Parking seems simple. A spot is a spot. Except when it isn't, or when it sort of is. After 20+ years of reading condo maps, title reports and CC&Rs for clients, parking is where more deals get complicated than anywhere else. Here's why San Francisco parking works the way it does, and what the words actually mean.
Here's where this goes:
- 🏛️ Why the city, not the developer, decides how much parking a building gets and which homes get it. This is the whole explanation for the one bedroom with no spot.
- ☑️ The five boxes the MLS actually gives a condo listing, and what each one means on your title report.
- 📱 Why the parking line on a portal is a fact about the website, not the home.
- 💸 Whether leased parking is even parking, and the three questions that settle it.
- 🔑 Whether you can rent yours out. Probably.
- ⚡ EV charging: what the HOA has to allow, what you pay for, and why the newest buildings are wired for it and the older ones mostly are not.
- 🅿️ Advice I've given for 20+ years about buying a spot when it is an option.