What $1,900 rents you 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 is another person’s townhouse? Today’s price: $1,900.

↑ Renting in San Francisco is a game of making due with what’s there. Take the case of this one-bath in-law in the Richmond, which consists almost entirely of a single narrow rectangular room on 40th Avenue. “One big single studio room with a private bathroom, we just use one side for cooking and food and the other as living space,” as the ad puts it, with only a single window facing the side of the main house. There’s no place like home, but this looks like a tight compromise for $1,900/month. But here’s the real kicker: According to the ad, the current tenant lives here with a roommate. Hard times call for extreme flexibility in a home life. On the bright side, pets are allowed here.

↑ As we learned in last week’s Comparisons, sometimes San Francisco renting can also be a matter of having to watch your head, in very literal terms. “Loft area is 45 inches (three feet, nine inches) high” reads the ad for this junior one-bed apartment for $1,800, located at the eastern edge of the Western Addition near Van Ness, accessible via a tightly wound spiral stair. The other big selling points ia the sun exposure on this third floor apartment and the fetching circa-1869 building itself, still complete with “period birdcage elevator.” Alas, owner will not consider pets, so that’s as close to an actual birdcage as this place will see anytime soon.

↑ The ad for this one-bath studio in Lower Pac Heights (a couple of blocks north of the previous listing) doesn’t specify the clearance on its loft space, but it looks like it’s even more of a low bearing. Note that the mysterious floor plan included among the photos in this ad is clearly not for this unit, which is a studio asking $1,845 in a beautiful old building that the city dates to 1905 (a rare case of conclusive city records that predate 1906) on Pine Street. The lease also allows pets, a beautiful thing in and of itself.

↑ You’ve got to keep your eye on these SoMa studios. This one-bath place on Ninth Street—which is getting in on the loft game too, albeit via a feature that essentially erases the distinction between what’s a loft and what’s merely a bunk bed—is $1,800 now, but just two months ago in late January a studio in this same building was $1,600. Granted, this one is a top floor unit and that’s expected to elevate the price a little bit as well, but this may also be a case of the studio market moving just that quick. Pets permitted here too.

↑ Assuming “lowest loft” is a contest nobody wants to win, this Tenderloin one-bath studio probably takes it. But in this case the real start of the show is the building itself, a work of true petite French-style beauty in lavender tones on Hyde Street. Note that the photos here are of a “similar unit” for $1,745, pets included.