The 10 Best Property Management Companies in San Francisco

As a rental property owner, the main benefit of choosing Utopia is the peace of mind it brings you. In addition to being one of the West Coast’s largest property management companies, with more than thirty years in the field and 27 offices across five states, our property managers have the combined experience to handle your concerns. Utopia has been at this since 1994 and manages roughly 9,000 properties, with the office serving San Francisco at 611 Gateway Boulevard in South San Francisco. Monthly management fees typically range from 8-10% of collected rent, and there is no management fee charged while your property sits vacant.

Utopia is committed to quick and quality customer service. With a full-time, in-house maintenance team and round-the-clock 24/7/365 call monitors, you won’t be left wondering when or if someone will be reaching out to assist you. Utopia is a full-service management company offering renter’s insurance at a competitive rate, grounds and property care, and an easy-to-navigate tenant portal. Tenants can fill out maintenance requests and even pay their rent online at any time of day or night.

As a rental property owner, you want to know what you are paying before you sign, and Gordon is the only local firm in this city that lets you find out without a phone call. The company states it has been providing San Francisco property management since 1987, and it prices in three published tiers on a public page: leasing only at a one-time 85% of one month’s rent with no ongoing management, full-service management at 6% of monthly rent, and a “Gold Standard” tier at 8% that the firm recommends for out-of-state owners. An annual administrative and technology fee of $75.00 per building is included in all three.

The detail that says the most about local fluency is what the tiers include: rent analysis, marketing, screening, lease preparation, financial reporting, capital improvement supervision and Franchise Tax Board non-resident withholding compliance, with court appearances and San Francisco Rent Board proceedings billed for time and effort. Keep in mind that the two published leasing figures do not agree — the pricing page says 85% of a month’s rent for leasing only, while the company’s own fees article puts the leasing fee at 50% of one month’s rent — and that no portfolio size, no broker of record and no DRE licence number appears anywhere on the site.

A good San Francisco manager is constantly aware of the legal pitfalls that have to be avoided in order to protect you, and Structure positions itself squarely on that ground: rent control and eviction law, with a dedicated eviction-services line and neighborhood pages for Bernal Heights and Noe Valley, Nob Hill and Russian Hill, the Mission, the Marina, the Castro, the Peninsula and Marin. The firm is owned by Jeff Jurow, publishes CA DRE #01961414, and also runs construction management — a genuine differentiator in a city of hundred-year-old Victorians and capital improvement petitions that must be completed and certified before any passthrough.

Keep in mind that the founding year is stated inconsistently by the company itself: the About Us page says 2017, other pages on the same site say the firm has served the Bay Area since 2012, and a landing page says “10+ years of experience.” The firm reports a 78% tenant retention rate against a stated 62% San Francisco average and 96% on-time rent collection, but both are self-reported and the market benchmark carries no citation. No pricing of any kind is published; the pricing URL returns a 404 and every path ends at a contact form.

Research a company online — its website, its listings, and its review history — and Azari has by far the strongest public record of any firm in this market, carrying a 4.9-star rating from 602 Google reviews and the first position in the San Francisco local pack for the head search term. Founded by Manzar D. Azari and incorporated in California in 2010, the firm is built for absentee and international owners: nine languages of service, relocation and concierge services, fiduciary management, and an in-house construction arm operating under CSLB #950571. It also sells a “Tenant Eviction Protection Plan,” a rational product in a just-cause city and one few competitors offer.

Keep in mind that none of it is priced. No management fee, placement fee or renewal fee is published anywhere, and the flagship products — the eviction protection plan and the investment package — are marketed without terms or cost. There is no corporate DRE number on the site either; the only licence numbers published are individual, including a CalBRE-era number, so verify the brokerage licence yourself. Published office hours are Monday to Friday, 9am to 4pm, which is short for a firm marketing emergency coverage.

Chandler Properties gives its founding date as 1979 in its own site structured data — the same year as the Rent Ordinance build-date cutoff — and holds CA DRE #00753958, a licence number old enough to corroborate it. Weigh time-tested local experience against a firm that opened a year or two ago, and Chandler is at the far end of that scale: it specialises in the building type that is hardest to run in this city, the multi-unit apartment building that is fully rent-controlled and fully just-cause-protected, and it manages homeowner associations alongside them from an office on California Street.

The owner-facing content is on exactly the right subjects for this market — building-systems compliance, turnover economics, proactive inspections, the vacancy cost of leasing a unit yourself, and mixed-use residential and commercial buildings. Keep in mind that no fee of any kind is published, no portfolio size appears anywhere, and the firm is oriented to whole-building owners and HOA boards rather than to somebody with one condominium, so it is not a like-for-like alternative for every owner reading this.

