I’m not even looking for an apartment right now, and I still can’t escape San Francisco’s rental scams. As real estate agents evolve from home representatives to social media influencers, my Instagram and TikTok feeds have been filled with home tour videos offering voyeuristic looks into light-filled $4,500-a-month Alamo Square one-bedrooms. It’s been a stark reminder of San Francisco’s 16.1% year over year rental price increase, except for certain accounts that have become little too reassuring.
One account, titled Budget Friendly Homes (for_rent_sanfrancisco), posted the same sleek video tours as other real estate agents, but at roughly half the price, attracting enthusiastic and incredulous comments from its 11,900 followers. One of the pinned videos showed a remodeled 1-bedroom apartment on Grove Street, just two blocks from Alamo Square Park. “That’s Life” by Frank Sinatra played as the video panned through the apartment, showing high ceilings, bay windows and new appliances. The rent? A mere $1,800. The video had been viewed 204,100 times, with 16,500 likes.
Although it may seem obvious to any city resident that a deal of that caliber would be too good to be true, desperate times bring out bad actors, and San Francisco’s market is as dire for renters as it has been in years…