Having ended last year lower than where they started, asking rents for apartments in San Francisco have inched up around one (1) percent over the past two months, in part due to the typical seasonality in rents.

And in fact, based on a comparison of roughly 2,600 listings, the weighted average asking rent for an apartment in San Francisco, including one-off rentals as well as units in larger developments, is currently running around $4,100 a month, which is 0.9 percent lower versus the same time last year and 8.5 percent below its peak in the fourth quarter of 2015 with the average asking rent for a one-bedroom still running around $3,400 a month having ticked down from around $3,650.

At the same time, the weighted average asking rent for an apartment in Oakland is currently running around $2,450 a month which is 0.5 percent higher than at the same time last year but still 18 percent lower than a mid-2016 peak with the average asking rent for a one-bedroom still running around $2,100 a month, which remains around 40 percent cheaper than in San Francisco.

76 thoughts on “San Francisco and Oakland Rents Inch up but Remain below Peak”
  1. We are comparing old inventory in Oakland vs new inventory in SF. Once the over 7,000 units under construction in Oakland come on the market the median rent in Oakland will be much higher than $2,400 per month. The newer units in downtown, Uptown, Lake Merritt and Temescal start at $3,000 per month for 1bd.

      1. If you have mostly old, run down apartment stock and then you add in shiny new larger units, then your median rent will most likely go up. But all this illustrates is that looking at median rent (or median sales price) is not a good way to gauge price change over time for something of constant quality (i.e. apples to apples).

        What you are thinking of is what will happen to the rents of these older run down units once new supply comes online. And that answer to that is that they will most likely decline.

        1. Are you out of your mind? Who is going to pay SF Pricing for a new unit in Downtown Oakland when they can live in Adam’s point for 3/4 to 2/3 to 1/2 of what the new units are asking?

          I sell apartment buildings for a living and rents have flattened out, vacancies have sat longer and there is a lot of uncertainty in the minds of owners in Oakland.

          Adding more units to the existing stock will depress rents across the board. There is a reason all of these new buildings in Oakland being built have condo maps in place…

          1. Part of the beauty of the new housing units in downtown Oakland is that prospective buyers or renters won’t be “paying San Francisco prices.” These will be Oakland prices for new construction.

            Also, the residential vacancy rate in Oakland is extremely low. Adam’s Point is a great urban neighborhood in a fantastic location but it can’t accommodate the current housing needs in Oakland. The new construction, recently finished developments in Oakland, are already over 95% occupied.

      2. Studies have been done, UC Berkeley did a big one I believe: building new units in older areas does indeed drive up prices, as the new supply is more than offset by the gentrification effect.

    1. We’re comparing the available inventory in San Francisco (both new and old) with the available inventory in Oakland (both new and old).

      1. Yes, and SF has a far higher percentage of newer units than Oakland on the market right now. This is not a fair comparison right now. In two years when most of these 7,000 units under construction in Oakland come on the market and new units are a much higher percentage of rentals in Oakland the average prices between the two cities will be much closer.

        1. And once again, a terrific example of how a change in mix can obfuscate an underlying trend and how new development can actually raise the average cost of housing despite increasing its supply.

          1. The $2400 number in Oakland is the deceptive figure. The deception is also pointing to the difference in price in SF vs Oak as a way to measure viability of new construction. Oakland’s price is currently hampered by old inventory not by any less desirable location.

    2. New construction units go for more rent in Oakland. SF has more new inventory than Oakland. The newer buildings at Jack London Square, Lake Merriit, City Center, and Uptown fetch much higher rents than Oakland’s current average. The vast majority of Oakland’s booming residential construction is in these areas.

      1. Dude let me make this simple: even if you compare equal new units in SF and Oakland, the SF ones are higher in rent. Probably around 40% more for prime units, which is the difference in the averages discussed above. You keep whining how Oakland gets compared poorly to SF, but may I suggest that it’s you who is bringing that baggage to the party? Especially with your exaggerated visions of Oakland grandeur that just don’t exist.

