I realize we were being kinda laissez faire about apartment hunting in San Francisco. But I didn’t think we were being naive … Until we encountered the rental resume. Oh yeah , I’m soooo not kidding about this.
Yes, it is more expensive to rent an apartment in San Francisco than say, Kansas or Knoxville. We were fully prepared for $2000 plus rent and went over and over our budget to calculate just how much we could “comfortably” afford…
We’d heard it was competitive, unfortunately, we were well into day three of our mad scramble to find a place when we realized we were way under prepared.
We relied heavily on the s.f. bayarea craigslist apartment search = San Francisco (we want to live in the city), min rent X, max rent Y and must allow dogs.
I also Googled “san francisco apartment” and got sites like sanfrancisco.apartments.com, apartmentratings.com, move.com and citiapartments.com.
We were casually touring a nice little two bedroom cottage and admiring the view of the city when we overheard another “shopper” tell the landlady that she and “Chuck” were interested in the place. Then… then, she offered the landlady a copy of their “rental resume.” Jay and I looked at each other and silently mouthed, “Rental resume?”
This is when we realized we were boned.
We decided our best course of action (besides freaking out) was to head back to base camp and write our own rental resumes.
About two hours later, we had several copies of our rental resume as well as Monster’s. Oh yeah, Monster has his very own rental resume, complete with his mugshot (I think this one says “Let me rent from you, please, I’m a good dog”), profile, stats and references. Yes, the dog had references. Thank goodness he’s a good dog.
Six apartments and a really rockin’ rental resume later, and we have a place to live! Thank you citiapartments!
My advice to anyone looking for a place to rent in San Francisco? Create a rental resume for you and your pet.
Lethicia Timothee | 30-Dec-08 at 7:16 pm | Permalink
I’m thinking of relocating to california. I need help in knowing the cost of living in california.
Lindsey | 06-Jan-09 at 4:04 pm | Permalink
That’s pretty wild that you have to have a rental resume to get an apartment in San Francisco. You’ve listed quite a few good resources for looking online, but you missed one!
Rentals.com has a San Francisco-specific site for renting apartments, condos, townhouses, and homes:
http://www.rentals.com/California/San-Francisco/