Yes, as I said, there are reasons that these neighborhoods are popular. Another reason is the weather: the Mission and SOMA tend to be sunnier than the rest o

Yes, as I said, there are reasons that these neighborhoods are popular. Another reason is the weather: the Mission and SOMA tend to be sunnier than the rest of the city. These features, in a rational world, demand a certain price premium. But the outer neighborhoods have nice features, too (e.g. they have less filth and crime, and more nature), so there's a trade-off. That said, complaints about being "isolated" in the Sunset is mostly a lot of butthurt. The entire city of San Francisco is seven miles wide. There is literally no part of this city that could be considered "isolated", unless your definition of "the city" begins and ends in the Mission. And I say that as someone who lives without a car -- there are rail lines that run to the Sunset, West Portal, Glen Park, Ocean View and so on. You're maybe 30 minutes away from downtown, at most. Still, ask a 20-something coder to consider living in the Inner Sunset, and you'd think you'd asked him to move to North Dakota. No, the real problem is that most of the people flooding into SF are wealthy 20-somethings who will pay nearly any price to live right in the middle of the hippest entertainment districts in the city. They don't want to live near icky married people and children, they don't want to travel more than ten minutes to meet their friends for a drink, and they definitely don't want to go up or down any hills to get anywhere. There are basically two neighborhoods in the city that meet these constraints, and in both, rents are skyrocketing.