        1. Dude, Oakland has it’s own identity and has rapidly become incredibly desirable to millenials and tech workers. It’s not a matter of “visions of grandeur that doesn’t exist”, it’s a matter of ignorance from people that have not experienced the incredible changes that have happened in DTO and it’s potential once these 7000 units approved and under construction come online. Something magical is happening in Oakland and nothing seems to be lurking to suspend it’s progression at this point. Go check it out. Love it.

          1. Dude, I’ve been to DTO, seen the changes. Good for Oakland. Don’t be so damn defensive. visions of grandeur exist in E.G.’s head, not mine.

  2. “weighted average asking”

    I assume it’s standardized to some ideal – or at least typical – mix of sizes?

    1. It’s just another textbook example of the typical victim complex in a situation where absolutely no philosophical value judgments are being made in the first place.

      1. There are real estate value judgements being made in a not very accurate manner. These apples to oranges comparisons have been used as a measure of some sort of “desirability” for SF and non viability for Oakland, How many years of disingenuous statements by bankers and SF developers that “Oakland’s rents don’t justify new apartment construction, particularly high rise construction?” All these statements were based on these unfair rent comparisons between SF and Oakland. It took developers from out of SF to see through the nonsense and begin the unprecedented building boom currently in Oakland.

        1. Quit while you’re behind. You once again took factual information and data and twisted it to accuse the site of a philosophical anti-Oakland bias. Nobody takes you seriously as it stands, and every time you spout your typical anti-reality, anti-fact nonsense, you dig yourself deeper.

        2. Let’s walk through this article piece by piece:

          >Having ended last year lower than where they started,
          FACT

          >asking rents for apartments in San Francisco have inched up around one (1) percent over the past two months, in part due to the typical seasonality in rents.
          FACT

          >And in fact, based on a comparison of roughly 2,600 listings, the weighted average asking rent for an apartment in San Francisco, including one-off rentals as well as units in larger developments, is currently running around $4,100 a month,
          FACT

          >which is 0.9 percent lower versus the same time last year
          FACT

          >and 8.5 percent below its peak in the fourth quarter of 2015
          FACT

          >with the average asking rent for a one-bedroom still running around $3,400 a month having ticked down from around $3,650.
          FACT

          >At the same time, the weighted average asking rent for an apartment in Oakland is currently running around $2,450 a month
          FACT

          >which is 0.5 percent higher than at the same time last year
          FACT

          >but still 18 percent lower than a mid-2016 peak
          FACT

          >with the average asking rent for a one-bedroom still running around $2,100 a month,
          FACT

          >which remains around 40 percent cheaper than in San Francisco.
          FACT

          You were also explicitly told by the site that:
          “We’re comparing the available inventory in San Francisco (both new and old) with the available inventory in Oakland (both new and old).”

          Comparing the average of all available inventory in one city with the average of all available inventory in another is, by definition, an apples-to-apples comparison.

          Not one single line in this article is a matter of opinion.

          1. I’m not blaming the site. This is just the figures used based on what each city offers in available rentals. You’re missing my point.

    2. bg:

      Relying on bigotry and not a few (white) racially derived prejudices from a boomer-aged cohort for your view of Oakland removes you from the group one takes “seriously.” Oakland both represents and embodies the self-consciously multiracial demographic mix and culture (food, music, art, fashion, politics, aesthetics, etc.) that draws younger generational cohort away from San Francisco in much the same way Brooklyn does vis-à-vis Manhattan.

      Once upon a time (mid to late 1990s), younger “creatives” might have immigrated to Brooklyn out of a need for, say, cheaper housing. No more. The so-called “hipster” youth culture cohort have fashioned a distinct, self-sustaining culture and identity within Brooklyn. The same dynamic unfolds in Oakland, as available demographic metrics demonstrate (recent influxes to Oakland are younger, educated millennial “creatives” who work not only in high-tech but also in variants of Maker Faire, the arts, culinary arts, and crafts).

      Indeed, San Francisco partisans, circa 2007–2010, not a few of them white and, when all said in done, quite racist posted predictions at various social media sites that Oakland would experience a new “white flight” back to San Francisco once the financial crises subsided have proved dramatically, if not risibly, wrong. The influx of young, educated, and privileged people continues into Oakland, where they encounter and exacerbate rising housing and rental prices.

