Welcome to Curbed Comparisons, a regular column exploring what you can rent for a set dollar amount in different neighborhoods. Is one person's studio another person's townhouse? Let's find out. Today's price: $2,650.
↑ The dueling black-and-white David Baker-designed buildings on Fulton opened a few months ago, offering micro-studios for what it promised was a more or less affordable rate (given the Hayes Valley location) and designer comfort despite the tiny dimensions. Here’s your chance to find out for sure, provided you have $2,650/month to commit to the experiment for a 350-foot home sans pets (alas), with City Hall as a neighbor.
↑ Of course, there’s no need to treat small spaces as a novelty at this price point. You could move over to the Pharaoh, a building on Sutter in Lower Nob Hill that flirted with Egyptian-revival style in 1922. A top-floor, one-bedroom apartment wants $2,645, pets included. (In the lease, that is; the landlord doesn’t provide them, of course.)
↑ Or for something with a style all its own, a one-bedroom apartment with similar dimensions at Trinity in North Beach (right on the edge of Fisherman’s Wharf) offers a look that could be called San Francisco rustic, covered in shingles and sporting exposed wood ceilings and a cubicle brick fireplace. The Stockton locale sits a few blocks from Pier 39 and the waterfront one way and Coit Tower the other. The price: a very precise $2,574/month.
↑ And the city continues its experiment with in-laws, including overn in the Richmond, where this narrow, bay-fronted cottage with a single bedroom and bath near 3rd Avenue and Balboa rents for $2,650/month. This is a backyard-style place, facing a garden with fountain and all. (The garden, of course, belongs to the main house, but at least you’ve a view.) No pets, though; presumably they’re not trusted around the shrubbery.
↑ A more traditional in-law underneath a house in the Sunset right by the beach and Golden Gate Park along Irving wants the full $2,650/month as well, rounding itself out at 800 feet (the largest of today’s slate of five) and a single full bedroom as well. Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home?