Comparisons between Vancouver:San Francisco neighborhoods and real estate costs
December 5, 2012 4:57 PM   Subscribe

For those with experience in both the Vancouver and San Francisco real estate markets, how would you compare the two? Can you offer any examples of similar neighborhoods?

Native Vancouverite with extensive knowledge of Vancouver real estate would like to know more about SF.

For example: What's the San Francisco equivalent to the West End/West of Burrard neighborhood? I don't mean "where is equivalent to Davie Street", I'm wondering what neighborhoods close to the SF CBD have a similar selection of condos and apartments in roughly analogous price ranges.

It's well known that both Vancouver and SF have some of the most expensive real estate in North America, so for house purchases, it may be possible to draw parallels between the two. Can anyone offer examples? Vancouver: 85-year old "fixer upper" houses have recently been selling on far east Pender for $980,000. Houses in Kitsilano that were $600,000 ten years ago are $1.45m+ in the current bubble. What's the SF equivalent to that?

I'm most interested in information about the SF peninsula itself, not east bay real estate knowledge. The Vancouver equivalent to this in terms of commute time would be info about Vancouver and Burnaby only, though the Canada line includes Richmond as well now.

Last question: Where does a person of middle class financial means want to avoid renting or purchasing? Example: You wouldn't advise an out-of-town friend to rent a condo near Hastings and Main in Vancouver, if something was available in the same price range in a better area.
posted by thewalrus to Work & Money (4 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
You might want to peruse http://nabewise.com/sf. Lots of descriptions of different neighborhoods in San Francisco.
posted by blob at 5:35 PM on December 5, 2012


Are you looking for neighborhoods which have had similar meteoric stories of gentrification? i.e. both neighborhoods used to be $x and are now $y?

Or are you interested in current price alone? Or current price + atmosphere/demographics?
posted by barnone at 6:47 PM on December 5, 2012


On the SF side of things, this page is pretty cool. Scroll down to the first map here. You can see the median data reported for everything from household income, 1st mortgage, age, vacancy numbers, rental vs. owner occupied, etc.

And here you can see the SF real estate market by neighborhood, including median sale price, average price per square foot, days on market, etc.

This was a useful site for data on Vancouver neighborhoods, but it doesn't look totally functional right now.
posted by barnone at 7:01 PM on December 5, 2012


DTES = Tenderloin. And that's about it for my comparative knowledge of the two.

Curbed SF is a local real estate blog that may give you a better feel for areas and prices.
posted by gingerbeer at 11:27 AM on December 6, 2012


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