      Your views, I respectfully submit, are more in line with and echo the mindset of a segment of the Boomer/X-Gen,i.e., that part that dispensed with their Leftist views of their youth in the late 1960s and aligned with Reagan, and the latter cohort, the X-Gen, embodied and embraced the “compassionate” conservatism (genial racism?) of Bush, Sr., the “Third Way” attenuated liberalism of Clinton, et al.

      1. Your racist views does not change the facts, but perhaps it makes you feel better to believe that it is a racist conspiracy that people will pay higher rents in SF vs Oakland.

      2. you’re wrong. i’m a millenial. bay area born and raised. as woke as they come. i can afford to live anywhere. i choose to live in sf.

      3. For someone so willing to accuse others of being racist you certainly aren’t shy about your ageist stereotypes. Also, I never trust anyone who uses the word “cohort” more than two times in one post, it reeks of faux intellectual pretense.

  3. I’ve been looking at rents at The Uptown and Domain on and off for the last couple of years. They seemed to peak a year and a half ago and have held pretty steady.

    1. A NYC citoyen recently exiled to San Francisco, I had looked very much forward to relocating to Oakland for its multiracial culture and vibrant city-on-the-rise ethos. Oakland prices in the areas I had coveted had become as higher than my digs in San Francisco.

      Ironically, perhaps fittingly, given the NYTimes “Brooklyn-by-the-Bay” meme for Oakland,” back in 2007, I had looked forward to moving my family from the Upper West Side to Brooklyn. Alas, by that year, the Brooklyn of cheaper rents had utterly vanished. We did find a lovely spot in Manhattan, the rebranded “Cabrini Heights” (Washington Heights), which realtors sold as Manhattan’s “little Brooklyn.” I see the kids who serve my coffee in my San Francisco neighborhood’s cafés in Oakland on First Friday/Art Murmur and on the weekends when I hang about across the Bay in Temescal or Uptown. Telling.

      1. Both Oakland and Brooklyn were marginized for decades due to their demographics. Oakland is more central to the entire Bay Area and Northern California attractions with a better climate than SF. Why is San Francisco 40% more expensive?

        This Oakland building boom is being financed by out of town banks and developers. The SF banks who redlined Oakland for years, along with the SF developers who sat on their land banked Oakland land, aren’t the ones behind Oakland’s current building boom. Oakland has CIM out of Los Angeles, other developers and investors from Texas, New York, Seattle, etc..

        San Francisco anti-Oakland attitudes and the SF-centric slanted media have kept Oakland at bay for decades but now Oakland is actually out building San Francisco in residential housing units. Oakland has arrived and there’s nothing that SF can do about it.

        1. Perhaps Oakland should spend more time fixing its crime problem and deeply dysfunctional city government rather than having a pissing contest with other cities over who has the highest rent.

          Oakland crime statistics report an overall upward trend in crime based on data from 18 years with violent crime increasing and property crime increasing. Based on this trend, the crime rate in Oakland for 2018 is expected to be higher than in 2016.

          The city violent crime rate for Oakland in 2016 was higher than the national violent crime rate average by 259.04% and the city property crime rate in Oakland was higher than the national property crime rate average by 129.96%.”

          I hear that hip kids these days think that getting raped, murdered or robbed is a total buzz kill. You can’t, after all, ride your fixie across the river Styx.

          1. Oakland’s violent crime rate has been going down for the last five years and last year’s homicide count was the second lowest since records were kept. Oakland’s crime is not going up and in fact Oakland has 1/2 the total numbers of crimes as San Francisco in a larger land mass. Please don’t phony assertions that “crime in Oakland is going up.” The deceitful fear mongering of Oakland doesn’t work any longer.

          2. And Fremont had Zero murders in 2016, and close proximity to CV jobs – there are really nice and safe cities in the East Bay.

          3. “Larger land mass”. You’re funny. The fact that SF’s population is ~3x Oakland’s wouldn’t be the presiding factor, would it?

