New York unseats San Francisco as country's most expensive rental market

With an abundance of tech-driven wealth and a shortage of housing, San Francisco has long ranked as the most expensive city in the United States for renters.  But after an 18-month period in which a global pandemic has upended the economy (and local real estate markets), things have changed.

According to the August edition of the Zumper National Rent Report, New York City has officially displaced San Francisco as the nation's most expensive city to rent the apartments.  The median one-bedroom rent in New York now stands at $2,810, slightly ahead of San Francisco's median price of $2,800.

"This was unthinkable even two years ago," reads the Zumper report. "In early 2019, median one-bedroom rent in San Francisco was more than $800 more than New York’s, but a combination of rising rent in the Big Apple and falling rent in the Bay Area caused the spread between rent in the two cities to slowly dwindle. In January 2020, the spread had fallen to $520."

Both cities were emptied out by the pandemic, as employees shifted to remote work, allowing many to leave the regions altogether.  By January 2021, the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco had plummeted 23.4 percent, with New York close behind with a 17.5 percent drop.

That trend has reversed in New York since the rollout of the coronavirus vaccines, with people returning to New York, leaving rents only slightly below where they stood before the onset of the pandemic.  However, San Francisco, with a large tech sector that has maintained work from home policies, has not seen a similar uptick.  While rents have increased since January, they remain down by 20 percent compared to March 2020.