San Francisco Luxury Apartments Being Bid Up by Renters

An increase in relocations and a lack of inventory has pushed up prices in San Francisco’s luxury rental market, leading to bidding wars on apartments at the upper end, according to leasing agents.

Zillow shows nearly 70 units available for rent in the city at over $10,000 a month, with a six-bedroom, 6.5 bathroom single-family home overlooking the “crooked” part of Lombard Street asking the highest price on the site at $35,000.

“The rental market is absolutely insane,” said Compass leasing agent Inna Rubinchik, who works mostly in the city’s luxury northside neighborhoods like Pacific Heights and Cow Hollow.

Nearly every property Rubinchik’s leased this year went for over the asking price. She has a new single-family home listing with seven bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms and 3,700 square feet coming on in Pacific Heights next month that went for $19,000 when it was last available three years ago. This time around she’s asking about 30 percent more: $25,000. That’s how much she got for her biggest lease so far this year: a house in Cow Hollow with five bedrooms and 4,000 square feet.

Rubinchik noticed an uptick in rental interest starting in 2023, when she said many of her clients were people who bought San Francisco homes during the heights of the early pandemic market, when money was cheap and they were panicked about missing out. The FOMO led them to buy properties that were “big mistakes” for one reason or another, she said, either the wrong neighborhood, or with the wrong layout or in need of expensive renovations. They started renting out the places that didn’t suit them and moved to rentals they’d prefer to live in instead, so they didn’t have to sell at a loss or give up their 2.5 percent interest rates.

These already local renters have now been joined by those relocating or returning to the city. Many prefer both the flexibility and lower monthly payment of renting, she said. She just leased out a home in the Central Richmond for $10,000 a month and estimates that between mortgage payments, insurance and property taxes the same home would cost upwards of $17,000 a month to buy.

“San Francisco is a very particular crowd. These are highly educated, extremely savvy people who know how to make money, how to spend money and how to count money,” she said. “So they just run the numbers and they’re like, it makes more sense to rent.”

Downtown luxury high-rises are also seeing renewed interest, according to Shalini Sadda, a leasing agent with City Real Estate who is on the board of the East Cut Community Benefits District.

That waterfront downtown neighborhood has been popular with both the typical young, single renter that many associate with downtown living, she said, as well as older C-suite renters looking for a second-home in the city, and families with young children attracted to the neighborhood’s playgrounds, preschools and dog parks.

No matter the age or stage in life, many of these downtown renters are reacting to return-to-office mandates or relocating due to some connection with the growing artificial intelligence scene in the city, she said.

“We’re expecting a lot of AI companies to take possession of office spaces downtown, which triggers people wanting to live and work closer to their offices,” Sadda said.

She noticed the pace picking up in April, when a two-bedroom, two-bath rental she listed for $5,695 a month in the MIRA, a luxury condo near the Embarcadero, was bid up to over $6,000.

“We hadn’t seen that in years,” she said of recent bidding wars, adding that rents in amenitized downtown high-rises are about 5 to 7 percent higher than they were a year ago.

Zumper defines “luxury listings” as studios through four bedrooms that are in the top 75th percentile for price, according to the listing site’s spokesperson Crystal Chen. Overall median rent for these top-tier units in San Francisco as of May 2025 was $5,595 a month, up about 9.7 percent year-over-year. That makes sense given that rental rates for San Francisco one- and two-bedroom apartments at any price point are up 11.9 percent and 14.2 percent, respectively, in the same period, she said.

“As high-income renters return to the city amid ongoing return-to-office mandates, demand for amenity-rich, top-tier apartments is climbing,” Chen said. “This renewed interest, combined with the seasonal surge in activity during peak moving season, is intensifying competition and placing additional upward pressure on rents.”

Median rents citywide are still lower than before the pandemic, but since 2019, the number of millionaire renter households in San Francisco has more than quadrupled, climbing to 1,411 from 321, according to Yardi data. That’s the second-highest number nationwide, after New York.

Interest should remain high all summer long, as many people have lease expirations over the summer and also choose to relocate then, according to Sadda. Rubinchik said summer is hot but “there are no seasons, especially on the high-end,” with some people moving at the end of the year and pre-paying for the whole following year upfront.

Those able to plunk down hundreds of thousands of dollars at once are also a “very picky” crowd, Rubinchik said, typically looking for something “modern and new and sexy with outdoor space and privacy” and often not finding it, thus leading to frenzied competition when something that does tick all the boxes hits the market.

“If you want to make a lot of money, if you really want to maximize the rent on your property and bring it up to snuff, make it sexy, make it exciting because you’ll be in a league of your own,” she said she advises her owner clients. “You’re not going to have any competition whatsoever.”

For the downtown crowd, renters most want a gym, then a pool and a hot tub, then a lobby concierge and entertainment spaces that can expand their often-small personal quarters, Sadda said. In their apartment, people still want room for a desk, but they aren’t working at home as much so they don’t need a dedicated second bedroom for an office. The building and surrounding neighborhood must feel safe as well.

Renters can sometimes turn into buyers in the city’s still-struggling condo market, but apartments give them a chance to try out the neighborhood or building before deciding to make a bigger commitment, Sadda said. It also gives them a chance to save up for a down payment.

“People want to test it out and see if they like living there before they make large purchases,” she said.