From the San Francisco Business Times: https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2026/03/25/rents-record-zumper-rtotechnology.html
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San Francisco apartment rents soared to record levels in March as more people want to live closer to their downtown jobs.
ADAM PARDEE
By Mark Calvey – Senior Reporter, San Francisco Business Times
Mar 25,
2026
Listen to this article 4 min
Story Highlights
San Francisco’s median one-bedroom rent reached a record $3,790 in March.
The city lacks available apartments with a 96.7% occupancy rate.
It goes against a national trend of falling rents in many cities.
San Francisco led the nation in annual rent growth in March for one- and twobedroom apartments, which reached their highest level since rental marketplace Zumper began tracking the data more than a decade ago.
San Francisco’s median rent for a one-bedroom was $3,790, up 18.4% year over year and surpassing the previous peak of $3,720 in June 2019, ahead of the pandemic that hit less than a year later. San Francisco’s two-bedroom rent rose to $5,270, up 22.6% from a year ago and exceeding a prior high of $5,120 reached last September.
San Francisco, which just last month captured the crown from New York as the nation’s priciest big city to rent a two-bedroom apartment, gave the crown back to the Big Apple in March.
San Jose ranked as the nation’s fifth-most-expensive city, with median onebedroom rent in March of $2,660, down 3.6% from a year ago. San Jose’s twobedroom median rent in March was $3,370, down 0.6% year over year.
The reasons for the higher rents in San Francisco are familiar ones: Workers facing stricter return-to-office policies and high-paid AI workers wanting åto live
close to their offices. Zumper also credited greater confidence in the city’s outlook taking root in the first year of Mayor Daniel Lurie’s administration.
Adding upward pressure to San Francisco’s rental market is the city’s lack of available apartments. San Francisco’s rental occupancy rate was 96.7% last September and has likely worsened since then, according to Zumper. As a result, San Francisco has little ability to absorb a new wave or renters moving to the city.
But Bay Area real estate interests are considering office campuses and parking lots built in an earlier era as ripe for housing developments.
“These are large, underutilized spaces in one of the most land-constrained and expensive housing markets in the country an opportunity that’s hard to ignore amid ongoing affordability challenges,” Zumper spokesperson Crystal Chen told the Business Times. “This shift also reflects a broader reset in how the region thinks about land use.
“”There’s growing momentum to rethink what these spaces should become, and in many cases, housing is one of the most practical and impactful uses.”
Striking contrast
San Francisco’s strong rental growth is all the more striking, given how other cities are faring. Most top-tier markets are seeing year-over-year declines in one-
bedroom rents.
“San Francisco continues to stand out as the primary growth driver among highcost markets as the only city in the top 10 to post double-digit annual rent growth,” according to Zumper’s latest report.
But the downward pressure on rents in much of the country could be easing.
“While rents are still down year over year, the pace of those declines is clearly slowing, and early signs of spring demand are beginning to push prices upward again,” Zumper CEO Shawn Mullahy said in a statement about the national rental market. The direction of the rental market is significant well beyond renters and their landlords. Shelter accounts for more than 35% of the consumer price index, which influences interest rates and consumer confidence.
Zumper also offered insight into how other markets are faring,including those that have long been favorite destinations for those leaving the Bay Area.
Florida, for instance, saw one-bedroom rents remain flat or drop across the state, which Zumper blamed on slowing domestic migration to the state and an elevated supply of apartments. Tampa’s median one-bedroom rent fell about 12% year over year, while Miami slipped almost 4%.
“After an unprecedented pandemic-era surge, Florida became a top destination for both domestic and international migration,” according to the Zumper report.
“While the state remains a long-term growth market, domestic migration has slowed meaningfully from peak levels.”