More real estate hunting (random)
I've also been looking at listings further South (Daly City, Glenn Park, etc.), close to BART and Caltrain stops. For some reason, BART-line condos are very cheap while Caltrain-line housing is not, even though BART is frankly a better system. It's probably because Caltrain conveniently connects two massively overvalued areas (San Francisco and San Jose) while BART is more for East bay travel. I dunno, though, I'd rather take constantly-running trains with amazing coverage over neat and tidy trains which run once an hour pretty much only during business hours. (Plus, BART is way more convenient for getting to the airport.) The downside being that work is literally across the street from Caltrain while it's about a mile from BART.
Obviously, Millbrae is the best of both worlds (since that's where the BART/Caltrain transfer station is) but that's nearly as expensive as SF proper.
Comments
Unrelatedly, there is a small but nonzero chance I'll be in SF late this summer (on a total goof-off trip and not for business), so let me know if you want to hang out, and I'll let you know that I know.
Hanging out would be awesome. Exchanging occasional snarky comments on LJ/etc. isn't a good substitute for meatspace.
The first one (on the edge of the Tenderloin) was pretty cool and stylish, but definitely didn't have what I need. For starters, the kitchen was very tiny, to an extreme I wasn't expecting - it just had two burners, a microwave (with convection oven), and a tiny fridge. No real oven, for example. Also, the two bedrooms were not in addition to a living room or whatever. So, definitely not for me.
The one I was most interested in was nice, but the space was allocated kind of funny and I don't think I"d have been able to really fit into it. There were also several next door which were even worse.
Also looked at a couple near my current apartment. They were nice, but way overpriced. Not surprising, though.
Also some nice ones on Turk & Van Ness, which were nice, but, again, overpriced. There was one "junior 1 bedroom" which was very compelling, though. I'd come close to settling for it if I had a bit more money for a down payment.
The current "winner" is a unit in 888 7th St. I'd looked at units in that building before with the previous realtor, but hadn't seen one of the particular layouts which I saw today, which would have suited me fine, EXCEPT, again, overpriced. (On the plus side it'd be even closer to work though. It's actually right by a bunch of the places we go for lunch fairly often.)
The realtor did have a few other listings that we couldn't get to today. We're going to go to some of them Tuesday afternoon (I'll have to take a couple hours off from work, not that it's a huge deal since I'm way ahead of schedule on my project and have been putting in a lot of extra hours lately to begin with). I'd still be stretched pretty thin in order to make the down payment though. This realtor is at least very patient and understanding, and doesn't want to pressure me into buying a place I'm not comfortable with (unlike the last one).