Amore Real Estate - Your Personal San Francisco Real Estate Connection

Located at the northern end of the San Francisco Peninsula, with the beautiful Pacific Ocean to the west and gorgeous San Francisco Bay to the north and east, the City and County of San Francisco is the fourth most populous city in California, and the 12th most populous city in the United States.

Well-known for its diverse ethnic and political communities, hilly terrain, world-class restaurants and scenic beauty, San Francisco is by far one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations. As a matter of fact, it's the very backbone of their economy.

With it's frequent portrayal in music, film, and popular culture, it's no wonder San Francisco and its landmarks are recognizable worldwide. It is the city where Tony Bennett "left his heart," where the Birdman of Alcatraz spent many of his final years, and where Rice-a-Roni was said to be the favorite treat. San Francisco attracts the third-highest number of foreign tourists of any city in the U.S. and claims Pier 39 near Fisherman's Wharf as the third-most popular tourist attraction in the nation.. More than 16 million visitors arrived in San Francisco in 2007, injecting nearly $8.2 billion into the economy—both all-time high figures for the city. With a large hotel infrastructure and a world-class convention facility in the Moscone Center, San Francisco is also among the top-ten North American destinations for conventions and conferences.

In a nutshell, San Francisco is the home of the ‘50s beat generation, the ‘60s flower power students, the ‘70s gay rights movement, the ‘80s culinary revolution and, of course, the ‘90s technology boom. Today, the city remains the epicenter for all things cyber and is on the leading edge of the great culinary food movement.

With so much to do, see, and experience, it’s no wonder why Tony Bennett left his heart here!

Let's Talk About The Weather

The weather in San Francisco is ideal. Mild, wet winters coupled with dry summers create little seasonal temperature variation. With an average of 260 clear days, and only 105 cloudy days per year, you can expect average highs in July at around 66°F, and Lows in December to be around 46°F. So nice.

The Heart of History

The historic center of San Francisco is the northeast quadrant of the city bordered by Market Street to the south. It is here that the Financial District is centered, with Union Square, the principal shopping and hotel district, nearby. Cable cars carry riders up steep inclines to the summit of Nob Hill, once the home of the city's business tycoons, and down to Fisherman's Wharf, a tourist area featuring Dungeness crab from a still-active fishing industry. Also in this quadrant are Russian Hill, a residential neighborhood with the famously crooked Lombard Street, North Beach, the city's Little Italy, and Telegraph Hill, which features Coit Tower.

Surf's Up!

Ocean Beach runs along the Pacific Ocean shoreline and is frequented by surfers, but few others swim there because the waters off the coast are perennially cold and form dangerous rip currents. Baker Beach is located in a cove just inside the Golden Gate and adjacent to the Presidio, a former military base.

Let's Park

There are more than 200 parks maintained by the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department.[63] The largest and best-known city park is Golden Gate Park,[64] which stretches from the center of the city west to the Pacific Ocean.

Sports and Fitness

San Francisco is home to the San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League (NFL), the longest-tenured major professional sports franchise in the city. Also home to Major League Baseball's San Francisco Giants and boasting stars such as Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Barry Bonds, ,The Giants play at AT&T Park which was opened in 2000, a cornerstone project of the South Beach and Mission Bay redevelopment.

The Olympic Club, founded in 1860, is the oldest athletic club in the United States. Its private golf course, situated on the border with Daly City, has hosted the U.S. Open on four occasions. The public Harding Park Golf Course is an occasional stop on the PGA Tour.

With an ideal climate for outdoor activities, San Francisco has plenty of resources and opportunities for various sports and recreation. There are more than 200 miles (320 km) of bicycle paths, lanes and bike routes in the city, and the Embarcadero and Marina Green are favored sites for in-line skating. Extensive public tennis facilities are available in Golden Gate Park and Dolores Park, as well as at smaller neighborhood courts throughout the city. Boating, sailing, windsurfing and kitesurfing are among the popular activities on San Francisco Bay, and the city maintains a yacht harbor in the Marina District. San Francisco residents have often ranked among the fittest in the U.S.

Yet More About Tourism

Economy Tourism is the economic mainstay, with service industries supporting the large number of annual visitors. For most of its history, San Francisco was the financial center of the West Coast, but in the late 20th cent. the city began to compete with Los Angeles for this distinction. Finance remains one of the most important activities; the city is still headquarters to two of the country's largest commercial banks as well as a Federal Reserve bank and the Pacific Stock Exchange. Many insurance companies are based there. Printing and publishing, food processing, and oil refining are important, and the city's manufactures include textiles and apparel, computers, chemicals, communications equipment, and machinery. San Francisco is also the marketplace for a large agricultural and mining region and the focus of many transportation routes. Along with the busy port of Richmond across the bay, San Francisco and the Bay Area form one of the largest ports on the West Coast and are a major center of trade with East Asia, Hawaii, and Alaska. The area's transportation needs are served by an extensive highway and rail network and the interurban Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system.

