Living and renting in San Francisco: Advice/Information needed!

[DeusMortuusEst]

I work for a tech company in Europe and recently management decided to open a U.S office and they chose S.F as the place to set it up. Now they've asked me if I'd like to go and get it started, basically do training for the new people coming in, establishing routines etc.

I really like the idea of going, but the problem is that they expect me to pay for everything besides the visa and the flight over by myself. I've been looking at the prices for renting a place in S.F and there is no way I can afford that, so I need to convince them to pay for that.

So here's my problem/question: If I can get the company to pay for a place to live I don't want to end up way off, or in a bad neighborhood but at the same time I know nothing about S.F. So if there are any playgrounder's who are from the bay area I'd be very grateful if you could give me a few recommendations on which areas to avoid when looking for a place to stay.

tl;dr: Advice needed on where to stay in San Francisco for approx. 6 months.

[razorback]

How much/long are you willing to commute?
BART (http://www.bart.gov/stations) has a pretty good spread around the greater bay area. Depending on whether you set up in SF proper, you might not even really need a car to get around. From Fremont, the bottom end, to SF takes about 45 minutes.
This (http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2014/02/13/the_median_rental_rate_of_1_and_2bedroom_apartment s_by_neighborhood.php) gives a median cost for each section of town.

Good luck with the hunt.

[DeusMortuusEst]

Cool, thanks! I'm going to have a meeting in about an hour regarding this, it'll be interesting to see what they say...

As for commuting I don't have a problem as long as it's under one hour, above that and I start to get a little whiney :smalltongue: I guess I'm spoiled...

[Cuthalion]

Pretty much everywhere in the city is covered by some form of public transportation, they have a great bus system. that having been said, I'd look for options in Daly City or South San Francisco, I'd expect the prices to be lower. They're also on BART lines.

[Gaelbert]

Cool, thanks! I'm going to have a meeting in about an hour regarding this, it'll be interesting to see what they say...

As for commuting I don't have a problem as long as it's under one hour, above that and I start to get a little whiney :smalltongue: I guess I'm spoiled...

If price is a problem I'd recommend living in the east bay. If you live within walking distance of a Bart station, you can make it into San Francisco in less than an hour, easy. There are certain neighbourhoods in the east bay (particularly in Oakland or Richmond) that aren't so great, but I've lived here for a few years without any sort of a problem.
Living in the city is almost impossible to manage at a decent price because of the recent tech immigrants but it's still an amazing place to work and play. I'm a fan.