\u201cWe weren\u2019t really seeing as much AI funding coming in. But now, we\u2019ve seen a huge boom of AI buyers that are really pushing the market up,\u201d he said. \u201cIt certainly feels like the rental market is tighter than it\u2019s been in a long time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The average monthly rent for a 579-square-foot apartment \u2014 a typical one bedroom, one bathroom \u2014 is around $3,745<\/a> per month, up by 13 percent<\/a> from last year, and higher than around 97 percent<\/a> of the national median.<\/p>\n Roughly 59 percent<\/a> of San Francisco renters pay more than $3,000 monthly. It\u2019s not clear how much of this increase is directly attributable to the AI industry, but it\u2019s safe to say that the job sector with the largest growth<\/a> in San Francisco is at least somewhat responsible for rising costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n George Lipp, a contributor to Mission Local and longtime Mission resident, created a database to track Mission rental listings posted to Craigslist since April 2021. He has noticed a sharp decline in availability starting in early 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never seen fewer places available,\u201d Lipp said.<\/p>\n Gabriel, a student at San Francisco State University, was crashing at his friend\u2019s place while he looked for his own apartment after returning from a study abroad program in Spain. He said he applied to dozens of places.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI wasn\u2019t getting anything,\u201d he said. He had pretty much given up hope when he had a stroke of\u00a0luck: His girlfriend\u2019s brother knew some real-estate agents in the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis guy said he only had one more room left,\u201d he said. He got it. \u201cI don\u2019t even know what I\u2019d be doing right now.\u201d<\/p>\n Although consulting real-estate agents for apartment hunting may have been uncommon in the past, the competitive and chaotic market in San Francisco has created a need for guidance from those most familiar with the market.<\/p>\n Gabriel is paying $875 a month to live with four roommates in Crocker-Amazon. He makes around $1,300 a month working a part-time job, with rent taking up a significant chunk of his monthly salary: 67 percent.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rodway, who has been a real-estate agent in San Francisco for 10 years, said it is basically an issue of a lot of demand and not enough supply.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cRenters and purchasers are all scrambling for a limited inventory,\u201d he said. \u201cSan Francisco is a tight inventory city. It\u2019s a limited geography,\u201d he said. \u201cIf someone sees a property that came onto Zillow today, and they say, \u2018I\u2019m interested,\u2019 it could be gone in three days.\u201d<\/p>\n The scramble, from renters and real-estate agents, results in a stressful and confusing experience, driving some, like Cardona, out of the city proper. But no matter the hustle, there continue to be renters determined to stick it out.<\/p>\n Lucas Vargas Zeppetello is currently renting in Oakland and is looking to move to the city. He grew up in the Richmond District, but moved out of state for school, returning to the Bay Area in 2024 to take up a teaching position at the University of California, Berkeley\u2019s Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management.\u00a0<\/p>\n Vargas Zeppetello knows finding a place will be hard, but he says it\u2019s worth it.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel, more than I have felt elsewhere, that the people I know from San Francisco have this incredible pride of place,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople really value being from the city. It\u2019s something that actually means something to people.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tralane Cardona arrived in San Francisco on Jan. 12, ready to start a new job at Aramark, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[1011,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-191366","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-housing","9":"tag-san-francisco","10":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","11":"tag-san-francisco-news","12":"tag-sf","13":"tag-sf-headlines","14":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Three](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/hot-pot-guide-2.jpg\")
Sunset apartments. Photo by Junyao Yang on Dec. 23, 2025. <\/p>\n