Pros and Cons of Relocating to San Francisco This Year

One of the most common headlines I've seen over the past several years since the onset of the pandemic is that San Francisco's either dead or dying. Nobody lives here anymore or wants to live here anymore. Everybody's moving out of town for greener pastures. A lot of people reach out to me asking what I love about this city so much, why I haven't moved back home to Southern California, why I haven't moved to cheaper parts of the state or other parts of the country. You know, what is it about this place that I like so much? In this video, I do a deep dive of the pros and cons of what it's like living here today, and, you know, tell you why even though, yes, there are cons about living here like there are any other city, I think San Francisco is still a great place to be. What's up everybody, this is Austin Klar, your lawyer turned real estate agent and real estate developer here in San Francisco. I've lived all over the city in multiple different neighborhoods, giving me in-depth firsthand experience of what it's like to live here, and this is my channel, Living in San Francisco. By the way, if you want more information about the San Francisco real estate market or about any particular properties or what it's like living in specific communities, definitely reach out to me. My contact info is in the description below. Call me, text me, email me. I answer every message personally and I would love to help you. And if you want more videos just like this, subscribe to my channel and don't forget to hit the bell so that you're alerted every time I post a new video. I graduated from law school in New York City in 2013 and moved to San Francisco to start a job at a law firm here. I was a little hesitant at first and I thought I was gonna move back home, you know, within a year or two, maybe 3 years at the most, but it's been 10 years and I haven't looked back and I don't intend to move anytime soon. I learned pretty quickly after moving here how truly unique and special this city is. A little bit of culture shock and lifestyle shock compared to, you know, what I experienced in New York City and in Southern California, 100%. Has it changed since a decade ago when I first moved here? You bet. So with all that experience in the rearview mirror, I thought it would be helpful to tell you guys the biggest pros and cons I think are about living in San Francisco today. So pro number 1, the cultural diversity. From all the art, history, food, architecture, music, there are hundreds of different versions of all of those things just packed within this little tiny 7-mile stretch of land. If you're into music, there are classical venues, opera venues, they play movies with a live symphony orchestra doing the score, there are candlelit concerts here, and then you're, you know, on the opposite end of the spectrum, they have, you know, your EDM clubs and your hip-hop clubs and your bars, and you have live music venues. SF also has, you know, a huge improv theater community, comedy community, A lot of shows that are on Broadway in New York City come to San Francisco. Big shows like Wicked and Hamilton and Lion King and all the big shows that you've heard of, they play here. There are also a lot of very unique and very strong cultural enclaves in the city. Japantown, Chinatown, Little Italy, the Mission for Latin American culture, the Castro. Every single enclave has its own food, nightlife, art, architecture. There's so much to explore and it never gets boring. Pro number 2 is the unique blend of urban and suburban life. For being so well-known, San Francisco's actually pretty small. There's less than a million people people that live here. It's only about 7 miles long, which is smaller than the length of Manhattan. It's less than 50 square miles. But within that small space, there's a lot that's packed in here. There's a lot of open green spaces and recreational spaces that are, you know, within steps of some of the busiest and most dense parts of the city. So it makes for a really nice blend of urban and suburban living. And you can really find anywhere to live where you're going to be, you know, close to the hustle and bustle of the town, but also close to a lot of very nice, very relaxing, you know, outdoor recreational spaces. There's floating park spaces between these giant, you know, financial district high-rise corporate buildings. There's, you know, Golden Gate Park is one of the biggest parks in the country. There's Dolores Park in the Mission. There's Alta Plaza and Lafayette Park in Pacific Heights, which have views of the entire city and the water. There's Marina Green and Crissy Field, which are waterfront parks on the north end of the city. There's China Beach, Baker Beach, Ocean Beach, multiple beaches throughout the city. There's the Ferry Building and Embarcadero. All of that recreational activity steps away from, urban centers of the city. So you have really a nice blend of that urban-suburban mix. Pro number 3 is the landscape. San Francisco's probably one of the most beautiful places that I've ever lived. And it's not just the fact that it's on the water. You have views of the Golden Gate Bridge, Pacific Ocean, of the bay, of the Bay Bridge, but you're mixing those iconic views with some of the coolest houses that you will ever see. And on top of that, you have these massive hills. So when you're on top of these hills, you have full panoramic views in any direction. And then just an hour away, you have Napa, Sonoma, couple hours away you have Carmel, Big Sur, Monterey, Pebble Beach. You have all these amazing places, you know, very close by. Pro number 4 is definitely the art. San Francisco