San Diego rents declined more than 19 of 20 top US markets after surge in supply
by littlexsparkee on 4/22/2026, 1:21:09 AM
Comments
by: Ancalagon
I’m gonna also say this is because biotech is in decline and major employers are pulling out. People straight up can’t afford to live there on their own.
4/22/2026, 3:23:06 AM
by: exabrial
Incredible. So what you're saying is... we should just build more housing? Who would have thought that was the answer?
4/22/2026, 1:56:18 AM
by: thelastgallon
Austin’s Surge of New Housing Construction Drove Down Rents: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47433058">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47433058</a>
4/22/2026, 2:37:04 AM
by: bix6
> San Francisco led the nation in annual rent growth this month, with both one and two-bedroom prices hitting new all-time highs, marking the highest levels in over a decade of Zumper data. One-bedroom rent climbed 18.4% to $3,790, surpassing its previous peak of $3,720 set in June 2019, while two-bedrooms rose 22.6% to $5,270, exceeding the prior high of $5,120 recorded in September 2025.<p>From the Zumper report. 22% gain on SF 2B is just insane to me.
4/22/2026, 2:55:08 AM
by: thelastgallon
> San Diego sits at the 11th most expensive rental market in the nation, according to the report, with the median rent for a 1-bedroom at $2,200. Median rent for 2-bedroom apartments is $2,950.
4/22/2026, 2:39:34 AM
by: rossdavidh
Should note that "top US markets" really means "most expensive US markets", not for example the largest by population.
4/22/2026, 2:00:34 AM
by: Apreche
But what about the desirability of San Diego? Was the decrease in rent only because of the increase in supply, or is there also lower demand?
4/22/2026, 2:09:55 AM
by: diogenescynic
It's always funny when people see the law of supply and demand in effect.
4/22/2026, 3:18:26 AM
by: jmyeet
So the source for this (which is stated and linked in the article) is something called the Zumper National Rent Report [1]. For anyone curious, this is their methodology [2]. This seems to be a measure of <i>active listings based on advertised prices</i>. So it's not necessarily an indicator of if those listings close and at what price (eg in hot markets, people can offer above the listed price). But it seems reasonably well-regarded.<p>I'm not sure where the "19 of 20" comes from because I grabbed the data from the report into a Google Sheet and sorted and it's not #19 by 1br Y/Y, 2br Y/Y or average rent. What it shows is 1br -5.6% and 2br -7.5% Y/Y. LA was -3.6%/-2.5%.<p>It's hard to find a comparable city to this because there aren't actually a lot of coastal cities in the US that aren't mega-cities (eg Boston, New York, Miami, Houston).<p>It seems like San Diego built ~4000 new housing units in 2025 with a population of ~1.4M. For comparison, Miami seems to have added ~18,000 but it's population also exceeds 6M so is that a fair comparison?<p>My point here is that the direct evidence linking building new housing units to changes in rent is weak.<p>Not that I'm opposed to building by any means but simply blindly building more units is by itself not an answer. It depends on what you build, where you build it and whether you allow effective or actual cartels to monopolize that supply.<p>Take Manhattan as an extreme example. There has been a ton of building along so-called Billionaire's Row and also some pockets in the Financial District, West Chelsea, the UES and so on. A lot of this stock is the so-called ultra-luxury market. Prices for some of these new units are now exceeding $7000/sq ft.<p>That is going to help absolutely nobody. Ultra-wealthy non-residents will park money there and that's it. This blind assumption that it will eventually become prole housing is ludicrous.<p>Housing should primarily be for shelter, not a speculative asset or investment vehicle to get wealthy by denying someone else shelter.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/national-rent-report" rel="nofollow">https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/national-rent-report</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://www.zumper.com/blog/our-methodology-empowering-the-renter-with-data/" rel="nofollow">https://www.zumper.com/blog/our-methodology-empowering-the-r...</a>
4/22/2026, 3:22:32 AM
by: dmitrygr
Increase in supply lowers equilibrium price? Somebody, pinch me!
4/22/2026, 1:30:34 AM
by: nine_zeros
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4/22/2026, 2:59:13 AM
by: throwaway27448
What is this country's allergy with public housing? Not pursuing that feels like jumping in water with our hands tied behind our backs
4/22/2026, 2:07:26 AM
by: abdullahkhalids
Lots of people quoting basic supply and demand.<p>People in the year 1500 could pretty reliably tell you that a rock would fall down if you released it from a height. People would also tell you that if you threw it up and away, it would go up in an arc and fall down.<p>The innovation that Newtown and friends brought about was they made quantitative predictions about the rate at which the rock would fall down, or the arc it would follow - both to pretty high level of accuracy.<p>The point is that, of course, building more houses has a tendency to reduce rents. The question is whether reduction is -0.1% or -10% or there is an increase of +5% because some other factor was more dominant. It would be very hard for policy makers to argue against building more housing, if there was a quantitative model that predicted exact numbers for how much rent fell down given all relevant factors, and this model had been validated over and over again by prediction (not retrodiction). Rather than "rock fall down if you drop it" model that everyone keeps quoting.
4/22/2026, 2:27:38 AM