In June, median asking rents for a one-bedroom in San Francisco held steady at $3,500, keeping up this city's ever-solidifying rep of being the absolute worst place to look for an apartment in the nation, per rental website Zumper's latest rent report. For the first time, Zumper also calculated medians for the individual boroughs of our No. 2 competitor, New York, where particular Manhattan neighborhoods are still more expensive than their San Francisco counterparts. However, we regret to inform you that on a city level, San Francisco's one-bedroom median actually comes in higher than Manhattan's, which sits at $3,195/month (compared with New York's overall median of $3,100).
We're not sure how long this has been going on, since Zumper only started calculating borough-wide medians with this month's report. "What I can say is that this isn't new, as we've seen SF be more expensive than Manhattan in the past," Zumper's head of strategic marketing, Devin O'Brien, tells Curbed. One thing is clear, though: San Francisco's asking rents have been beating out New York City's for a solid year now, after initially surpassing New York City in June of 2014.
The report analyzes asking rents on market-rate apartments in Zumper's database during the month of June, so it does not reflect an average of what all San Franciscans are paying, but instead a snapshot of the kinds of prices apartment seekers in June were seeing. (Zumper's measure of one-bedroom prices is not to be confused with Zillow's rent index, which lumps all apartment sizes together in one number, and recently estimated the median asking rent in San Francisco at $4,225 using a different standard of measurement.)
In May, the Financial District actually toppled Russian Hill as the most expensive neighborhood for apartment seekers in San Francisco, and it's taken the top spot again, with a one-bedroom median asking rent at $4,010, up slightly from $3,995 in May, and a two-bedroom median asking rent at $5,780. (Zumper does not calculate a median that factors in apartments of all sizes.) Mission Bay came in second, with a one-bedroom median at $3,990 and a two-bedroom median at $5,110. Pacific Heights made third place, with median asking rents for one-bedrooms standing at $3,850 and two-bedrooms at $5,100.
New York's most expensive neighborhood, NoMad, still beat out the Financial District, with a median asking rent of $4,520 for a one-bedroom and a whopping $7,400 for a two-bedroom.
Check out the full report (PDF) to see where your neighborhood ranks.
· SF's Median Asking Rent for One-Bedrooms Hit $3,500 in May [Curbed SF]
· Forbes: San Francisco Is the Absolute Worst City for Renters [Curbed SF]
· Zumper [Official Site]
· Zumper National Rent Report: July 2015 [Zumper]
· San Francisco's Median Rent Climbs to a Whopping $4,225 [Curbed SF]
· Is San Francisco's Median Rent of $4,225 for Real? Yes and No [Curbed SF]