SF’s rent is through the roof- but not relative to pre-pandemic? Comparison of rent costs across cities and time. – Not Another Substack
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SF’s rent is through the roof- but not relative to pre-pandemic? Comparison of rent costs across cities and time.
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SF’s rent is through the roof- but not relative to pre-pandemic? Comparison of rent costs across cities and time.
August 16, 2026
I just spent some time diving into the market rate historical rental price data on Apartmentlist, and the portrait it paints of different cities is incredible:
Despite continued population increases and 30% inflation during the same period, Austin saw its prices drop 20% since its post-pandemic high in July 2022. This is most readily explained by a surge in construction in response to Austin’s huge surge in rents over 2019-2021. After a wild ride, Austin is back to its pre-pandemic levels.
Denver was another popular destination for pandemic transplants, seeing at 25% increase in rents relative to 2019 peaks, but subsequent production has brought rents down to near their pre-pandemic peaks.
New York bounced back quickly, probably encouraged by strong return-to-work policies in finance and media (I was impressed by how much Andrew Cuomo leaned on big finance businesses to have strong return-to-work policies at the same time that California took a laissez-faire approach). By summer 2022 they were on-track for consistent year-over-year increases in rent as if the pandemic hadn’t happened.
San Francisco’s trajectory is tricky: High pre-pandemic prices collapsed during the pandemic, and remained soft for many years without strong return-to-work enforcement, high office vacancies, and downtown public safety issues. The AI boom and "boom loop" vibes have sent rents up 25% in 2026 YTD after another 12% increase over 2025
Some quick relative comparisons of pre-pandemic peak, mid-pandemic trough, and post-pandemic or recent peaks:
Austin, TXDenver, CONew York City, NYSan Francisco, CA% Change since pre-pandemic max0%1%25%15%% Change since pandemic trough7%9%62%64%% Change trough-to-post-pandemic peak35%24%62%64%% Change pre/post pandemic maxes27%15%25%15%
One surprise from this is that while SF has seen a huge recent rise in rents, it’s still only 15% up from its pre-pandemic max. By comparison, Austin saw prices up 27% from 2019 to their peak in 2022 before they fell due to significant construction, and Denver saw a 15% peak-to-peak increase. When thinking about what level of rental rates might be necessary to incentivize adequate construction, SF may only now be getting to the point where there is a strong market price signal. Given the impact of recent inflation (another 12% in the CPI since July 2022), SF may need to see even higher rents before construction on many projects pencils out. Construction costs in California seem particularly hard-hit by inflation: the California Department of General Services California Construction Costs Index has increased 50% since the July 2019 pre-pandemic rental rate highs. This would suggest that a project which penciled in 2019 would need a very substantial increase in rents to be able to pencil with 2026 construciton costs.
These findings roughly track the RAND comparison of multifamily housing costs in Texas, Colorado, and California- though the cheaper cost of housing in Texas and Colorado may make the market more responsive through having lower unit costs, and there’s a complicated interplay with SF’s market dynamics where only luxury projects pencil, reducing the effective market capacity and making development riskier.
A few caveats:
There may be reporting inconsistencies between municipalities, making the comparison within a city much more useful than the comparisons between cities. See Apartmentlist’s methodology notes.
NYC has a relatively large inventory of (tiny) studios and 1- and 2-bedroom units, while SF has a larger inventory of single-family homes and large victorians in which many roommates may live together, skewing SF’s rent numbers higher.
The rent numbers do not appear to be inflation-adjusted, but any treatment isn’t clear in Apartmentlist’s documentation.
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