Trulia just released a new chart tallying up rent increases nationwide in the past year, and whaddaya know, the top three cities that saw the biggest rent hikes are all in the Bay Area. Trulia chief economist Jed Kolko laid out the year-over-year change in rent prices from August 2013 to August 2014, led by Sacramento, with a 14.9 percent increase. San Francisco comes in second with a 14.5 percent gain, followed by Oakland, at 14.4 percent. According to Kolko's data, the median rent for a two-bedroom in SF in August was $3,500, which is only slightly less debilitating than the $3,600 Priceonomics recently calculated in-house with its own secret-sauce formulations.
August's tally represents a slight slowdown only for San Francisco, where the increase in rent prices year over year reached 15.1 percent. The rental markets in Oakland and Sacramento are heating up faster than they were in the spring, when Oakland's year-over-year was 10.7 percent and Sacramento's was a now-tame-looking 8 percent.
Of course, Sacramento and Oakland have median rental prices well below SF's, at $1,250 and $2,600, respectively, for a two-bedroom.
Probably also without the aid of charts it's pretty clear that a median income in SF is pretty well eaten up (to the tune of 44.3 percent) by the high price of a median rent. Here, nonetheless, is that chart.
· Slow and Steady Now Winning the Home-Price Race [Trulia]
· Color-Coding San Francisco's Totally Bonkers Rental Market [Curbed SF]
· Only a Dozen Large Metro Housing Markets Feature Both Affordable For-Sale Housing and Affordable Rental Housing [Zillow]