Having rebounded a little over 12 percent from May through September, the weighted average asking rent for an apartment in San Francisco slipped a percent in October to $3,375 per month.
As such, while the average asking rent in San Francisco is up around 11 percent from its pandemic-era low in May, it’s still nearly 18 percent ($725) lower than prior to the pandemic and 24 percent below a 2015-era peak, with the average asking rent for a one-bedroom in the city having held at around $2,800 over the past quarter (which is down from closer to $3,700 at peak).
At the same time, while there are now less than half the number of apartments listed for rent in San Francisco than there were at the beginning of the year, which includes units in larger buildings as well as one-off rentals, there are still 20 percent more units listed for rent in the city than there were prior to the pandemic and 30 percent more listings than there were at this time of the year in 2019.
Our analysis is based on a subset of (well) over 100,000 listings going back going back to 2004 that we maintain, normalize and index on a monthly basis. We’ll keep you posted and plugged-in.
Until offices re-open, it seems likely rental prices will remain flat. I’ve got to imagine there will be at least one more variant and/or spike this winter, so I’m putting offices re-opening at April 2022.
UPDATE: Asking Rents in San Francisco Tick Down Another Percent