Housing and Accommodation!!!

Hi Guys!!!!

Sorry for the long break between my last post and now. I was organising my own visa to return to San Francisco in April. I finally got all the paperwork finished and sent in. It was a messy ordeal but i got it sorted eventually thanks to the helpfull staff at USIT. THANKS GILLIAN, your a star. So i am just waiting on my job to be approved and get my visa finalised. Roll on April 8th WOOOOHOOOO!!!!!!

In my last post, at the end, i said i would talk a bit about housing and accommodation in my next post. Well i guess i better do this now. Upon finishing reading this post you should have enough info to get yourself housed and ready to enjoy your summer. Once you have found diggs there will be a load taken off and you can relax.

I guess i will start off by freaking you out a little and giving you the horror story first. Its not that much of a horror story really. I guess by now you know that housing is pricey in San Francisco. I have a theory as to the reason. My theory is that San Francisco is sitting on top of the San Andreas fault line and is prone to earthquakes. Im sure you have all heard of the 2 big ones. One in 1906 and the other in 1989. These are the two most horrific ones that caused the most amount of destruction. What you may not know is that San Francisco experiences earthquakes quite freaquently. Dont worry though, you cant even notice them they are so small. Well i believe that this is the reason for the high prices of housing. The insurance must be very high as there is the constant threat of earthquakes. This in turn will lead to higher rents.

If you have made the decision to go to San Francisco then you are willing to pay these prices. The way around these high prices is to wedge a load of you into one apartment. The more you get the lower your rent. Dont over do it though becasue it will get cramped and at times may get unbearable.

Last summer i had my accommodation sorted before i left. This was such a relief as we could move in straight away. It may be more difficult for you to organise it before you go as you will not be in the city. I was lucky as i had friends already living there who helped me out alot. Basically sorted it out for me. As i will be there in April i will gladly help anyone i can, if you need it that is.

So, down to the important info of this post. To start off you will need to know where to look for your housing. The best place is on craigslist (www.craigslist.org). This is where practically every person in the city goes to get a new apartment. craigslist is a beast. you can get everything you need on it. EVERYTHING. It is handy for jobs too. For the housing aspect i will give you a run down on how to use it.

1. log onto www.craigslist.org

2. click on SF Bay Area

3. click apts/housing

4. depending on where you want to live you have 2 options. To live in the city itself click the San Francisco tab. If you want to live in Berkeley click the East Bay tab.

5. choose the neighbourhood you wish to live. For Berkeley choose Berkeley and not Berkeley north/hills. For the city then just choose what ever district you want. I will do a later post on the different neighbourhoods of San Francisco.

6. put in the range you wish to spend on rent, the number of bedrooms you desire and then check the "has image" box so it filters out ones without pictures of the apartment. you dont have to do this if you want a wider search. I just like to see the apartment before hand so i dont waste my time.

So that is how you find yuor housing on craigslist. Now i will give you some tips that will be very usefull when getting in contact with the apartments. It will usually be carried out through e-mail first, some have phone numbers displayed and you can easily call them. If you are looking to have it sorted before you leave then it will be best to use e-mail. I will now give you some tips to make this easier, as you will more than likely be sending loads of mails to loads of different apartments.

1. Draw up a template email and save it. This can then be weasily copied and pasted to your email and saves a hell of alot of time.

2. Create a folder on your desktop and call it "housing". Inside this folder create some sub-folders and call them the names of the different districts of San Francisco. This is so you can save the ads that you have replied to so you know where abouts in the city they are.

3. Each ad will generally have a "reply to" address at the ver top. It will generally look like this hous-xjrpg-1653149791@craigslist.org. This is the address you send your mail to. some will have no reply to address on the top but you will find it somewhere else in the ad.

4. When you have sent the e-mail you should open up a word document and copy and paste the ad to it. Copy from the very top, where it shows the price and number of rooms in big bold text, right down to the very end where it gives the "posting ID". Now save this into whatever sub-folder it belongs in. The reason for saving it is because any replies you get will not com back from the email address you sent it to. You will get a reply from your original mail and you can locate the ad from the address you originally sent it to. This may be confusing to read but believe me it will be a million more times confusing and frustrating when you get a reply about an apartment and you dont know which one it was. This is a tip i was given from my friends living in San Francisco.

Now that i have given you tips on how to locate apartments i will give you a brief rundown on what type of prices to expect. Well, for a 2 bed apartment you can pay anywhere from $2000 up to $3500, depending on where it is located. some areas are far more expensive than others. A studio apartment could cost you anywhere from $800 to $2000. Some apartments are bigger than others and nicer than others. The apartment i lived in last summer was 2 bed and 2 bath. It was huge and there were only 4 of us in it. It cost us $2400 a month. We could have easily had8 8 people live in it. one bedroom comfortably holding 4 people ad the other 3 and then you could have had a few stragglers in the sitting room. I know of a group in the same apartments as us that had 10 people in the same size place as us. The were only paying $240 each a month. Very affordable.

So, this is a good bit of info for you and some tips. If you have any questions feel free to ask me sanfranj1@gmail.com . also contact me if there is stuff i missed that you think should be posted. And one last reason to contact me, I will be there in a few weeks and would gladly help anyone who may need any help getting settled or needing help finding apartments or just looking for any info in general about the city.

I reckon my next post will be about jobs and employment. stay tuned. Hopefully i dont leave it so long for the next post.