has some of the best art museums in the country. You got the Museum of Modern Art in SoMa, you've got the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park, murals that are painted on, you know, bars and restaurants and buildings in the Mission. You've got the Palace of Fine Arts in the Marina, you've got the Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park. So there's really a ton of art in the city. Pro number 5 is the architecture. This is one of my favorite things about living in San Francisco, and honestly one of the reasons why I got into real estate. They don't build homes anywhere in the world like they do in San Francisco. There's so much history here, architectural history here, and San Francisco's done a pretty good job about maintaining that historic aspect of their residences. And it's not just the homes. There are a ton of iconic non-residential buildings here, like Transamerica Tower, which, you know, is currently undergoing like a billion-dollar renovation. There's the Bank of America building at 555 California. There's Salesforce Tower. There's the Sentinel Building. There's Grace Cathedral, Palace of Fine Arts, Palace of the Legion of Honor. A lot of the museums that I talked about are also architecturally significant. Obviously, you know, there's no comparing things to some of these older cities in Europe, but I think that, you know, San Francisco is one of the most architecturally significant cities that there is, and one of the reasons why I love living here. Pro number 6, you don't need a car. This isn't gonna be true for everyone, but, you know, obviously it's gonna depend on where specifically you live in relation to where you work or where you like to, you know, go out. But for the majority of people, you don't need a car here. And honestly, in a lot of cases, it's easier just not to have one at all. There's a fairly robust transit system here, and everything for the most part is pretty walkable. Yes, even with the hills. And honestly, if you don't have a car and you're going out, you don't need to worry about parking, which in and of itself is a nightmare, which I'll talk about later in this video. For the first 3 years that I lived in the city, I didn't own a car, and then I bought a car. I drove it, I think, like once a month. Yeah. I lived a block from multiple grocery stores. I lived a block from my gym. I walked to work. So I had no reason to buy a car. And I realized that was stupid of me to do, and I sold my car. And the only reason I own a car now is because I'm in real estate and I have to go to showings and houses all over the Bay. But if I wasn't in real estate, I probably wouldn't own a car to this day. And if you do happen to wanna go north to Napa or Sonoma for the day, there are a million options available to you to do, you know, single-day rentals. There's also, you know, party buses and things like that, which are pretty fun. But there's, you know, tons of rental agencies out there, just local. You can go and just pick up the car from someone's house and go. You don't— it's not like you have to go to the airport or something like that, like a Hertz or a Budget to get a car. There's scooters everywhere, there are electric bikes everywhere, and you can walk pretty much anywhere in the city. Pro number 7 is public transportation. If you want to save cash by ditching a vehicle, you can do that in San Francisco. There are two sort of main public transportation systems in San Francisco proper. One is BART, Bay Area Rapid Transit, which is sort of like a tram in San Francisco. Really, it runs on the south end only and mainly along Market Street until you get to, you know, South City. It does not run, you know, north into the city at all. So if you're traveling from, say, the East Bay into San Francisco and you need to get to the Marina, for example, you're going to have to take multiple forms of public transportation or transportation to get there. There's no BART that's gonna get you there. The other transportation option is the bus line which runs, you know, all over the city and it's great, is Muni. The only problem with Muni is that, you know, it's not necessarily the most reliable. It's late a lot. The buses aren't the nicest, but it's pretty inexpensive. It's a couple bucks just to get anywhere you want in the city and it's fairly easy. Pro number 8 is the shopping. Believe it or not, San Francisco has actually one of the better shopping districts of a lot of major cities that I've been to. No, it's not, you know, on par with like Rodeo Drive or Madison Avenue, but honestly it has most of all the same exact stores, just not on quite the same scale. There's also a lot of boutique shopping options, you know, in many neighborhoods throughout the city. Union Square is where you're gonna find like most of those big, you know, very high-end luxury brands, your Neiman Marcus, Saks, Nordstroms, Hermès, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, all the name brands that you would expect at a Rodeo or a Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue. Those are going to be in Union Square. Other sort of shopping districts are on Fillmore in Pacific Heights and Sacramento Street in Pacific Heights and Presidio Heights. Sacramento Street has a lot of like very boutique home design stores and clothing stores. Fillmore is a little bit less boutique-y than Sacramento Street is. There are a lot of stores there that have locations all over the city and all over the country like, you know, Aesop or Paige and those types of brands. And then, you know, if you want to go outside the city, there are a lot of places to shop too that are super nice. You've got the Stanford Shopping Center down