SF parking spot rental costs $250-400/month but there is no marketplace — it is all word-of-mouth and Craigslist

You move to a neighborhood with zero street parking (Russian Hill, North Beach, Nob Hill). Your building has no garage. You need a parking spot. There is no centralized marketplace for parking spots. You post on Craigslist 'ISO parking spot Russian Hill.' Nothing. You walk around your neighborhood looking for private garages with empty spaces and leave notes on doors. You ask your neighbors. After 3 weeks, someone knows someone who has a spot in their building for $350/month, cash only, no written agreement. You pay $350/month in cash with no receipt, no lease, and no protection if they give your spot to someone else next month. So what? SF has approximately 280,000 garage parking spaces in residential buildings, many of which sit empty because the resident does not own a car. Meanwhile, 40% of SF residential streets have no available parking after 6pm. Empty spots and desperate drivers exist on the same block but have no way to find each other. The entire parking spot rental market operates informally — cash, handshakes, Craigslist posts that expire. No platform aggregates available spots, handles payments, or provides any tenant protection. Why does this persist in the first place? Parking spots in SF are legally complex: some are deeded to specific units, some are common area, some are tandem. HOA rules often prohibit renting spots to non-residents. Building managers do not want liability. So the market stays underground — cash transactions, no paper trail, no platform willing to navigate the legal complexity.