San Francisco Rents Animation.

Three Years of San Francisco Rent Prices by Neighborhood from The Bold Italic on Vimeo.
Chris Rutherford at The Bold Italic prepared this animation from data collected at Zillow that shows rising rents in San Francisco over the past three years.

What's great is that the animation focuses on different neighborhoods, not the city as a whole. Clearly, there are certain areas of the city that are exploding in value and others that are not. The Marina District and St. Francis Woods - off the charts.

However, if you are willing to live in the Tenderloin District, you might find something reasonable. Well, acceptable compared to downtown San Francisco and midtown Manhattan rents, that is. If you're working at Target, you're likely not living downtown.

New York City and San Francisco are the hottest real estate market in the country, running neck and neck for most unaffordable places for the average worker to live. But if you are a young person drawing a huge tech salary, $4000 a month is probably just some spare change to you. Well, as long as you keep your job.

If you are interested in the entire city:

• In December 2010, the average rent in San Francisco was $US3005
• In December 2011, the average rent was a little lower at $US2836
• But in December 2012, it shot back up, hitting $US3215
• In  December 2013, it was up again by a little under $US200, to $US3403
• The average for April 2014 was $3605. So a $200 average increase in just four months!

So rents increased in San Francisco from an average of about $3000 to $3605 in a little over three years. Nice if you're a landlord!

There are many ways to spin these numbers so that they don't appear so formidable. The high end is going through the roof, raising the city average, while other parts of the city remain at least manageable.

Clearly, if you want to live in the nicer parts of town or simply don't know the city very well, or don't have time to look around much, you're going to pay - and pay dearly. New grads who are taking a huge paycheck (for how long?) at some tech giant or law firm probably don't know any better and will grab some overpriced place by the marina and not save a penny rather than venture out among the hoi polloi.

And so it goes. Same as it's ever been.

2020