in Palo Alto. You've got the Town Center and the Village up in Marin in Corte Madera, which is about 20 minutes north of San Francisco. Pro number 9 is the outdoors. Temperate climate in San Francisco makes it pretty great for outdoor activity. No, you can't do it year-round. Yes, it does rain here, you know, more often than say in Southern California. But for the most part, outdoors are readily available to you and they're really well maintained and a lot of people use them. In addition to the, you know, outdoor spaces I talked about earlier, like, you know, Salesforce Park and Golden Gate Park and Dolores Park and all those parks, There are a ton of like outdoor music festivals and food festivals and art festivals throughout the city here all times of year. One of my favorites is the North Beach Festival, which is in the North Beach neighborhood, which is the first neighborhood that I lived in when I first moved here. It's, you know, San Francisco's version of Little Italy, and you know, there are a lot of Italian food and non-Italian food vendors and art vendors that set up shop all over the main parts of the North Beach neighborhood, and there's live music, there's, you know, drink vendors, It's pretty fun, and they have those things throughout the year in a whole bunch of different neighborhoods highlighting different cuisines. And then they have weekly food truck festivals in the Presidio, at Fort Mason, which is in the Marina, and different parts of San Francisco where you can just hang out outside and enjoy the beautiful scenery and weather the city has to offer. Pro number 10 is the weather. A lot of people think that I'm crazy for liking San Francisco weather more than Southern California weather, but I like the fact that San Francisco is always, you know, pretty reliably between like 50 and 70 degrees. Once in a while it gets to like 90 and 100, and when most places in the city don't have air conditioning, yeah, that can be a bit rough. But for the most part, the weather here is pretty temperate and I love it. What makes San Francisco one of the most unique cities from a weather perspective is that every neighborhood almost has different weather at the exact same time. And it's because a lot of the city's surrounded by water and then there are more inland parts of the city. So the ones that are surrounded by water often tend to be, you know, more foggy, a little bit cooler, a little bit wetter. Ones more inland tend to be a little more insulated from all that, so they tend to be a little hotter than those other places. There's actually an app that a lot of people in San Francisco use. It's called Mr. Chili, and it breaks down the weather by microdistrict so that you can see what the temperature variations are, you know, throughout the city. Temperature also varies pretty significantly just throughout a single day. So in the mornings, things start off very, very cold, and by the time you know, fog burns off, the temperature increases, you know, pretty significantly. And then by late afternoon, early evening, the temperature's back down to pretty cold. So you get pretty serious fluctuations within a typical day. So I always tell people, like, if you're visiting here, if you're out and about in the city, you're going to be out for longer than a couple hours, always have a jacket on you just in case, because chances are you're probably going to need it. Pro number 11 is definitely the food. I think that San Francisco has probably the greatest concentration of awesome food out of anywhere. And I'm not talking about just, you know, the multi-star Michelin restaurants, and there are a bunch of them here. I'm talking about like food trucks and just casual pizza spots, burger spots, you know, you name it, this city has it. And it's not just food in San Francisco. You can go east across the Bay Bridge and get really great food in Oakland, in Berkeley. You can go north across the Golden Gate Bridge, great food in Marin, Napa, Sonoma. There's a ton of stuff to eat all over the place. Con number 1, this one probably won't surprise anybody, but this city is expensive. San Francisco is one of, if not the most expensive city in California, which is the most expensive state in the United States. Average price for a single-family home in San Francisco last year was about $2.2 million compared to about $350,000 nationally. That's come down a fair amount since um, you know, interest rates started to rise and the market started to shift, and now the average home probably costs around $1.8 million, which is still significantly higher than what the average cost is in the nation. Average price for a condo last year, similar story, it was $1.4 million compared to about $330,000 nationally. Average rent in San Francisco is about $3,300 compared to about $1,200 nationally. So you get the picture. Housing is super, super expensive here, but it's not just housing. Mm-hmm. Traditionally, this is one of the most expensive places to fill up your gas tank. Hopefully, things change as electric vehicles become more and more popular, but gas, I think, always will be very expensive here compared to other cities. Going out to eat here, super expensive. I feel like every time I go out to eat here, 2 people, if I'm ordering like 1 drink, I'm guaranteed to spend like $80 to $100 for the meal. Yeah.