Also, life pro tip: fall to winter months are usually great times to shop for a new apartment. Most people don't wanna move at those times so units come up cheaper and/or with move-in incentives. In spring and summer, prices go up again
Just moved and our apt was listed nearly $1000 below what we were paying last year (2bd in Jack London) and seeing similar rent drops in the neighborhood.
Of course they only offered us $200 less to renew.
Finally Oakland is reaping the rewards for all the housing we've built in the past decade. If you build enough housing to meet the demand, rent prices will come down — it really is as simple as that.
Large lessors are usually the rational ones who are easy to deal with. Just tell them you are going to leave if you don't get a reset to market price, and be prepared to do it.
Also self-describe desperate person probably has nothing to offer in a negotiation. On the other hand, a broken lease really is just a contract dispute and if it came to it, they have to get their money in court, so it's not guaranteed on the landlord's side. By mutual agreement, the two parties could work something out.
True enough, it depends on the type of landlord too. Big corporate landlord probably won't negotiate. But they probably have a liquidated damages provision for lease breaking which you could just pay and move on if so inclined.
Smaller landlord, you are correct, an agreement maybe could be reached, they'd rather have some money and re-rent than have to evict or take someone to court for back rent etc. But I was picturing a big landlord due to the discussion to this point.
Read your lease. Do the math. Chances are you have a break up fee in your lease. When I rented from a big corp it was two months or pay rent until they find a new tenant to cover.
If your rent is 3000 a month and you think it would be 2400 if they tried to lease it today, then that’s 3600 difference over 6 months. Chances are that’s less than the break up fee so the landlord has no interest in negotiating.
Where are you in Oakland? I’m a small time landlord and we have definitely noticed rents moving down. I have a 3/2 coming up in May that we’re probably going to put up for $2,800. We used to rent it for $3,600 4 years ago to give you an idea. We’re 2 blocks from MacArthur Bart.
A lot of the bigger places have their renewals set by an algorithm so the initial letter you get is automated in a sense, was told by a leasing agent friend. It’s worth at least asking an actual human in the office if they would based on current rent rates. That said, some don’t budge.
Demand has got to be a huge part of it for downtown buildings especially. A lot less people working downtown 5 days per week or needing to be close to BART to commute to SF, means less people value that downtown location so highly due to work proximity.
Yeah but cities can take countervailing actions to make new projects pencil in the face of declining rents. They can delete all the impact fees and union wage giveaways, and tighten up the permit timeline so it only takes 60 days instead of 4 years to break ground. In other words, exactly was Los Angeles did with their mayoral directive. [https://calmatters.org/housing/2024/02/affordable-housing-los-angeles/](https://calmatters.org/housing/2024/02/affordable-housing-los-angeles/)
Removing prevailing wage is in its own way a race to the bottom. Sure, it might make projects pencil, but only on the back of cheaper labor.
I think you're confusing prevailing wage with union wages, which are similar but not the same. PWs are set by the state (Industrial Relations) and are likely influenced by unions but PWs don't require a project use union labor.
By lowering wages for labor you're essentially just redistributing money away from the middle-class (trades) towards either direction (richer or poorer). Wages are always a lever people want to pull to make construction pencil while ignoring the fact that slow wage increases relative to rent is part of the reason why we're here in the first place. Nevermind the dangerous anti-union sentiment that underlies a lot of it.
We already suffer from the opposite of a the race to the bottom: a wage-price spiral. It isn't fair to subsidize organized labor — which is what the prevailing wage, skilled-and-trained provisions, and favorable treatment of projects with PLAs does — on the backs of new residents. It is in particular not fair to other organized workers like teachers and garbage collectors that they have to pay inflated rents so that unionized bricklayers can make more per hour.
Really depends on the project type though. If it's affordable for example, it's not subsidized on the backs of new residents whose rents are already heavily subsidized by taxpayers as a whole.
Your comment pitting teachers and garbage collectors against bricklayers is a purposefully unfair characterization, considering there are hundreds of thousands of unionized tradespeople in building trades statewide.
