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. Since a lot of listings were bumped for space last time, today's price is just a hair over Tuesday's at $4,100.
↑ First, a fourth-floor flat in a circa 1904 building on the edges of the Castro, right in the middle of the narrow strait of streets between Corona Heights and Buena Vista Park, asking $3,899/month. (That extra buck will presumably add up over the years.) This one features 900 square feet, two bedrooms and one bath, exposed brick walls, multiple skylights, park peak views, and eye-catching reddish accents sprinkled throughout. Cats and dogs are both a go.
↑ Our weekly award for best exterior goes to this barrel-fronted two-bed, 1.5 bath Bayview house circa 1927, offered for $3,975/month. It comes with 1,324 square feet, brick fireplaces, a sizable garage, and verdant backyard, complete with complimentary gardening service. The kitchen was recently remodeled and looks like it's still gleaming from a recent polish. No word on pets, sadly.
↑ Today's SoMa-area condo (there's just no getting away from that hood) is $3,975/month and comes by way of the Watermark, a 10-year-old high-rise situated just a few feet from the waterfront and right in the shadow of the Bay Bridge, which makes for some intriguing poolside views. It's a one bed, one bath kind of place, with bamboo floors, marble bathroom, granite counters, and triple-pane windows. No pets here either, though; rough market for anything on four legs today.
↑ Swinging in the direction of the other bridge, we get a one-bedroom Russian Hill apartment at Crystal Tower for a very specific $3,922/month. If central casting provided a Russian Hill apartment, this would be it: white-interior corner unit with bridge views, floor to ceiling windows, and small balconies in an old building (circa 1962) right on the border between the hill and North Beach. It's hardly a creative setup, but people have been paying a primo penny to live like this in San Francisco for decades. Did you guess that there's no pets? Strike four.
↑ We conclude with a round of intrigue, a two-bedroom, single bath flat for $3,900/month, advertised in an "upscale area." Which area? Therein lies the mystery: The ad doesn't say. Although, per the ad, "Glen Park village and its BART station are a little over a mile away" and "the Balboa BART station is also close." The unit alternates between oak and granite floors while boasting French doors, marble mantle fixtures, integral-color walls, a garden with fountains and fruit trees, and even "oak doors and moldings rescued from the old City Hall." Rent covers utilities. Pets are good so long as, according to the ad, they lack "the urinary capacity to wither a square yard of vegetation in one go." Parse that however you will.