The US Cities With the Highest Rents
A for rent sign is posted in front of an apartment building on Sept. 01, 2020 in San Francisco, where one-bedroom apartments were less expensive than in Boston in October this year, according to one ranking. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
An East Coast metro scooted by San Francisco to become the second-most expensive for a one-bedroom apartment this month. As nationally, growth in rent prices showed signs of slowing.
Boston passed San Francisco to become the second-most expensive U.S. city for one-bedroom apartment rent in October, according to a monthly ranking.
The Zumper National Rent Report shows that, overall, residential rents were cooling this month. Prices eased in so-called "Zoomtowns" that attracted remote workers during the pandemic and nearly every city on the list in Florida exhibited month-over-month declines.
But the report flagged Boston's ascent on the list as the month's most "surprising" development. Median one-bedroom rent in Boston was up 5.9% in October compared to September, to $3,060, according to Zumper, which is a real estate listing company. The two-bedroom median in the city is now $3,500, a 4.2% rise over September.
The one-bedroom price in Boston was slightly higher than San Francisco, where the one-bedroom median was $3,020, a 2.6% slide. The two-bedroom median in San Francisco was $4,060. New York City stayed atop the list. The median price for a one-bedroom there was $3,860. For a two-bedroom it was $4,300.
The report pointed out that Boston, like other major U.S. metro areas, has a shortage of housing. But it also notes that, as a hub for major colleges and universities, an autumn influx of students is a likely driver of what affected prices this month.
"We can expect prices to soften a bit now that students have settled into their new homes and we enter what is traditionally the low season for renting across the country," the report said.
Cities that had previously seen steeply rising rents that saw one-bedroom apartment rents sag this month compared to September included: San Jose, California (down 6.1%); Tulsa, Oklahoma (down 5.9%); San Diego, California (down 4.6%) and Seattle (down 3.9%).
National one-bedroom median rent is down 0.8% over last month, to $1,491 and the two-bedroom median slipped 0.7% to $1,832, the report said. Still, rent nationwide was up year-over-year 9.2%.
"In many metro areas, declining prices are actually a correction to prices that’d become overly inflated," Zumper CEO Anthemos Georgiades said in a statement.
"We saw historic levels of migration throughout the pandemic, as people switched to working from home and re-imagined their living situations," Georgiades added. "Now—with a turbulent, unpredictable economy causing fear of recession—migrations are slowing, occupancy rates are falling and rent prices are following suit.”
Zumper says its monthly index looks at data from over one million active rental listings across the country to come up with median asking rents for the top 100 most populous cities. The company's full report and index can be found here.
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