I currently live in a two-bedroom, two-bath in the Marina District, a pretty sought-after, expensive neighborhood, and I moved here in 2020 when I learned that rents were dropping.<\/p>\n
At the time, it was priced at $3,695. In fall 2025, they sent us a letter saying that they were going to retroactively raise the rent. Now it’s $4,378.<\/p>\n
My fianc\u00e9 is in construction, so we like the idea of a heavy fixer-upper. We started our budget at around $1.2 million<\/a>; it’s kind of unattainable in the city, which we were aware of \u2014 even before the AI boom<\/a> or whatever’s going on right now. But we did our research and saw that, within the last year, there were a lot of fixers on the market.<\/p>\n Belton has been looking for a fixer-upper, and still can’t find an affordable option.\u00a0<\/p>\n Courtesy of Alexandria Belton<\/p>\n We thought that would be a good strategy for us, but we looked at some fixers, and the last fixer we saw was our final straw. We decided to expand out of the city, and found a fixer listed for around $700,000 or $800,000. <\/p>\n It was only 800 square feet, and it looked horrible, but we saw the vision. It sold for $1.3 million or so, and that was before any work was done.<\/p>\n We were shocked by that, since that was not reflective of what we saw happening last year.<\/p>\n I’ve expanded my budget, and it’s still not enough<\/p>\n Basically, we learned very quickly not to trust the list price. At minimum, it would go for $300,000 over asking. We’ve seen a house sell for over $1 million over the asking price.<\/p>\n So we adjusted our search accordingly, and that’s how our budget slowly crept up because we realized that $1.2 million wasn’t going to get us anything, even if it was a fixer.<\/p>\n Now we’re at $1.5 million, and that’s after expanding our search outside the city. We started looking at an area called Marin, which is north of the Bay.<\/p>\n It’s still the Bay Area, about a 15-minute drive from the city, but it has its own charm. It has nice downtown restaurants and shops, which was our same goal: not to be too far away from stuff like that when we were in the “suburbs.”<\/p>\n We got a new agent who was more experienced in Marin, and we told her our experience in San Francisco, and she’s like, “Oh yeah, you’re not going to see that here in Marin. Things usually go for about asking, sometimes even below.”<\/p>\n She said we weren’t going to experience this craziness we’ve been seeing, and then, immediately, the first house we put a bid on was listed for I think $1.1 million and sold for $1.9 million. I think it was only 1,200 square feet and needed a lot of work done.<\/p>\n Belton expanded her search outside San Francisco, but prices are high all over the Bay Area.\u00a0<\/p>\n Courtesy of Alexandria Belton<\/p>\n Our agent was like, “Unfortunately, now we are starting to see the things that are happening in the city as people are probably having the same idea as you to expand their search.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n