          4. Yes, Danville is very safe statistically as far as crime but you are much more likely to die or be a victim of a traffic accident on the freeway due to constant commuting. The lack of seeing multicultural faces doesn’t make you necessarily safer living in the wealthy suburbs than it does living in Oakland. There are other variables such as not having to commute as far in Oakland and also having much better accessible to public transit, that make you safer living in Oakland. The white population of Oakland has about the same homicide rate per capita as the white population in Walnut Creek. The victims of violent crime in Oakland don’t look like the ones who constantly vilify and fearmonger Oakland online and in the media. “Safety” comes in many forms. Safety is not just about crime rates, which effect people living in the same city in different ways based on their socio economic and ethnic makeup.

          5. Oakland has a population of about 426,000. SF has a population of about 880,000. Is that 3x Oakland’s population?

          6. In all fairness , s/he didn’t say “3x”, but rather “~3x”; of course by that loose standard “SF’s crime rate ~ = Oakland’s crime rate”, so let’s leave it there and get back to the topic at hand: whether/not this miniscule rise in rents means it’s not 11:59 PM on the Depression Countdown Clock.

          7. Even at 2x the population my point still stands: SF has superior crime stats. And the “land mass” is irrelevant. It’s the only fake metric you can conjure to argue your point.

            I actually think your whiny-victims-attitude is doing a disservice to Oakland. Most of us here that like or live in SF think Oakland is a pretty cool city. But when confronted by such one sided and victim-biased nonsense we’re compelled to speak out.

          8. San Francisco and Oakland are two great cities that should complement each other. I have nothing against SF other that the decades of bad treatment and looking down on Oakland. We should all get along as a region. It’s just that scrappy Oakland has to fight for everything it gets. It’s not a “chip on the shoulder” it’s a matter of self-defense and survival.

          9. San Francisco and Oakland not only should get along as a region (and all the other BA cities) they must or they will be eclipsed as a region in the coming decades. Seattle is growing at more than 3 times the rate of the BA. It will hit a million residents perhaps by 2035 and in the process surpass SF, The Seattle metro area will, given current growth trends, surpass the SF/Oakland metro area in population. That would be huge. Not to mention the potential of a Seattle/Portland metroplex. Portland too is on the way to a million residents. All this will impact jobs and much else. Seattle and Tacoma are a single port entity(recently) and far ahead of Oakland in terms of tonnage. That will only increase as the BA has no single port authority. The SF/Oakland stuff is playing in a sandbox. This region is falling behind in so many ways.

          10. The Port of Oakland dominates Bay Area commerce with 99% of container cargo in the Bay Area. The Port is one of the top export ports to Asia. What could hurt the Port of Oakland and Bay Area exports are Trumps tariffs on China. If China retaliates California wine, nuts, and other exports to China will get hurt. Oakland and SF need to work as a region on housing and transportation issues.

          11. What hurts the Port of Oakland (it has dropped to number 8) are two things. Most importantly the supersizing of the Panama canal to handle super sized ships which allows freighters to bypass the West Coast. The East Coast ports have yet to dredge to allow super-freghters to offload. But for Virginia whose port recently surpassed Oakland in tonnage. Beyond that, Seattle is a day closer to Asia and LA/LB is entryway to a massive population. More than double that of the Bay Area. The Port of Oakland will lose share to LA/LB and Seattle/Tacoma going forward and all West Coast ports will lose share to the East coast. It is what it is.

          12. Well many of the people on SS seem to have a solution: make the BA as populous as LA…at least those whose first words seem not to have been “mama” or “papa” but “density!”

          13. “at least those whose first words seem not to have been “mama” or “papa” but “density!”

            Now that is a good sense of humor, but you have a good point – how dense do we want our cities to be? The benefit of building dense is supposed to be better services nearby and the availability of public transportation that is too expensive when cities are scattered out. Is that happening for the part of he city that is getting build up?

  4. $4,100 a month average? Speaks volumes as to the results of the City’s decades long “progressive” land use policy.

    San Francisco’s African American population has declined from 96,000+ to less than 49,000 now. Racist city policies wouldn’t let blacks buy homes west of Twin Peaks. Now whole communities of black renter’s are being priced out of SF. We have 6,500 homeless people living under freeways – predominantly black.

    This is not what successful or progressive land use policy actually looks like.

