The average asking rent for an apartment in Oakland has effectively held at $2,600 per month over the past quarter. While an average of $2,600 per month is 5 percent higher than at the same time last year, it’s 3 percent lower than prior to Covid and 13 percent below its 2016-era peak, with the average asking rent in San Francisco still 12 percent lower than prior to the pandemic and 19 percent below its 2015-era peak.
As such, the relative discount in asking rents between Oakland and San Francisco, which had dropped from around 34 percent prior to the pandemic to 24 percent in the first quarter of 2021, has ticked back up to 28 percent, with the average asking rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Oakland hovering around $2,200 a month versus closer to $3,000 in San Francisco.
Our analysis of the rental market in San Francisco and Oakland is based on over 200,000 data points going back two decades, not just a few years, that we maintain, normalize and index on a monthly basis. We’ll keep you posted and plugged-in.