As the first Covid-19 lockdowns began in the U.S. last year, the cost to rent a place in San Francisco began plunging. By December, prices were down 35% year over year as those able to work remotely moved to smaller cities and suburbs nearby.
Even more than a year later, the gap in the city between actual rent prices and pre-pandemic projected rent prices — representing what prices would look like if they had followed their historical course — remains the highest in the country, according to new research published by real estate aggregator Apartment List. In San Francisco, actual June 2021 rents are still 16.2% lower than their pre-pandemic projections. The same pattern can be observed across 21 of the largest and most expensive U.S. housing markets, among them New York City, Washington, D.C., Boston and Seattle.
Nationwide though, the trend looks different: The gap between actual and projected prices closed for the first time in May, according to Rob Warnock, Apartment List senior researcher and author of the research.
