Comment by dahart | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dahart | Hacker News Reader

Top 5 cities: LA $2600, San Jose $2502, SF $2333, NY $2141, San Diego $2058

It's been a while since I lived in the Bay Area, but has San Jose really surpassed San Francisco? Or is this a function of SJ having larger apartments than SF on average, or something like that?

I wonder if the list would be quite different for a specific type of apartment. A single renter living in 800 square feet will probably pay a lot more (I speculate) in NY than San Jose? Where a family of four living in 1200 square feet (not the norm, I realize) might not even be able to find a place in a few of these cities.

Bottom 5 cities: Toledo $550, Memphis $728, Glendale AZ $751, Kansas City $885, Lincoln NE $907

The average for the lowest cities is surprisingly high. This makes me curious about Toledo -- how is the lowest rent city 25% lower than the next lowest? That seems like an outlier. Is Toledo out of space, or depressed, or only renting studio apartments or something? How does Toledo compare to Detroit, where it's easy to find a small apartment in the $400s?

Toledo is a depressed version of Detroit, being its less rich next door sister city. It was even more exposed to automotive (Jeep). Though to be honest, it wasn’t that bad when I lived there in the 80s.

The article explicitly states that they are measuring the amount people actually pay, not per unit rented. So a person renting in SF might pay less for a more expensive unit compared to one in LA only because the person in SF is sharing rent with more people.

Also, 1/3 of rental housing in SF is rent controlled, meaning that rent increases are limited to a fraction of the CPI. This causes a large difference between current market rates and what established tenants pay. It explains both the low prices reported here, and some of the seeming discrepancy between wages and housing costs as reported by market sources.

I pay $1550 for a small studio in SF. My neighbor pays less than $300 for his apartment, which is the same size as mine. I've lived there since 2016, he has lived there since 1985-ish.

I believe price per square foot is higher in SF/NY than San Jose, but I think the reasons that median rent is higher in San Jose are partially due to the following:

- SF and NY have always had a high percentage of renters and a long history of rent control, skewing the actual amount people are paying in rent down.

- San Jose is closer than SF to the highest paying tech jobs, driving the median income in SJ (according to some studies) to the highest in the nation and supporting rental increases.

- As luxury apartments are a relatively newer addition to San Jose, the rents being paid are going to be higher than a 20 year occupant of a sweet rent controlled apartment in the city.

So the reason San Jose rent is showing as more expensive than SF/NY is largely due to the metrics of this particular study. However, as tech companies are continuing to heavily invest in the South Bay and Peninsula, I would expect to see a continued upward trend in San Jose median income and rent.

"The average for the lowest cities is surprisingly high."

The list is based on the 100 most populous cities so I'm not sure what their point was for the least expensive cities. Higher populations generally mean higher prices.

>It's been a while since I lived in the Bay Area, but has San Jose really surpassed San Francisco?

Maybe it's because most of the cheaper more "suburban" areas near San Jose are Cupertino, Sanrta Clara, and Santa Cruz - cities in their own right whereas SF has a wide variety of rents within it's borders. (For example, outer sunset is much cheaper than SOMA.)

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