What $4,400 rents in San Francisco right now

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? Today’s price: $4,400.

Here’s beautiful news for anybody who loves cranberry-red carpets and has $4,400/month to spend on an apartment in the Richmond. In fact, that hue on the floors gives this three-bed, two-bath place on 11th Avenue a retro look, but the ad claims that the carpets are actually brand new, along with “large living room with fireplace, high ceilings, [...] formal dining room, three skylights” and a backyard. The landlord also concedes “small dog or cat okay with good references,” though coming up with a reference for your dog or cat on short notice is a potentially tricky prospect.

The building at 330 Mission Bay Boulevard only dates to 2008, but in this day and age that almost qualifies as retro for the neighborhood, which this ad for a one-bed, one-and-a-half bath condo overlooking Mission Bay Park dubs “San Francisco’s fastest-growing bayside neighborhood.” This is certainly true in terms of the surging rent prices down there, which in this case adds up to $4,400/month for just over 1,000 square feet. Also fo note: “This unique unit also has a private dedicated storage room (instead of a shared cage) and a one-car parking slot in the secured garage.” Less unique: “No pets.”

Crocker-Amazon isn’t one of the city’s fastest-growing neighborhoods, but maybe that’s a good thing, as it means the same price nets a three-bed, one-and-a-half bath, roughly 1,700-square-foot single-family house in the southernly exposed neighborhood. “Bright and sunny Edwardian” is the pitch here, along with “built-in cabinets / decorative fireplace, and separate formal dining room, both with cove ceilings.” Although it’s only two blocks from the nearest park, the ad forbids pets, and the price is $4,300/month.

This is tangential to the home itself, but local broker Joseph Ginel is continuing his habit of writing new ads in vaguely Haiku-like lists of semi-exclamations like, “Palatial Old World Charm in Holy Matrimony with Modern Updates” and “Avoid Ridiculous Annual Rent Increases with Rent Control,” which, at the very least, is solid advice. The latest to get the poetic treatment is this two-bed, one-bath apartment in Pacific Heights in a circa-1927 building with a stunning lobby. The home’s ad: “Design Details of Bygone Era Difficult to Duplicate in This Day and Age,” though there’s little specificity on what those details are. It’s $4,295/month, plus an extra $40 in pet rent. By the way, the building includes an astroturf dog run on the roof.

Finally, Jackson Square yields a two-bed, one-bath apartment on Montgomery Street for $4,350/month in a former tobacco warehouse turned lawyer’s office belonging to “King of Torts” Melvin Belli, who himself was fond of claiming that it was a Gold Rush-era brothel. That claim is hard to corroborate, but it’s certainly not at all unlikely, either. In any case, the building is unambiguously full of condos these days.