pacific Heights, you don't really have bars in Presidio Heights. It really is just food or bars that are actually at the restaurants themselves. So you don't have a ton of like late-night crowds in Presidio Heights, whereas you might have some of that in Pacific Heights. So which of these has better food? For me, I think it's Presidio Heights. Really top-quality restaurants. The best restaurants in Presidio Heights are way better than the best restaurants in Pacific Heights. I think Pac Heights probably has a better variety of food, but Presidio Heights, generally, the food is better. Luckily, because as I mentioned, these two neighborhoods are right next to each other, if you choose to live in one, you're not necessarily having to forego the food in the other, but you are going to be, you know, closer to the food in the neighborhood that you're living in. But if I had to choose, I'm going Presidio Heights. By the way, if you want to learn more about my favorite restaurants, my favorite food, my favorite places to shop, favorite places to go out, the best things to do in each neighborhood, I make videos about all that stuff every single week, so make sure to subscribe to my channel. And if you're thinking about relocating and want to learn more about what it's like living in these specific neighborhoods and what it costs to live there and what the markets are like there, definitely reach out to me. Like I said, I've lived in the area for over 4 years. I know it very well, and I'd be happy to be a resource for you. I'll leave my contact info in the description below. Now back to the rankings, and the next category is views. If I had to choose which neighborhood, Pacific Heights or Presidio Heights, has better views, I'm choosing Pacific Heights for 2 reasons. First, I think there are more places in Pacific Heights where you can get great views than there are in Presidio Heights. And the views are both to the north of like the bay, as well as to the east and south of the city. Presidio Heights isn't as hilly and isn't as elevated as parts of Pacific Heights. So the views in Pacific Heights are more dramatic from more places. The second reason is that the best views in Pacific Heights are way better, light years better than the best views you're going to get in Presidio Heights. Both of them offer homes with views of the Presidio. You've got the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, the bay, the city, but the homes in Pac Heights, especially near the top of the neighborhood along Broadway, Vallejo, and Jackson Streets, which are, you know, arguably the best streets in the area, those have the best view profiles. And depending on their location, they have insane views from every single level of the home. So not just like the top level or top 2 levels, literally every single floor, including from your yard. And for that reason, even though Presidio Heights is more expensive on average than Pacific Heights from a cost of housing standpoint, and I'll talk about that later in this video, the most expensive homes in the city are actually in Pacific Heights. So way more expensive at the ultra high end than in Presidio Heights. It's because of the unique profiles of views that you can get at the best view homes in Pacific Heights is way better than what you can get in Presidio Heights. And there are a ton more opportunities in Pacific Heights to get a view home than in Presidio Heights. So if a view is a priority for you, better bet to be looking in Pacific Heights than Presidio Heights, but obviously you can look in both. The next category of Pacific Heights versus Presidio Heights is parks. Which one has better parks? And this one is really tough. Pacific Heights is home to two incredible parks, Alta Plaza Park and Lafayette Park. They're both terraced parks, panoramic views of the city on the south side as you go up, and then you have kind of a flat area leading to the north side where you have gorgeous Bay Views. And they're both surrounded by gorgeous historic homes. They have great amenities like children's play areas, basketball court, tennis court, picnic areas, things like that. Presidio Heights also has an incredible park, the Presidio, which is a national park, and it's Presidio Heights' backyard. And no matter where you live in Presidio Heights, you're pretty much walking distance to that park, which has some of the best views of the city and the bay, as well as various like sports and rec areas., but it also offers something that Pac Heights parks don't, which is really great, like walking, running, and biking trails. It's more of like a nature enthusiast park than sort of the loungy, like, picnic-y parks in Pac Heights. There are picnic-type, like lounge-type areas in Presidio, but they're actually far into the Presidio, closer to the water, not really close to Presidio Heights itself. The Presidio's edge technically borders the edge of Pacific Heights along a very narrow stretch of Pacific Heights., but you're much closer to the Presidio in all of Presidio Heights than you are in