San Francisco's outrageous rent hits a new peak of $3,690, highest in the US

The median price for a one bedroom apartment hit that new high before expected IPOs of Airbnb, Uber and Lyft this year.

Ian Sherr Contributor and Former Editor at Large / News

Ian Sherr (he/him/his) grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, so he's always had a connection to the tech world. As an editor at large at CNET, he wrote about Apple, Microsoft, VR, video games and internet troubles. Aside from writing, he tinkers with tech at home, is a longtime fencer -- the kind with swords -- and began woodworking during the pandemic.

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Ian Sherr

Feb. 28, 2019 1:21 p.m. PT

2 min read

Get your Kleenex ready.

The median rent for a one bedroom apartment in San Francisco has reached a new peak of $3,690, according to survey data from Zumper, a home and apartment rental app. That's also a rise of nearly 9 percent from the same time last year, the survey found.

Not only are those figures high enough to make your bank account cringe, but they're also nearly 30 percent higher than New York City and more than double the prices in Miami. Seattle, home to Amazon and Microsoft, rang in at $1,970 and Washington, DC, hit $2,150.

Oh, and by the way, while San Francisco's prices rose, the median price of one bedroom apartments across the US dropped nearly half a percent during this same time. That means while San Francisco's prices climbed, the country's prices fell.

"Though there may be a ton of cash flowing through the city and surrounding areas soon, many of these workers will not immediately invest in a home and may, instead, take their money to both travel and upgrade their rental situation," Zumper wrote in a blog post Thursday.

The survey data, though likely unsurprising, underscores the challenges the tech industry faces in its home turf of the San Francisco Bay Area. The shocking success that's helped make companies like Apple , Google and Facebook titans of industry has created an estimated 74 billionaires and nearly 150,000 millionaires.

Add in the fact that there isn't enough housing to go around, and prices have naturally skyrocketed. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development said last year that a family of four earning up to $117,400 qualified as "low income" in the city.

With expected tech IPOs from San Francisco-based companies like Airbnb , Pinterest, Slack, Uber and Lyft , all likely to mint many more millionaires and draw even more people to the city, there's little hope for relief.