In the past 12 months, just 0.03% of San Francisco rentals were listed for under $1,000 – the third-smallest share in the nation
In recent years, rising rental costs have pushed affordability further out of reach for many renters across the U.S., making finding a home for under $1,000 increasingly difficult. In fact, half of all renters now pay more than 30% of their income toward rent, underscoring the gap between market rates and wages.
This trend is especially obvious in San Francisco, CA, where just 0.03% of rentals on the market are listed for under $1,000. The nationwide average is 7.5%.
So what’s happening in the rental market? Why does SF have so few rentals for under $1,000 per month? Let’s dive in to find out.
In San Francisco, CA, there are almost zero apartment listings for under $1,000
San Francisco has the third-lowest share of rental listings below $1,000 in the country, at just 0.03% – a dip from 0.37% last year. San Francisco has so few $1,000 rentals largely because of its high median asking rent, which currently sits at $2,683. The nationwide median asking rent is $1,634.
San Francisco has been on somewhat of a rent rollercoaster since the pandemic. The median asking rent rose more than $750 from February 2020 to April 2022, reaching $3,455. This increase was largely due to a decade of extreme housing appreciation, leaving homeownership out of reach for even wealthy renters and pushing them into rentership.
However, once the pandemic-induced migration boom started, many renters with well-paying remote work decided to move somewhere more affordable. This exodus caused demand to plummet, and brought rents down with it. Rents have since dropped by $772. SF, and California on the whole, is still too expensive for many.
San Francisco does have strong protections for most renters, including rent control and eviction protection. For example, renters living in a building built before June 14, 1979, can only have their rents increased by 1.7%, with some caveats. The city also passed a Housing for All Plan that has seen some success. The city still faces a shortage of nearly 6,000 affordable homes, and is building them too slowly.
This lack of super affordable apartments has had consequences. When accounting for the entire San Francisco renter population, 47% were rent burdened (spent more than 30% of their income on housing) in 2023. Nearly a quarter spend over 50% of their income on housing.
What share of renters in San Francisco actually pay less than $1,000/month?
Even though $1,000 listings are almost nonexistent, 15.1% of San Francisco renters still pay less than $1,000 per month. This share is tied to the apartment unit and not an individual renter.
A higher share of SF residents pay less than $1,000 per month because many signed leases long ago when rents were much lower, they live in subsidized (usually via Section 8) or public housing, or live in a rent-controlled apartment.
Unsurprisingly, the share of renters spending less than $1,000 on rent has dropped in the past decade, from 20.3% in 2012 to 15% today. However, this drop is relatively small compared to some other metros, which gives credence to its strong rent control policies. In nearby Orlando, for example, nearly 50% of renters spent less than $1,000 on rent in 2012. Today, that figure has dropped to just 11%.
The share of $1,000 rentals has declined nationwide
Nationwide, 7.5% of listings on the market cost less than $1,000. This is a 0.1 percentage point (ppts) increase from the same time last year, but well below the 10% share in September 2019. Why are $1,000 rentals becoming less common?
The primary reason is because rents have increased dramatically. Rents skyrocketed during the pandemic because of a moving frenzy, housing boom, and lack of new construction. They reached a record high of $1,700 in August 2022, with some metros seeing $700 increases over only a few months.
Rents have since stopped rising and even declined in a few places over the past few months, but are still up nearly 21% from before the pandemic. This has massively strained lower-income renters.
How many renters nationwide pay less than $1,000/month?
Nationwide, 32.1% of renter households pay under $1,000 in monthly rent. This far outweighs the share of $1,000 listings, but is the lowest share on record. In comparison, 37% of renters paid less than $1,000 in 2022, and in 2012, the share was 50.4%.
This gap exists largely because many renters signed their leases years ago when housing was more affordable. Many of these renters are also staying put because they can’t afford the typical apartment on the market today. Property owners do often raise rents for existing tenants, but these increases are usually smaller than the increases they apply when seeking a new tenant.
Renters who are paying less than $1,000 a month are also more likely to have lived in their apartment for five years or longer.
Metro-level highlights
Around the country, there are 13 metros that have less than 1% of rentals listed for under $1,000, while 7 metros have fewer than 0.1%. The four metros with the lowest share of $1,000 rentals are New York (0.01%), Miami (0.02%), San Francisco (0.03%), and Washington, D.C. (0.03%). Median asking rents in these areas all top $2,000.
At the other end of the spectrum, five metros have over 20% of rentals listed for under $1,000: New Orleans (27.2%), Memphis (26.7%), Cleveland (24.9%), Houston (24.3%), and St. Louis (22.2%). These places are all among the most affordable for renters in the country, with median rents around $400 below the national average.
It’s worth noting that many of the most affordable metros have seen large rent increases lately – likely because low rents have fueled a rise in demand. The median asking rent in Cleveland, for example, rose 11.1% year over year in September – one of the largest jumps in the country. Louisville also saw a sizable increase.
When looking at the share of renters paying less than $1,000, New Orleans tops the charts at 63.5%, with Cleveland (63.5%) and Louisville (57.6%) close behind.
Two interesting metros are Phoenix and Las Vegas, which saw some of the largest year-over-year declines in the share of renters paying under $1,000. Phoenix dropped 15.7 ppts (28.1% to 12.4%), and Las Vegas fell 14.7 ppts (32.5% to 17.8%). Both cities surged in popularity during the pandemic, which drove up demand for housing and, in turn, rents.
$1,000 rentals: Complete metro-level data
Methodology
Based on a Redfin analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Redfin.com, and Rent.com.
The data on the share of rental housing by price point and length of stay comes from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2012-2023 American Community Surveys (ACS*) for units in apartment buildings with five or more units. 2020 data is excluded due to pandemic-related data collection issues. This data has been inflation-adjusted and represents 2023 dollars.
The data on the share of rental listings by price point comes from Redfin and Rent. and covers units in apartment buildings with five or more units. This data, which is based on asking rents, has been inflation-adjusted to reflect values in September 2024 dollars.
*ACS data was retrieved from IPUMS USA:
Steven Ruggles, Sarah Flood, Matthew Sobek, Daniel Backman, Annie Chen, Grace Cooper, Stephanie Richards, Renae Rodgers, and Megan Schouweiler. IPUMS USA: Version 15.0 [dataset]. Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS, 2024. https://doi.org/10.18128/D010.V15.0