certain parts of Pacific Heights. Because you do have at least some access to the Presidio from Pacific Heights, and you have the other parks like Alta Plaza Park and Lafayette Park in Pacific Heights, I think Pacific Heights takes this one, but it is really narrow. The next category in the Pac Heights versus Presidio Heights debate is shopping. Which neighborhood has better shopping? And this one is also really tough, really going to come down to like what exactly it is you're looking for. Pacific Heights has shops in two main locations. The primary one is along Fillmore Street where, you know, all the restaurants and bars are. Most of the shops there, they're going to be like bigger name brands, Aesop, Le Labo, Paige, Frame, Paper Source, those types of stores. You do have a little bit of a mix of like antique or like vintage stores, but most of them are going to be bigger name brand stores. The second spot where you have shops in Pacific Heights is along Sacramento Street, but it's on a very narrow portion of Sacramento Street, and that's where you're really gonna find a selection of home goods stores. Two of my go-tos in the Pacific Heights portion of Sacramento Street are March and The Future Perfect. I love those stores, but both of them are unbelievably expensive, so I do not shop there very often. In Presidio Heights, all the stores are on Sacramento Street, and the major focus of those stores is interior design and home goods. There are some antique stores, some like boutique clothing stores, some consignment stores, but by and large it's going to be interior design and home goods stores. You also have like a stretch of interior design studios, architecture studios, things like that. So it is really going to come down to like what you happen to shop more for. Personally, I don't do a ton of clothes shopping in Pacific Heights. I actually find myself doing more of my shopping for home goods and interior design stores. Getting stuff for my place in the places in Presidio Heights. But I do think Pacific Heights has a better variety. So if I'm choosing a location to live in based on the shopping experience and what's available, I'm choosing Pacific Heights. The next category is walkability, and I think Presidio Heights has better walkability than Pacific Heights. I think there's a lot more to walk to in Pacific Heights, but I think it's easier to get around in Presidio Heights. In the east to west direction of a good portion of these neighborhoods, both of them are not super hilly. They're mainly flat. The hills mainly run north to south, and the hills in Pacific Heights are larger than the hills in Presidio Heights. So depending on where you live and where you're going, you might not want to walk at all in Pacific Heights. There's also more traffic in Pacific Heights than Presidio Heights since there's a lot more of activity and it's a lot more dense in Pacific Heights. There are just more people there, more car traffic there, even more foot traffic there. So it's not quite as, you know, quiet and serene of a place to walk around as is Presidio Heights. Both of them, generally speaking though, and relative to other neighborhoods in the city, they're very walkable, they're very family-friendly, pet-friendly. You see people, you know, going jogging, walking with kids, with pets all the time. Both of them are great for exercise because they do have all those changes in elevation, really great for walking. Personally though, I think Presidio Heights takes that one. The next category is commuting, and I think Pacific Heights is better for commuting than Presidio Heights. First, it's closer to downtown, especially the farther east you get, so easier to get to downtown than it would be from Presidio Heights. You've also got a bunch of main thoroughfares going through Pacific Heights that don't go through Presidio Heights. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Street, Van Ness, and Franklin. Those are the main thoroughfares running north to south through the city. You can get to places like the Mission, the Castro, the Central Waterfront, and other areas on the more southern side of the city using those streets. It's also very easy to get to the Golden Gate Bridge if you live in Pacific Heights. That's actually one of the reasons why I moved there. My boyfriend works in Marin and goes to the office every day, so his commute is across the Golden Gate Bridge. Super easy to do that from where we live in Pacific Heights. As I mentioned, Presidio Heights is a little bit farther from downtown, but it actually is closer to the Golden Gate Bridge. It's also closer to Park Presidio, which is another north to south main thoroughfare, but it just goes to a different part of the city, like takes you through Golden Gate Park and out to like the Sunset and that side of town. That street is technically not in Presidio Heights, it's 15 blocks from Presidio Heights, but Presidio Heights is closer to it than Pacific Heights. Also, I think commuting is easier from Pacific Heights because for people who don't have a car, there are more public transportation options. There are more bus routes from places in Pacific Heights than there is Presidio Heights. