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Key takeaways
- The post recounts the author's experience searching for an apartment in San Francisco, describing Craigslist as the most effective resource despite heavy competition for listings.
- The post recommends checking Craigslist on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings and the following mornings as the best times to find new apartment listings, based on posting activity data.
- The post also suggests Facebook groups as a secondary resource alongside Craigslist for finding San Francisco apartment listings.
A while ago I was looking for an apartment in San Francisco. There are a lot of problems with finding housing in San Francisco, mostly stemming from the fierce competition. I was checking Craigslist every single day. It still took me (and my girlfriend) a few months to find a place — and we had to sublet for three weeks in between. Thankfully we’re happily housed now but it was quite the journey. Others have talked about their search for SF housing, but I have a few tips myself:
- While Craigslist continues to be the best resource for finding housing (it’s how I found my current apartment), there are quite a few Facebook groups that may also be useful. My experience has been of having weekly cycles, where I send out lots of emails, get a stream of responses, go visit 1-2 places per weekday evening, and then get a stream of rejections back. If you do check Craigslist, the best times to check are Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, and then the following mornings, as the following graphic shows.
Data sourced from over 10,000 SF apartment Craigslist postings over the month of September