SAN FRANCISCO—According to Zumper, an online platform for apartment rentals, rent of one-bedroom apartments in San Francisco has decreased by 9.2 percent. This is the biggest decline in rent since Zumper began recording this data in 2015.
On Monday, June 1, Anthemos Georgiades, Co-Founder and CEO of Zumper, tweeted: “These price drops are unprecedented in the 7+ years we’ve published @Zumper monthly rent data,” in reference to the decrease in prices of rent in San Francisco.
A decline in the median price of one-bedroom apartments in San Francisco has coincided with the decrease in rental rates in the city. In the last month, the median price of one-bedroom apartments in San Francisco has declined by nearly 3 percent. However, the city still has the most expensive one-bedroom apartment rental prices in the country with the median amounting to $3,360.
Renters are seeking apartments in other locations that are offering more space and affordability because of the circumstances that have resulted from the COVID-19 outbreak including unemployment and remote work. San Francisco renters are resorting to locations including Sacramento, Sonoma, and Los Angeles for more spacious and affordable living spaces.
Georgiades added, “Whereas in other geos we can correlate the impact of mass unemployment with falling rent prices, the size of these drops in the Bay Area are indicative of a flight to other markets with lower costs of living, in addition to job losses.”
