Rents in San Francisco Tick up but Still Depressed

The weighted average asking rent for an apartment in San Francisco has ticked up 1.6 percent since the end of August to $3,425 per month.

As such, while asking rents in San Francisco are now up a little over 12 percent, on average, since hitting a pandemic-era low in the second quarter of this year, they are still over 16 percent lower than they were prior to the pandemic and 23 percent below (a 2015-era) peak, with the average asking rent for studios ($2,100) and one-bedrooms ($2,800) having rebounded an average of closer to 9 percent and still down over 26 percent from their peaks.

In addition, while there are now 50 percent fewer 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 27 percent more units listed for rent in the city than there were prior to the pandemic and 42 percent more listings than there were at this time of the year in 2019, with net inventory levels, which dropped an average of 10 percent per month over the previous two quarters, having held firm over the past month.

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. And as always, we’ll keep you posted and plugged-in.