Marin town makes list of Bay Area’s most expensive ZIP codes to rent an apartment
The Bay Area is home to nine of the 100 most expensive U.S. ZIP codes to rent an apartment, according to a new report. But only one local neighborhood cracked the top 50, coming in behind high-society enclaves in Florida, New York, Colorado and Southern California.
Los Gatos (95030) ranked 23rd on apartment search site RentHop.com’s list of priciest ZIP codes. A typical two-bedroom apartment in the Silicon Valley town tucked in the foothills southwest of San Jose goes for a cool $6,325 a month, according to RentHop, while the median listing price for a one-bedroom rental is $2,625.
Urban parts of San Jose and San Francisco, along with Tiburon in suburban Marin County, rounded out the other Bay Area neighborhoods on the list.
The local ZIP codes that landed in the top 100 include:
- 95030 in Los Gatos at No. 23 ($6,325 two-bedroom, $2,625 one-bedroom)
- 94105 in San Francisco’s South Beach at No. 59 ($5,000 two-bedroom, $3,750 one-bedroom)
- 94920 in Tiburon at No. 68 ($4,950 two-bedroom, $3,580 one-bedroom)
- 94158 in San Francisco’s Mission Bay at No. 71 ($4,860 two-bedroom, $3,600 one-bedroom)
- 95126 west of downtown San Jose at No. 80 ($4,600 two-bedroom, $2,900 one-bedroom)
- 94102 in San Francisco’s Civic Center neighborhood at No. 81 ($4,600 two-bedroom, $3,450 one-bedroom)
- 95110 in and near downtown San Jose at No. 90 ($4,400 two-bedroom, $3,270 one-bedroom)
- 94107 in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill at No. 94 ($4,375 two-bedroom, $3,165 one-bedroom)
- 94114 in San Francisco’s Castro at No. 97 ($4,300 two-bedroom, $2,875 one-bedroom)
Why didn’t the notoriously expensive Bay Area rank even higher?
One reason is that the local tech industry’s embrace of remote work in recent years has allowed many renters to move away, depressing the demand for apartments, said Shane Lee, an analyst with RentHop.
During the depths of the pandemic, rental prices cratered by as much as 25% in some Bay Area cities as people fled to the suburbs and less expensive parts of the state and country. Rents began to rebound in 2021 as public health restrictions were lifted and more people returned. But the region’s hardest-hit urban centers, including San Francisco and Oakland, still have yet to see a return to pre-COVID prices.
Rents in many other cities across the country, meanwhile, soared to record highs during the recovery from the pandemic, though rental prices have started to come down nationwide in recent months amid growing economic uncertainty.
In an email, Lee said the turnaround in the Bay Area’s rents is “nowhere near the kind of growth other cities have experienced,” which also helps explain the region’s lower ranking.
Wealthy Bay Area towns including Atherton, Woodside and Ross — which have among the most expensive home prices in the country — didn’t make the list because they have too few apartments, Lee said.
The priciest ZIP code in RentHop’s report is Fisher Island (33109) near Miami, with a whopping median two-bedroom rent of $24,000. It’s followed by Hampton Bays (11946) in New York at $12,500; Snowmass Village (81615) in Colorado at $11,250; and Montecito (93108) in Santa Barbara County at $10,950.
New York City has the most ZIP codes on the list with 38. Los Angeles County, which encompasses ritzy cities such as Beverly Hills and Calabasas, has a total of 14.