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE], and that's just really a function of Presidio Heights being a much smaller neighborhood than Pacific Heights. So I'm going to give this one to Pacific Heights. I think the area is more conducive to car traffic because it just has more avenues available to travel long distances more quickly, north to south, east to west, than does Presidio Heights. Also, I think commuting without a car is easier in Pacific Heights as well. So easier to get to destinations like the waterfront, to downtown, and other parts of the city that I go to all the time. So I'm going to give this one to Pacific Heights. The next category is housing stock, and Pacific Heights is going to take this one as well. I think Presidio Heights has incredible architecture. So many, like, historic Victorians, Edwardians. You've got old colonial homes, you've got some moderns. I love the architecture in Presidio Heights, but I think you get all that plus more in Pacific Heights. Pacific Heights has a lot more condo buildings than Presidio Heights. Really historic mid-rise co-op buildings, pre-war buildings. They're absolutely gorgeous.. You also have modern amenity buildings like one of my favorites in the city, the Pacific, designed by Handel Architects, one of the best amenity buildings in all of San Francisco. Overall, you have a lot more optionality in Pacific Heights than Presidio Heights. Presidio Heights does have some condos in like lower-rise buildings, 2 to 4 units. Most of Presidio Heights is going to be those big single-family homes that I talked about. In Pacific Heights, you have a ton of condos, a ton of single-family homes, and those historic pre-war co-op buildings. They're gorgeous. There's just way more optionality in Pacific Heights, so I'm giving that one to Pac Heights. And the last category is home prices. This one's going to Pacific Heights because technically it is less expensive on a relative basis than Presidio Heights, but both of them are incredibly expensive. On average, recent years, homes in Pacific Heights have cost about $6.7 million, about $1,460 a foot. In contrast, homes in Presidio Heights have cost about $8.9 million, about $1,600 a foot. Condos, it's a little bit more of a mixed bag, just shy of $2 million in Pacific Heights and just over $2 million in Presidio Heights. So not as much of a difference, but it's still technically more expensive in Presidio Heights than Pacific Heights. Price per foot for condos in Presidio Heights, just above $1,200 a foot, just below $1,200 a foot for Pacific Heights. So not a huge difference with condos, but there is some. Now, as I mentioned earlier, at the very, very high end of the market, the most extreme homes, the more expensive ones are actually going to be in Pacific Heights. The most expensive home that ever sold in San Francisco was on Billionaires' Row in Pacific Heights. It was a $71 million home, and the record that it broke was a $43 million home, also in Pacific Heights. So at the extreme end, it's more expensive in Pacific Heights. There are still some pretty, like, extremely expensive homes in Presidio Heights. The most expensive home that sold last year in San Francisco was actually in Presidio Heights, sold for $35 million. So— Mm-hmm. There are very expensive homes that sell in Presidio Heights too, but the most expensive are in Pacific Heights. Bottom line, either way, it can be very expensive to live in either neighborhood, but on average, it's going to be less expensive in Pacific Heights, so that one's taking the edge. So this is where we stand. Pacific Heights took the win for views, parks, shopping, commuting, housing stock, and home prices, and Presidio Heights took the W for food and walkability. That's just how I stack them up. Let me know what you think in the comments. And remember, These are some of the best neighborhoods in all of San Francisco. There's a reason why these two are usually the top two most expensive neighborhoods. They are incredible places to live. You're really not going to go wrong living in either of them. They both offer an incredible quality of life, great access to amenities. I promise you, anyone that spends any time in these neighborhoods will love it. If you're thinking about relocating to either of these neighborhoods and want to learn more about them, I'd be happy to be a resource for you. I've had clients move to these areas from all over the country and they absolutely love it in these neighborhoods.. So definitely reach out to me. I'll leave my contact info in the description below. And if you like videos like this about current events, coming soon developments, and what day-to-day life is like in a bunch of different neighborhoods in San Francisco, definitely subscribe to my channel because I make videos about that stuff every single week. I hope you enjoyed this video, and I'll see you in the next one.