San Jose is now the third-most expensive rental market in the country.
Only San Francisco and New York are costlier.
That’s according to May statistics from Zumper, the apartment rental website. Its national rent report shows San Jose edging past Boston for the first time. Boston is now ranked fourth, while — a sawbuck behind — Oakland is tied with Washington, D.C., at No. 5.
All of this is an uncomfortable reminder of how difficult it is for low-income and middle-class earners to get by in the Bay Area. The median price for a one-bedroom apartment is $3,590 in San Francisco, $2,290 in San Jose and $2,270 in Oakland, according to the report.
San Jose’s rise is “pretty amazing,” said Zumper’s Devin O’Brien, who authored the report. “For the last two years, the top three have pretty much been a lock: San Francisco, New York and Boston. But we’ve been watching as everything goes up down south (in the Bay Area), a steady climb. And now Boston — this traditionally large and expensive city — has been displaced. It’s just a very competitive market, Silicon Valley.”
Zumper samples more than 1 million rental listings across the U.S. to calculate median asking rents for the top 50 metro areas by population.
O’Brien conceded that the report may not fully reflect listings by “mom-and-pop” landlords, who often charge less than the market rate found in larger and newer complexes.
“If new lease-ups come to market, that can skew the median upward, if there’s enough of them,” O’Brien said. “But we try to include as many of the ‘mom-and-pop’ listings as we can.”
According to the May statistics, the cost of a two-bedroom apartment was $4,800 in San Francisco, $2,910 in San Jose and $2,750 in Oakland.
At least Bay Area renters can take solace in this: After suffering through double-digit increases over the past few years, the rate of rental hikes appears to be slowing. On a year-over-year basis, rents were up 2.6 percent in San Francisco, 8 percent in San Jose and 16.4 percent in Oakland. But the most recent quarterly and monthly increases have been less dramatic. In fact, Oakland rents dropped 0.4 percent from April to May. (In April, Oakland rents were marginally higher than those in San Jose.)
O’Brien predicted additional “flattening” through 2016 in San Francisco, though he still expects rents this year to increase by 4 to 7 percent in San Jose and at a slightly higher rate (“in the high single digits”) in Oakland.
Contact Richard Scheinin at 408-920-5069, read his stories at www.mercurynews.com/richard-scheinin and follow him at www.twitter.com/RealEstateRag.
Top 10 Costliest cities for renters
(One-bedroom apartments)
1. San Francisco $3,590
2. New York $3,250
3. San Jose $2,290
4. Boston $2,280
5. Oakland $2,270
5. Washington $2,270
7. Los Angeles $1,970
8. Miami $1,850
9. Seattle $1,790
10. Chicago $1,740
Source: Zumper