Have you ever heard about microclimates? I have but I never fully grasped the meaning of that word until recently. In San Francisco, microclimates are a serious matter as they affect people’s lives and real estate decisions. To save you the effort of browsing the web, I report here what San Franciscans experience:
“Because of its sharp topography and maritime influences, San Francisco exhibits a multitude of distinct microclimates. The high hills in the geographic center of the city are responsible for a 20% variance in annual rainfall between different parts of the city. They also protect neighbourhoods directly to their east ("banana belts" such as Noe Valley) from the foggy and sometimes very cold and windy conditions experienced in the Sunset District; for those who live on the eastern side of the city, San Francisco is sunnier, with an average of 260 clear days, and only 105 cloudy days per year”. (Source: Wikipedia).
What, then are, these microclimates? San Francisco’s Department of Public Works publishes a nice map of the different microclimates occurring in the city and divides it into three main areas.
In essence, this all means that there are only few areas which are sunny and warm (ie Zone 3), most notably the Mission.
Where would you then expect people to live? In the sunny and less windy parts of the city. Of course! Although these might seem many, once you have excluded downtown and surroundings because of the dense presence of drug addicts, Potrero Hill due to the noise of being between two freeways (ie 5 lanes each direction multiplied by 2- is there any motorway in Europe with 5 lanes in each direction??), and Bayview, which in addition to having one of the highest crime rates in the city is also home to the most polluted neighbourhood of San Francisco (i.e. Hunters Point), you are only left with the Mission!!
Apparently, everybody wants to live in the Mission, at least judging from recent real estate activity- rents are up by approximately 11% a year and house prices increased by over 20% in past two years only.
You might wonder why I bother looking at real estate and microclimates. As a recent transplant to the city, I am faced with question of where to live (there are other reasons too, but let’s leave them aside). If earthquakes were not enough, now there is also climate to complicate my decision.
I am not really eager to try the dense fog of the west and, since I love the sun, my only option is the Mission, or to be precise Mission Dolores. The Inner Mission, especially around Mission Street, looks a bit rough to my European eyes and does not have the nice architectural finishes that I am looking for.
Unfortunately, with limited inventory and the job market in the Bay Area doing so well, I have a lot of competition (unemployment was just 4.8% in the San Francisco County and 4.6% in the Bay Area last January.
If I want nice weather, I will have to pay a premium, as my realtor (i.e. estate agent in the U.S.) likes to say. How much would you, or I, pay for sunshine?
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