Here’s how much rent has gone up in the Bay Area since 2010
The fact that rents have risen dramatically across the Bay Area is no surprise to most locals, particularly long-time residents of one of the nation’s hottest real estate markets.
But a new analysis from Rent Cafe puts into stark focus just how staggeringly prices have ballooned and how the demographics of the area have changed in the last decade.
Now sitting at $3,680, average rent in San Francisco has soared 70 percent since 2010 while home prices climbed an eye-popping 95 percent and median income crept up a comparatively modest 61 percent.
Across the bay in Oakland, rent climbed even more — 108 percent. Income? Just 59 percent overall. And in San Jose, the current average rent of $2,697 is 74 percent higher than in 2010, while the median home price climbed 124 percent and income ticked up 51 percent.
All three cities far outstripped the national average. Across the U.S., average rent climbed 36 percent since 2010, to $1,473. Median home price has gone up 31 percent, from $179,900 to $234,983. And median household income has ticked up 27 percent.
Both Oakland and San Jose saw the number of renters earning more than $150,000 roughly quadruple from 2010. Back then, just 8,800 or so renters in San Jose earned that much. Now, some 34,600 renters pull in that much money each year. Likely driven by the booming tech sector, that increase is far steeper than the rise across the country as a whole, where the number of high-earning renters increased just twice as fast as the number of high-earning homeowner households.
The city of Santa Clara is going into 2020 with a 60 percent share of renters, the 18th highest concentration among the 260 largest cities in the country and about the same concentration of renters as in Los Angeles. While that’s a modest figure compared to Manhattan’s 77 percent, it’s more than in any other Bay Area city.
San Francisco added 40,400 housing units over the last decade — the 17th highest number in the nation. But that’s done little to alleviate the housing crisis. More than a third of the units qualify as luxury units and the city has the third smallest apartments in the nation, at 707 square feet on average. Only Seattle and Newark, New Jersey, have smaller abodes, with even Queens and Manhattan in
Over the last decade, the number of renters has increased twice as fast as the number of owners, with more than
108 million Americans now renting. Renters went from being in the minority to the majority of the population in 20 cities over the last decade.
New York boasting more square feet per apartment on average.
And as the decade closes, San Francisco and Sunnyvale sit in the top 10 cities with the highest shares of millennials. On the other side, college towns across the country are losing millennials as the population ages and moves into the job market. Back in 2010, most cities with the highest share of millennials were college towns like College Station, Texas, and Ann Arbor, Michigan. Now, they’re job centers like Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia, Seattle, Denver and the Bay Area.
Throughout the country, according to Rent Cafe, developers built 2.4 million apartments. North San Jose saw the largest complex of the decade — Crescent Village at more than 2,000 homes. If 2.4 million homes sounds like a lot, consider that the country also added 3.1 million parking spots — enough for every registered car in Kansas, Kentucky and Maine combined.
Over the last decade, the number of renters has increased twice as fast as the number of owners, with more than 108 million Americans now renting. Renters went from being in the minority to the majority of the population in 20 cities over the last decade, including in Stockton, Irvine and Pomona.
And renters are increasingly choosing to call suburbs rather than city centers home. The Austin and Phoenix metro areas have seen more than a 30 percent increase in the number of suburban renters this decade, among the highest in the nation.
Regardless of where they live, families are increasingly child-free. The number of homes with children has declined 1.3 million since 2010. And renting has become more popular among people 60 years and over, ticking up 32 percent over the last decade.