While the cost of capital continues to rise, the weighted average asking rent for an apartment in San Francisco proper has now held firm at roughly $3,600 a month for six straight months and is 4 percent lower than at the same time last year, marking the second straight month with a year-over-year decline in the average asking rent following two years of year-over-year gains.
Despite the two years of recovery from the pandemic-driven decline, the weighted average asking rent in San Francisco is still 12 percent lower than prior to the pandemic and 19 percent below its 2015-era peak of nearly $4,500 a month, with the average asking rent for a one-bedroom in San Francisco having inched up to $3,050 per month, which is one (1) percent higher than at the same time last year but still 13 percent lower than prior to the pandemic and 18 percent below peak.
At the same time, the number of apartments listed for rent in San Francisco is now running 40 percent higher than at the same time last year, with nearly 60 percent more studios and one-bedrooms on the market and local employment having slipped on a year-over-year basis for the first time since the pandemic ended, key facts that aren’t “bearish” or “pessimistic” in nature but simply reality (and shouldn’t catch any plugged-in readers by surprise).
Our analysis of the rental market in San Francisco is based on over 170,000 data points going back to 2004 that we maintain, normalize and index on a monthly basis, not simply a few years of data or recollections. And as always, we’ll keep you posted and plugged-in.