San Francisco · studios and one-bedrooms · updated 31 August 2026

Twenty-one places, and both of the ones you liked are gone

Re-checked everything this morning before making a single call. 129B Precita and 3009 Mission are both gone — the two you rated highest, both dated "available 1 September", both taken over the long weekend. Precita's page has reverted to a plain property record and the Mission post has been pulled.

One piece of good news: 776 Bush has dropped from $2,100 to $2,000. It's rent controlled, you'd already said it was worth a look, and it is now the cheapest central thing on the list. Notes marked from someone who lives here are yours and Samson's, kept in your own words.

What would actually help

Which of these blocks would you walk home to at night? That's the question I can't answer, and it matters more than square footage.
Anything here that's obviously overpriced or obviously a steal? You'll spot it faster than I will.
Off-street parking has been the hardest thing to find, and the five that have it are starting to look like a choice rather than a win. Two are in the far southwest and read as suburban, one has been unavailable for a week, one won't say what the garage costs, and the best of them has a train line behind it. Is parking worth reorganizing the whole search around, or should I let it go and take a better neighborhood on street parking?
Anywhere I should be looking that a filtered search would never surface.

Where the locals have landed

Hector has been through the whole list now, with Samson on the Sunset. Kept here so nobody answers the same thing twice.

Cut: 2245 Larkin and 1648 18th Ave (both dead), Baker St at Greenwich (short-stay only, won't do a year).
Go and see: 129B Precita, then 3009 Mission — his two strongest calls, and he prefers Precita of the pair. Then 776 Bush and 26th Ave near Lawton.
Slow down: 3870 Sacramento (too cheap for the neighbourhood), 18th Ave at Lawton and 23rd & Vicente (both want a lot up front), the West Portal studio (no address). Split verdict on Kirkham St. Cow Hollow checks out but has no address in the ad.
Ruled out: the O'Farrell / Taylor cluster, for open drug use in the street.
Live-with-it, not dealbreakers: the J-Church behind 947 Church, the hill at Mark Hopkins, the sidewalk on Hyde St, and four places that are simply far from the centre — which Samson points out is the discount.
Rent control is the one piece of strategy so far, and only 776 Bush and Hyde St state it outright. Worth asking of every single one: was the building finished before June 1979?

Still listed: 21re-checked 1 Sept
Off-street parking: 6the hard part
Under $2,200: 13where I'd like to be
Dogs allowed: 5non-negotiable-ish
Ready by 1 Oct: 18when I need to move

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21 of 21 showing

Checked again, 1 September, before any calls

Every listing re-opened one at a time this morning. The picture moved a lot overnight.

129B Precita Ave — gone. Yesterday it was taking applications. Today the Trulia page has reverted from a rental listing to a plain property record with off-market language. This was the only address you said you actually liked.
3009 Mission St — gone. The post has been pulled. It was available 1 September, so it almost certainly went over the weekend.
Both were dated "available 1 September." That looks like the pattern rather than bad luck: units dated for the first of the month get taken in the days before it, not on it.
776 Bush St dropped $100, from $2,100 to $2,000.
230 Jules — the studio's 1 September date has arrived; both units now read available now.
10 Lupine still reads currently unavailable, five days running.
Checked and not added: a $2,200 one-bed advertising a garage and in-unit laundry turned out to be in Alameda. A $1,750 studio at 642 Jones St is inside the square you ruled out. And 2905 Van Ness listed a second unit, #504, at $2,695.

Sent over, but not added

Two of the three listings you sent are inside the O'Farrell / Leavenworth square you ruled out, so I've left them off the ranked list rather than quietly re-adding them.

691 O'Farrell St #401 — $2,090, 307 sqft studio, cats and dogs, laundry in building, and the building has a garage. Good on paper, two blocks from the pin you sent me, and already on my Apartment List saves.
540 Leavenworth St #104 — $2,495, 1 bed, 354 sqft, in-unit washer/dryer, pet friendly, rooftop and shared garden. Your reasoning was specific: back of the building, bedroom separate from the common areas. Worth knowing that Brick + Timber's own page tags the neighbourhood "Tenderloin" even though the description calls it Lower Nob Hill.
On reconsidering roommates — already running as a separate search with its own budget and shortlist, on a later timeline, since rooms turn over on two to four weeks' notice.

Not ranked, but on my radar

Four Nob Hill buildings that look fine on paper but I've never verified, plus two places worth a waitlist call. None has parking and all are cats-only or don't say.

925 Jones St — $2,225, 425 sqft, all utilities including electricity. 1010 Hyde St — $2,095. 950 Pine St — $2,300, 500 sqft, wall A/C. Sutter House, 1140 Sutter St — $2,295 for a 1BR.
Pine Street Terrace, 1035 Pine St — nothing available, and the floorplan I wanted turns out not to exist in that building.
1552 Great Hwy, Outer Sunset — parking, laundry and pets all yes, but zero units open. One of the only buildings in the city that ticks all three, so it's worth a waitlist.