Moving to the city comes with a cost

With the continuous growth and opportunity surrounding the tech PR industry, many grads find themselves relocating to the Bay Area after college. Landing your dream job, meeting new people and exploring all that San Francisco has to offer sure sounds appealing, but there is one dreadful factor that can’t be overlooked—finding a place to live.

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Screen Shot 2015-02-18 at 11.21.17 AMPhotos by: Kayla Wilkinson

I am one of those soon-to-be grads seeking out a career in the Bay Area. If job hunting wasn’t already enough of a stressor, try adding in finding a place to live that costs less than $3,000 per month. Let’s just say, it’s not easy. With graduation quickly approaching I’ve already started my search for finding a place to live.

Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

  • According to Kiplinger.com, San Francisco comes in third for the most expensive place to live in the U.S., right behind Honolulu and New York. Yikes.
  • As a rule of thumb, I found that only 30 percent of your salary should be spent on rent. Well, let’s do the math to see how much we should spend on rent:

A base salary of a public relations assistant account executive or account executive in San Francisco averages to about $35,000-45,000 a year according to hoojobs.com. Let’s just say a job offers you $40,000. That means that 30 percent of your salary would come to $12,000 leaving only $1,000 per month dedicated to rent. With the price of rent for a one bedroom averaging at $2,920.50 per month, there is no way this is financially affordable.

So here’s some things you can do:

  1. Find roommates! The easiest way to lower the cost of rent is to find roommates to split it with.
  2. Utilize social media. Tools such as Hootsuite and TweetDeck make it easy to search for keywords like “rent in San Francisco” or “Bay Area housing” so that you can stay on top of new listings. You can also post status updates that let your friends and family know you are looking to relocate. It’s all about networking.
  3. Check Craigslist. You never know when someone is in desperate need to find a roommate and is offering a great price for a room.
  4. Use Livelovely.com to refine your search and set alerts. This site makes it easy to find exactly what you’re looking for. If nothing is currently available, you’ll be alerted when something comes up.

For all of you in the same boat as me, I wish you luck on finding a place to live. As much as it is a hassle to find housing in the city, I have no doubt that it will be worth it. Let me know if you have any other tips for finding a place to live!

By Kayla Wilkinson, General Manager