San Francisco apartment rent prices are dropping fast as tech companies embrace remote work and unemployment rises

* The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco fell 11.8% year over year in June, following a 9% year-over-year drop in May.

* Tech companies like Twitter and Facebook are embracing remote work on a long-term basis, leading some tech workers to leave the city as they will no longer need to commute to an office.

* Rising unemployment thanks to the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown may also be a factor.

New monthly data from apartment rental platform Zumper shows San Francisco rents were down nearly 12% year over year in June, making the city's decline the largest in the nation, and a record slide for San Francisco.  It's also the second consecutive month San Francisco rental prices have dropped, says the company, which based these statistics on 9,000 listings in San Francisco.

According to Zumper, the median rental price for a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco fell 11.8% year over year, from $3,720 to $3,280, beating May's 9% drop. The survey also reports a 1% uptick in national rents, with the average median apartment in the U. S. renting for $1,229 in June.

"Zumper has been tracking rent prices across the country for over five years but we have never seen the market fluctuate quite like this," says Zumper co-founder and CEO Anthemos Georgiades. "For example, rent prices in San Francisco have historically only gone up and typically only incrementally, yet now we are seeing double-digit percent rent reductions. This is unprecedented for this generation of renters."

The new numbers reflect prices in June, just weeks after Twitter and Facebook announced many employees currently working from home during the coronavirus pandemic could continue to do so permanently. As many tech workers in San Francisco mull their newfound geographic freedom, Georgiades says, the city's real estate market is rapidly changing.

Georgiades says the dramatic dip is due in part to "the very real move of many mainly technology employers to a future of remot... (Read more)

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