Rents in San Jose slide for third consecutive month

Apartment rents in San Jose have tumbled for three consecutive months, while rents across the nation rose slightly.

The median asking rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the city in December was $2,500, down 1.6 percent from November, while the median price for a two-bedroom unit fell 0.3 percent to $3,130, the Silicon Business Journal reported, citing Zumper.

The median monthly rent for a one-bedroom flat in San Jose peaked at $2,800 in late July, as rent on a two-bedroom unit topped out at around $3,300 through mid-September, according to Zumper, a rental listing service.

San Jose isn’t the only city where rents have cooled. Austin, Phoenix and Boise, Idaho — which became popular “Zoomtown” destinations for remote workers during the pandemic — saw rental rates for one-bedroom apartments remain flat this month from November, according to Zumper.

“Rent prices are nearly always a harbinger of other economic indicators,” Zumper CEO Anthemos Georgiades said in a statement. “We’re seeing pandemic-era trends begin to unwind, and we expect that to accelerate — in nearly every sector of the economy — over the next six months or more.”

The fall in rents in San Jose comes during a steep plunge in the area’s home values. It also comes as the rest of the nation saw an uptick in rental rates.

Nationwide, rents rose by less than 0.5 percent from November to December.

Despite the drop in prices in San Jose, rents are still up compared to a year ago. The price of a one-bedroom apartment this month is 8.2 percent higher than it was in December 2021, while two-bedroom units cost 11.8 percent more than they did a year ago, according to Zumper.

The city remains among the priciest in the country. Rent on a median one-bedroom apartment is tied with San Diego for the fifth highest rate in the U.S.

New York has the highest prices countrywide, with a median rate of $3,740 a month for one-bedroom apartments and $4,340 a month for two-bedroom units. It’s followed by Boston, San Francisco and Miami.

The median price for a one-bedroom apartment nationwide is $1,497 a month and $1,822 monthly for a two-bedroom. Zumper figures rents from its database and other rental listings.

In greater the San Francisco and San Jose market, rents fell 2 percent last month from their high in August, double the nationwide drop during the same period.

Meanwhile, rents in San Francisco still haven’t caught up with overall rents before the pandemic, a symptom of the city’s Downtown office slump. The median apartment rent in San Francisco was $2,238 last month, a 10.9 percent drop from March 2020.

— Dana Bartholomew