Bay Area Home Prices Jump as Apartment Rents See Drastic Cuts

While rents in the Bay Area apartment market took one of the hardest hits in the country in 2020, single-family home prices soared. The San Francisco Bay Area has the most expensive home prices in the country, with a median sale price of an existing single-family home approaching $1.6 million as of December 2020, according to the California Association of Realtors. Over the past five years, the median sale price of an existing single-family home in the Bay Area increased an average of 7% annually. In just 2020, prices climbed over 16%. Meanwhile, average effective asking rents for apartments in the Bay Area fell nearly 14% in 2020, one of the worst declines nationwide. In the four years before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, rents in the Bay Area were climbing an average of 2.6% annually. Despite recent declines, apartment rents in the Bay Area were still steep, at roughly $2,500 per month, at the end of 2020. These were the second-most expensive rates nationally, behind only New York ($3,100).