— and that's, I'm talking about like a non-fancy restaurant. If you're going fancy or you're getting multiple drinks, then sky's the limit, honestly. And it's not just eating out, cooking at home's expensive too. And that's just because the cost of goods here is higher than it is in, you know, most other parts of the nation. Bridge tolls, you know, when you come into the city on the Golden Gate Bridge or the Bay Bridge, I remember when I first moved here in 2012 and bridge tolls were like $4, $5, and now it's like $9 anytime you come into the city. I don't think it's a surprise to anyone that San Francisco is expensive. You definitely read about that every day. In the news, but when you think about what you get when you live here right next to an ocean with all these insane views and these beautiful park spaces, it makes sense. Con number 2 is traffic and parking. So even though a lot of people don't have cars here, like I talked about, uh, traffic here is legendarily horrendous, and so many people go without cars especially for that reason. Traffic in the Financial District during the peak of rush hour is something that you should avoid at all costs. Trying to get across the Bay Bridge going from either, you know, Oakland or Berkeley into San Francisco or going out of San Francisco back to the East Bay, uh, if you're doing that during rush hour, you know, best of luck to you. It is— it can be a nightmare. Unlike the Bay Bridge, getting across the Golden Gate Bridge is a lot easier. The main kind of traffic comes from people from Marin coming into the city to work in the city. If you're going out of the city during rush hour north toward Marin, that's a reverse commute. You're probably not going to hit much traffic, but even the traffic coming into the city, it's not that bad. Parking here was never easy. If you're lucky enough to have a garage, great. Otherwise, you're going to be relegated to street parking where, you know, in a lot of places you're at risk of getting your car broken into. If you're going out in anywhere that's really busy, like in the Financial District, in the Marina, in the Mission, parking is going to be tough, and that was before COVID Now, you know, since the pandemic, a lot of these restaurants have put in, you know, these outdoor parklets for outdoor dining to increase capacity of the restaurants while indoor dining was closed. Well, they're still around, and I love it. I personally love eating outside. I think, I think it's great. I hope these things stay around, you know, forever. But, you know, they've taken up parking spaces, which makes an already difficult parking situation even worse. Con number 3 is homelessness and drug use. It is an unfortunate reality that there is a very serious homelessness problem and drug use problem in San Francisco. It is sort of all over the city, but there are certainly specific areas of the city like the Tenderloin and the Market Street areas that are a lot more heavily trafficked, you know, homeless population and drug use than other parts of the city. Con number 4: the reality that you have to live with the potential for wildfires and earthquakes. The 1906 earthquake that devastated San Francisco was like between a 7.9 and an 8.2, and it destroyed like 80% of the city, and it killed thousands of people and caused fires. It was awful. Ever since then, there's like a looming threat of the big one over San Francisco. Reality is, that's not a threat that's unique to San Francisco. Anyone pretty much along the western coast, along the fault line, that threat is the same. So it's nothing, you know, unique about being in San Francisco. But since San Francisco is on a fault line, you do experience, you know, more tremors than say you would in Orange County or Los Angeles. Since the time of the 1906 earthquake, the city's been rebuilt. The city's undertaken a lot of efforts to seismically retrofit all of the buildings to make them more safe and earthquake resistant. In addition to earthquakes, I also mentioned wildfires. North of the city in particular, there are a lot of, you know, open brush spaces that are very susceptible and have been scenes of absolutely terrible and devastating wildfires. Every summer, you know, during fire season, fires cause damage to parts of Northern California. You know, very substantial fires north, even, you know, 100, 200 miles away from San Francisco, wind carries the smoke into San Francisco. And there have been days, they've been rare, but there have been days since I've lived here where the air quality is so poor that, you know, companies tell people just stay at home, don't come in. There are advisories to just stay in your home. Doesn't happen very often, like I said, but it has happened once or twice since I've lived here, you know, over the last decade. Con number 5, and it's, you know, half con, half pro, are the hills. Yes, San Francisco is super, super hilly, but not everywhere is hilly. There are a lot of flat spaces, a lot of places that are, you know, on like very slight inclines, but there are a lot of, you know, full-on neighborhoods that are built entirely into hillsides. And especially because parking is so difficult and it's expensive to have a car here, a lot of people walk places. And the city, like I said, is very walkable, but you do have to be prepared to contend with those hills. I think it's a great form of exercise. The hills make for pretty amazing views. Uh, you know, you get great views of the Golden Gate Bridge, of the city, of the ocean, of the bay, of the Bay Bridge. It's pretty awesome. But the hills are very real. Well, there you have it. Those are my biggest pros and cons of living in San Francisco. Uh, if you want, you know, more pros and cons of living here, you want more information about any particular property or specific communities, my contact information is in the description below. Feel free to reach out. And don't forget, if you like this video and want to see more just like it, hit subscribe button and don't forget to click the bell so you're alerted every time I post a new video.