    1. whoa…homeless are predominantly black? I pass by tent encampments daily in SOMA and Potrero area and that is NOT the observable case.

      1. Nor does it match the City’s 2015 survey results which reported: 39 percent of the homeless in San Francisco identify as White versus 36 percent Black and 19 percent Multi-ethnic.

        And in terms of the chronic homeless population, it was 48 percent White (versus 33 percent Black).

        The results of the 2017 survey are not yet available but we’ll keep you posted and plugged-in.

    2. a sad statistic, but the majority of black people in San Francisco now live in public housing. And their tenure there is actually quite secure compared to renters on the open market.

      1. Black people have a higher percentage of homelessness in both SF and Oakland than their over all populations in either city.

        1. Exactly. SF is 6% black overall. Yet they make up 33% of the chronic homeless population here according to the survey Socket cites. That is way overrepresented. The most overrepresented of any group. SF should do better. It ‘solution’ to the issues of racial integration has historically been racist land use planning.
          The day will come when Willie Brown will be the last black man in the entire city. Sad.

  5. Why not look at the percentage of income spent on rent as a metric? Both cities have residents spending upwards of 30-50% of their income on their market rate rents. Oakland residents’ skew higher b/c of their lower annual income. So in terms of sustainability, the quickest rise will see the quickest fall when there is a slow down or recession.

    Arguing over which city boasts the highest rents w/o looking at the whole picture is meaningless at best, and self-defeating in terms of attracting new renters at worst.

    1. Higher income people will be the ones paying the higher rents for Oakland’s new 7,000 housing units currently under construction. Oakland’s lower priced newer units coming to market in two years will definitely put downward pressure on SF’s high rents. Developers are building more in Oakland than in SF because they see the trend of too much expensive inventory in SF and not enough moderately priced inventory in Oakland. There is no reason people making high tech wages in SF won’t choose to live in Oakland.

  6. WSJ article today said both boomers and millenials are leaving the urban areas for the burbs, the only inflows keeping the urban areas afloat are birth and immigration. Big Tech is under fire, politically from both sides, and Elon Musk just deleted the Tesla page on Facebook. This year has seen the most IPOs with negative earnings since 2000, the IPO has become not a way to raise money but rather to cash out. The US consumer is maxed out on credit and bottomed out on savings. Bottom line, things are not looking good in the short term for Bay Area rents!

        1. We’re in a plateau.

          Which is not the same as the impending collapse that has been predicted here for years.

          1. Good to know. So we’re now at a so-called “plateau” with sales volume, rents and new condo pricing having fallen despite Google and Apple trading at all-time highs, and Dropbox having suddenly replaced Facebook in the trio of “duh” reason why prices is San Francisco won’t decline save a complete economic collapse and despite a growing body of evidence to the contrary.

          2. It depends on the segment.

            But in general, the market in San Francisco hit a plateau back in late 2015, within a few months of our having pointed out weakness in the new construction market and increasing inventory levels, and has since weakened on an apples-to-apples basis.

            It’s always surprising how many people can’t seem to figure out they’re falling until they’ve actually hit the floor.

          3. Oh, and I just happened to mention Dropbox because it ipo’d just today as Sabbie was bewailing the state of the tech industry. Apple, Google, and Facebook are still the drivers.

          4. If we’re in a plateau, then prices aren’t falling.

            Considering that the “Index for Bay Area Home Values Ended 2017 at an All-Time High”, I find little evidence that prices are falling.

          5. But as we actually wrote, “in general, the market in San Francisco hit a plateau back in late 2015…and has since weakened.”

            And once again, it’s helpful to understand market segmentation when hanging one’s hat on a Bay Area index while dismissing a host of anecdotes, pricing and demand data that hits closer to home. Either that or remain a couple years behind the “now” emerging trends.

          6. I was given to understand that a plateau is flat.

            You are claiming that prices are going down (“has since weakened” “people can’t seem to figure out they’re falling until they’ve actually hit the floor”). Which is a fine thing to believe, but it’s not the same as a plateau. Those are different things! Nor does it match SS’s own headline that prices ended 2017 at an all time high.

