There should be no more talk of a “San Francisco exodus,” as rents are spiking here more than anywhere in the nation, and apartments are leasing faster in SF than in any other city in the US.

San Francisco went through a phase for the past couple years where we were the only major US metropolitan area where rents stayed below pre-pandemic levels, while the other cities saw their rents breaking the pre-pandemic ceiling. But that trend started to reverse around late 2024 and early 2025, when data began showing that SF rents were rising at a faster rate than anywhere in the US.

Well sorry apartment-hunters, but that trend is now accelerating even more, even if rent levels haven't quite reached 2019 levels yet. The Chronicle reports that San Francisco apartments are leasing faster than in any other city, or at least faster than any other city that the online marketplace Apartment List assessed in their most recent study. And the Chronicle speculates, probably correctly, that San Francisco’s AI hiring spree is the cause of this apartment madness.

The Chronicle sifts through Apartment Lists’s data, and finds that the average number of days a San Francisco apartment sits on the market before finding a taker is currently 20 days (that number was an average of 46.7 days as recently as January 2024). That’s the shortest average “days on market” figure SF has seen since July 2019, when it was 18.2 days.

That data also shows that SF rents have jumped by 12% over the last year, higher than any other US metro that the analysis took into account. That conclusion is backed up by another study published last month by Zumper, which KTVU reports showed that SF rents had increased by 13% between July 2024 and July 2025. That report also includes micro neighborhood data, showing the largest annual rent increases were in Hayes Valley (13.5% increase), South of Market (11.4%), Civic Center (10.9%) and South Beach (9.3%).

And for good measure, Zillow is chiming in too with their own data saying that the average SF apartment rent has increased by $250 over the last year (and $150 in just the last month!). That platform pegs the current average San Francisco rent at $3,650 (across units of all sizes), while Zumper has it at $3,400.

Critics will say that this is because San Francisco hasn’t built much housing stock in recent years, and that’s true. But market conditions like high interest rates and construction costs have been keeping housing projects in limbo for years, and developers are often not building even when they’ve got permits to do so.

None of that is likely to change in the short term, so we probably have to get used to that fact that San Francisco is once again going to be one of the most exceptionally high-rent cities in the nation.

Related: Rents Rose Last Year In SF Faster Than Any Other US City [SFist]

Image: SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - JUNE 02: A "for rent" sign posted on the exterior of an apartment building on June 02, 2021 in San Francisco, California. After San Francisco rental prices plummeted during the pandemic shutdown, prices have surged back to pre-pandemic levels. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)