First and foremost, HSM is knowledgeable of the local market. Founded by Mrs. Flemming and Mr. Arthur Watson, the firm has the longest continuous tenure of anybody in this set — long enough that it predates the 1979 Rent Ordinance itself — and it works San Francisco and nowhere else, from an office on Haight Street rather than a Financial District suite. It carries 4.9 stars from 293 Google reviews and sits second in the local pack, publishes CA DRE #01318859, and names its executive and management staff.

Keep in mind two things. The founding date is stated inconsistently: the About Us page describes a sixty-year legacy while the Google profile claims 75+ years, so treat the firm as mid-century rather than pinning a year on it. And the website is a thin Wix build of about six substantive pages with no fee information, no owner resources and no rent-ordinance content at all, which means everything you want to compare will have to come out of a conversation. Published hours are Monday to Friday, 9:00 to 5:30, with an after-hours emergency line on the same number.

Gaetani Real Estate is the oldest firm we found working this market, founded in 1946 and run by three generations of the same family from an office on the Geary corridor in the Richmond. It specialises in multifamily apartment buildings and commercial property — the pre-1979 stock that carries the full weight of the Rent Ordinance — and it is a member of the California Apartment Association, which is a meaningful signal in a city where the allowable increase, the deposit interest rate and the relocation amounts all reset every March 1.

The firm publishes CA DRE #01986860 and describes a single-team model rather than a franchise or a platform. Keep in mind that the website is thin relative to the company’s age, with no pricing, no portfolio size and no named broker of record, and that Gaetani did not appear in the local pack or the top organic results for the head term when we checked — it surfaced only on a secondary search, so its digital visibility lags its longevity. Single-family and condominium owners are also not the target client here.

ReLISTO — the name is an acronym for Real Estate Leasing Innovations, Services and Tools Online — is a leasing-first firm run by co-founder and managing director Eric Baird out of Berry Street in Mission Bay, covering San Francisco, Marin, the Peninsula, the East Bay, the South Bay and the Monterey Peninsula. It is the only firm in this set publishing genuinely useful San Francisco compliance content for owners, including a standalone page explaining the annual San Francisco Rent Board fee, which is exactly the sort of local specificity that signals real ordinance familiarity. A public rent-estimate calculator and a strong furnished and corporate-relocation line suit owners chasing maximum rent achieved.

Keep in mind that for a firm whose entire brand is leasing, no leasing fee is published anywhere — nor a management fee, nor a renewal fee, including on a page literally titled FAQ under the management service. The founding year is not stated by the company at all and third-party profiles disagree, most saying 2010 and one saying 2008. The site publishes “CIN #01877685,” which has the shape of a California DRE corporate licence number but is not labelled as one, so verify it before you rely on it.

Similar to any other business, not all managers are good managers — but a named broker with a published licence number and twenty years of continuous trading says a great deal about how a company operates. J. Wavro Associates has been working since 2003 under managing broker James Wavro, covering San Francisco, Marin County and the San Mateo Peninsula, and it stays residential-only, which is unusual among long-standing San Francisco firms that tend to drift into commercial and association work. It handles furnished as well as unfurnished apartments, which matters in a city with steady corporate-relocation demand.

The firm was also named first in the r/AskSF community thread on Bay Area rental companies that surfaced in our search — an anecdotal reputation signal rather than a fact about the business, but a real one. Keep in mind that there is no pricing of any kind, that the website runs on a legacy URL scheme with no sitemap at all, which limits what anybody outside the firm can verify, and that the licence is still published under the retired “BRE” label rather than the current one.

Ziprent is a technology-driven manager covering San Francisco as one of hundreds of cities, and it publishes every number without exception: $150 per month per property, $100 per month for each additional property, $1,500 to place a tenant, and $250 per renewal, with a ZipGuarantee tier at $250 a month that bundles unlimited placements and renewals. It publishes CA DRE #02095462 and a live counter of 4,546 units across 639 cities in 18 states, which almost no local competitor does.

The arithmetic is what matters for a San Francisco owner, and here it runs the opposite way to most markets. Against a reported median one-bedroom of over $4,000 a month, $150 flat is under 4% of rent, where a 6% fee would be about $240 and an 8% fee about $320. Keep in mind what the flat fee does not buy: the firm is headquartered in Tiburon and priced identically in every market it serves, and nothing on its pricing page addresses the Rent Ordinance, Rent Board petitions, the Housing Inventory filing that gates your rent increase, Chapter 49 deposit interest, or just-cause procedure — which is the work that actually distinguishes management in this city.