Photo of Oakland by Joe Parks via flickr
As San Francisco's doom loop appears to have been reversed, the City’s affordability crisis continues.
A report from real estate marketplace company Zillow dated 30 June 2026 shows the average home value in San Francisco just shy of $1.4 million, up 9.5% from the same time last year. The Apartment List Rent Report from July 2026 shows that the overall median rent in the city jumped 3.2% last month, landing at $3,558. These sudden, record-breaking increases owe to an AI tech boom that has swept the City. In fact, at least one house seller has indicated that they are willing to accept shares of stock in AI companies like Anthropic or OpenAI as payment.
As real estate in San Francisco goes into long demand and short supply, housing market experts have observed that home prices and monthly rent for apartments have gone up in Oakland. According to data gathered by Zumper, a digital real estate marketplace, the median cost for a one-bedroom apartment in Oakland has grown to $2,070 and that of a two-bedroom apartment has grown to $2,600. Although both figures are significantly less than the median rent in San Francisco, this means that if a person was working a minimum wage job in Oakland, after taxes, they would be left with a paltry sum just south of $300, if they rented a one-bedroom solo. Then again, if they were lucky enough to find a stable, reliable roommate (which can easily take a very long time) and go half on a two-bedroom, they could be left with a sum just over a thousand bucks. In either case, they'd still need to take care of food, phone, possibly utilities, public transit, maybe also the expenses of owning and operating a car. Those costs quickly add up, leaving little room for discretionary purchases.
Photo by Basil D Soufi via Wikimedia Commons
Crystal Chen, a spokesperson at Zumper, told SFGate.com, “As long as hiring stays strong and little new housing comes online in San Francisco, the pressure keeps building and pushing renters east. Oakland should continue to absorb some of that spillover demand but I'd expect steadier, more moderate increases rather than the kind of spikes San Francisco is seeing.”
Not surprisingly, the neighborhoods in Oakland seeing increases are the most scenic, walkable and therefore desirable, such as Adams Point, which is on the northern shore of Lake Merritt; Glenview, which is immediately west of Dimond Park, and Laurel, a small enclave a ways northeast of Fruitvale. Also not surprisingly, rental applicants spying those neighborhoods are coming to showings armed with packets filled with introduction letters and written recommendations from current and former employers and previous landlords, ready to apply on the spot. Indeed, things are getting competitive.
Crystal Chen recommends that people hunting for apartments in those neighborhoods act fast. "Don’t sit on a place you like, because chances are it’ll be quickly snapped up by someone else."