Getting Down to the Business of Economy

With over 30 international financial institutions, six Fortune 500 companies, and a large support infrastructure of professional services—including law, public relations, architecture and design—also with significant presence in the city, San Francisco is designated as one of the ten Beta World Cities.[The city ranks fifteenth in the world's list of cities by GDP and eighth in the United States.

San Francisco's economy has increasingly become tied to that of its Bay Area neighbor San Jose and Silicon Valley to its south, sharing the need for highly educated workers with specialized skills. San Francisco has been positioning itself as a biotechnology and biomedical hub and research center. The Mission Bay neighborhood, site of a second campus of UCSF, fosters a budding industry and serves as headquarters of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the public agency funding stem cell research programs statewide.

Small businesses with fewer than 10 employees and self-employed firms make up 85 percent of city establishments. The number of San Franciscans employed by firms of more than 1,000 employees has fallen by half since 1977. City government has made it intentionally difficult for national big box and formula retail chains to expand in the city; the Board of Supervisors has used the planning code to limit the neighborhoods in which formula retail establishments can operate, an effort affirmed by San Francisco voters.

The city's poverty rate, at 7.7 percent, is lower than the national average and among the lowest for cities ranked by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Education

The University of California, San Francisco is part of the University of California system but is solely dedicated to graduate education in health and biomedical sciences. It is ranked among the top-five medical schools in the United States. and also operates the UCSF Medical Center, ranked among the top 10 hospitals in the country[UCSF is a major local employer, second in size only to the city and county government.

San Francisco State University is part of the California State University system and is located near Lake Merced. The school has close to 30,000 students and awards undergraduate and master's degrees in more than 100 disciplines. The City College of San Francisco, with its main facility in the Ingleside district, is one of the largest two-year community colleges in the country. It has an enrollment of about 100,000 students and offers an extensive continuing education program.

Located between San Francisco and San Jose in the heart of Silicon Valley, Stanford University is recognized as one of the world's leading research and teaching institutions. Leland and Jane Stanford founded the University to "promote the public welfare by exercising an influence on behalf of humanity and civilization." Stanford opened its doors in 1891, and more than a century later, it remains dedicated to finding solutions to the great challenges of the day and to preparing our students for leadership in today's complex world.

With an enrollment of 13,000 students, Academy of Art University is the largest institute of art and design in the nation. Founded in 1871, the San Francisco Art Institute is the oldest art school west of the Mississippi. The San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the only independent school of music on the West Coast, grants degrees in orchestral instruments, chamber music, composition, and conducting.

The California Culinary Academy, associated with the Le Cordon Bleu program, offers programs in the culinary arts, baking and pastry arts, and hospitality and restaurant management.

Public schools are run by the San Francisco Unified School District as well as the State Board of Education for some charter schools. Lowell High School, the oldest public high school in the U.S. west of the Mississippi, and the smaller School of the Arts High School are two of San Francisco's magnet schools at the secondary level. Just under 30 percent of the city's school-age population attends one of San Francisco's more than 100 private or parochial schools, compared to a 10 percent rate nationwide. Nearly 40 of those schools are Catholic schools managed by the Archdiocese of San Francisco.

Public Transportation and Local Airport

Many people in San Francisco use public transportation, nearly a third of commuters in 2005.

Cycling is a popular mode of transportation in San Francisco, with about 40,000 residents commuting to work regularly by bicycle.
The Transbay Terminal serves as the terminus for long-range bus service (such as Greyhound) and as a hub for regional bus systems AC Transit (Alameda County), SamTrans (San Mateo County), and Golden Gate Transit (Marin and Sonoma Counties). Amtrak also runs a shuttle bus from San Francisco to its rail station in Emeryville.

San Francisco International Airport (SFO), though located 13 miles (21 km) south of the city in San Mateo County, is under the jurisdiction of the City and County of San Francisco. SFO is an international gateway, with the largest international terminal in North America.

Companies With a Major Presence

Google, eBay, Yahoo, Facebook, Netflix, TiVo, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Palm, Sun Microsystems, Intel, Chevron, Gap, Levi's, Genentech, Charles Schwab, Clorox, Cisco Systems, Adobe, Dolby, Electronic Arts, Peet's Coffee and Tea, Gymboree, McAfee, LeapFrog, Intuit, Wells Fargo, Safeway, Ross, Lucas Arts, Pixar