San Francisco Rents Up, Los Angeles Rents Down in New Report

Rent price changes in San Francisco and Los Angeles over the past year tell a tale of two very different cities.

San Francisco rents in January were up 13 percent from a year before, while the median rent in Los Angeles fell 1.8 percent during the same period, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, citing new data from Apartment List. San Francisco saw the highest rate since late 2019, while Los Angeles had the lowest rate since 2021.

Supply is believed to be one of the biggest contributors to the gap between the two cities.

“San Francisco has had a declining multifamily construction pipeline since 2018, whereas L.A. remained elevated through 2022,” Rob Warnock, lead economic researcher at Apartment List, told the Chronicle.

Last year, 15,095 multifamily units were completed in the Los Angeles area, marking an 18 percent increase from the year before, per CoStar data cited by the Chronicle. In San Francisco, housing completions declined sharply after the pandemic, with 2024 seeing the lowest number of finished projects in a decade with 1,597. The years of “strong production” in Los Angeles “are paying dividends today by providing more apartments to absorb demand longer,” Warnock said.

With the market flush with new supply, the vacancy rate in Los Angeles rose to a four-year high in January of 6.1 percent. San Francisco’s was down to 3.3 percent, below the 4 percent registered in 2019.

The influx of artificial intelligence companies to San Francisco and growth of current tenants like OpenAI and Anthropic are expected to drive up demand for residences in the city and across the Bay Area in the coming years.

Prices are already following suit in San Francisco as heightened demand meets diminished supply. In the 94158 zip code that includes OpenAI and Nvidia’s homes in Mission Bay, rents have increased 36 percent over the past year, while the surrounding 94107 zip code including South of Market, Potrero Hill and Dogpatch are up 21 percent. “Demand is skyrocketing thanks to the AI industry,” Warnock said.

Last year, CBRE predicted that AI companies’ expansion could bring up to 60,000 new jobs to San Francisco, but job numbers in both San Francisco and Los Angeles tell a different story. Los Angeles County lost a net 6,700 jobs between December 2024 and December 2025, while San Francisco and San Mateo County together lost a net 4,400 jobs during that time, including 4,500 job losses in the tech-heavy information sector.

— Chris Malone Méndez