            I believe that prices are at a plateau, which means that they are roughly constant. People have been predicting for many years that the collapse is imminent. There is no evidence of it. The best course is to accept that our economy will remain strong, and decide the best course of action based upon that.

          7. I’d say home prices are in a plateau, but rents are more in a downtrend. Looking at the SF Zillow Rental Index chart, we fell below the 12 mo moving average in late 2016 and just got rejected there again in December 2017. Of course, the SF market is varied and some segments are doing better than others. But I am talking about looking forward to the next several years, I don’t see much upside given the demographic trends and business cycle.

          8. Does this really matter?

            The 2007 cycle had a flat part, or plateau if you will, at the top. And this fact has been pointed out many times here on this site. Now we’re seeing marker changes start with professional sellers (new condos), then move to existing condos and finally SFRs. Just as you’d expect. We even see the lower tier overshoot, just as last time.

            I’m sure the historians will want to know exactly when the peak was, but the more salient point is that we are slowly but surely progressing through the late stage of a real estate cycle (one with very large amplitude!)

            And practically, since selling costs are so high, does getting in at the edge of a cliff vs 12-18 months away from the edge of a cliff really matter?

          9. And perhaps cliff is too florid an analogy, though it dovetails so well with “plateau”. Let’s call it a down-slope

          10. It matters only in the sense that people here have said over and over that the market is dropping, or is about to drop. They’ve been wrong, for years.

            It’s easy to say the sun will set, the value is in saying what time it will set.

        2. We come back to developers building too much high priced luxury housing in SF while ignoring building moderately priced housing in Oakland for nearly 10 years. All the finished new inventory in Oakland so far in 2018 (only around 200 units so far this year) has quickly filled up. Developers just aren’t building the right type of housing in SF right now. This is why the condo and apartment market are very sluggish in SF.

    1. Boomers and millennials are leaving certain urban areas but flocking to others. Such as Seattle and Austin. Certain urban areas have peaked for the time being – the Bay Area for one – but others are experiencing huge growth in population and jobs. Seattle and Phoenix are growing at 3 – 4 times the rate of the Bay Area. Affordability and quality of life are changing the urban landscape at a time millennials and boomers are willing to relocate. Recent stories have featured the telecommuting tech industry which is emerging. SV techies moving to Tahoe and Bend (that I don’t get) and this will only accelerate. So yes, some urban areas will lag but others will boom. For RE investors this is the best of times – depending on the market.

      1. Most of those other “urban areas” like Austin or Phoenix or Denver etc are not really urban when compared to SF or NY or even LA nowadays. Just 5-10 minutes from downtown by freeway you are already looking at more of a suburban pace, like you said it’s a whole different quality of life.

        1. The “not really urban” is actually a draw. A part of the “new urbanism” which is emerging. SF or NYC don’t have to define urbanism. Quality of life is a big factor in the new urbanism. Ten minutes on the freeway and you are in a less intense urban space? Many folk love that type of situation. The emerging urban centers offer a housing variety that is diverse. One can live on a small river, lake or in the mountains and still be within an “urban” core It’s not just large metros like Denver and Seattle which are a draw. Some millennials/techies are charting non-urban waters which the new tech based economy allows them to do. Bozeman Montana of all places has seen rapid growth driven by incubator tech companies. There are about two dozen of them there right now. A new urban and non-urban model is emerging as millennials have more impact on the workforce.

  7. And btw….E.G.’s cheerleading comes from his heart and I think it gets pretty old that commenters on Sockesite feel the necessity to drag him down just for his love for a city. His points have actual relevance to the discussion at hand. If his data isn’t accurate, put up a proper rebuttal. Carry on SocketSite.

  8. Trying to rent my place now in oakland – never seen it this quiet. How can we believe that these new buildings with their shiny-tiny space optimized layouts with no rent control will rent for much-much more rent than the rent-controlled older units? yes, you can fool some of the millennials some of the time…. I see the _asking_ prices of these new buildings, but what are the actual average rents including vacancy and concessions?

    Without a whole of new Oakland jobs damn quick I can’t see these 7K units not driving rents lower. even with the berk study. Correlation is not causality.

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