Across the city, San Francisco’s rental prices are flattening out. However, even with monthly rents for one-bedroom apartments down 9 percent year-over-year, San Francisco is still able to hold onto its dubious honor as the most expensive city in the country for renters, according to data from real estate site Zumper.
The city is seeing median one-bedroom rents at $3,270, well above median monthly prices in San Jose and Oakland which are sitting at $2,180 and $2,000 respectively.
Median two-bedroom prices in San Francisco have also dropped year-over-year with current median rents of $4,500, 7.6 percent lower than the year before.
While there has been a general decline in rent prices across the city from last year, Zumper’s data reflects the relatively stable prices in San Francisco the last few months. Zumper’s Crystal Chen attributed the rental price changes to loss of interest in the high-end luxury market. “While new sky rises were booming with interest the past few years, the most recent year marked tons of concessions, like a month of free rent or reduced security deposits, by these expensive, luxury buildings as people migrated away from them and toward cheaper neighborhoods,” Chen told the Business Times. “The real test of whether San Francisco rent prices will continue to see this decline will be when the summer season rolls around and many will people begin looking for new housing.”
Of course, neighborhoods in the city differ wildly in pricing, with some traditional hot spots remaining high. Areas like SoMa, Russian Hill and Mission Dolores all have median monthly prices higher than $3,600. Higher still are the neighborhoods of South Beach and Pacific Heights, which have median rents of $3,750, the most expensive in the city.
On the other end are neighborhoods that border the city’s Southern and Western borders like the Outer Richmond, the Outer Sunset and Bayview, which are seeing median rents under $2,600. Some of the neighborhoods seeing the highest-growing rents include Presidio Heights/Laurel Heights and the Outer Mission/Excelsior, which are both up roughly 5 percent since last quarter.