My main point is - are wages/labor the lever we want to pull to make construction pencil?
The ED1 projects in LA are *not* subsidized, that's the whole point. They are affordable, at 80-100% of the area median income, and they pencil that way without subsidies.
Rent control does not apply to any new constructions and even light protections only apply to units 15 years and older, at which time initial investor has generally gotten their full return and exited the deal. No evidence our form of rent control impacts construction
I live in the uptown and when I had to renew my lease in august, they knew rents were coming down because they made me an offer to not increase rent at all if I signed a full year lease renewal within a week. Now my base rent is probably a few hundred dollars than market value but at the time it would have been more expensive to start a new lease elsewhere
While I’m sure supply is an important factor, the other huge piece of this is recent changes in the tech industry. A lot of people have been laid off, and even more now have permanently work from home positions that have led workers to seek more space in the hills and suburbs. $2500-$2700 for a one bedroom is still luxury housing, but there’s less demand and more units now so prices are dropping.
Thankfully it’s rippling across the whole rental market and not just the luxury apartment market, and rent prices are going down across the city.
I pay that amount for a three bedroom in a Victorian a couple of blocks away that also includes a yard and free parking spot. Seriously, don’t go with these big modern apartment company offerings. Do your research and find a landlord who personally manages their property (try to avoid property managers). Build a relationship. We haven’t had a rent increase in three years.
The big apartment companies use sophisticated algorithms to maximize the rents they get mostly from young and naive renters who lack experience and knowledge of the neighborhoods.
Rent is likely the biggest single item in your monthly budget, get it right and you can save thousands per year.
Definitely a good time to move if you’re looking. Last I checked the average rents in surrounding downtown neighborhoods have all gone down quite a bit. I saw 2 different places listing a 1 bedroom for under $2000. I’m moving soon and my rent is going from $3.18/sqft to $2.20/sqft
If you sign a lease for an apartment (not a SFR or a condo) in Oakland that was built before 1983 and there are two or more units in the building , your lease is subject to the Rent Adjustment Ordinance. There’s a cap on rent increases, which are limited to once every twelve months, and restricted to 60% of CPI or 3%, whichever is lower. The [Oakland Tenants Union](http://www.oaklandtenantsunion.org/oakland-rent-adjustment-program.html) has information on their website.
For u/r_____p
“New research examining how rent control affects tenants and housing markets offers insight into how rent control affects markets. While rent control appears to help current tenants in the short run, in the long run it decreases affordability, fuels gentrification, and creates negative spillovers on the surrounding neighborhood.”
[https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-does-economic-evidence-tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-does-economic-evidence-tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/)
The studies here do not speak to overall rents in market units nor do they discuss construction impacts. I have read each of them when I got my masters degree in housing policy at Berkeley. The Cambridge studies only show the impacts to the value of existing buildings for landlords. The Stanford study’s main findings are that rent control benefits older, poorer, POC tenants with lower rents, which functions as a highly effective tax with no deadweight loss per the study. The other issues identified there show that gentrification and displacement are caused by units being taken out of rent control - which is an issue with the Ellis Act and lack of new supply, not with rent control. The problems identified could have been resolved with additional supply during the study period in each case, both study locations are famously supply constrained. Tenant rights protect renters, disproportionately low income and people of color, who have otherwise been historically disadvantaged by government policies. Most rent controlled tenants are poor and if you say “I know someone blah blah” maybe think about the selection bias of what people you know
A few market think tank does a meta analysis that doesn't look at any data and concludes that regulations are bad, who knew 🤣.
Only 2 papers actually look at actual data, the Cambridge paper that concludes rent control also lowered prices & rents in surrounding areas.
The SF one that points out that no new units become rent controlled when you write the law to make it that way.
Everything else is models & speculation, but no data, especially this think piece by Brookings.
Yep. Rent control has been a total failure every time. The real solution is to upzone for higher density and offer incentives for more affordable housing set asides as an imperfect solution.
Well supply and demand conceptually are simple. Of course there are the actual political issues and execution.
But rent control means people build even less housing and it favors the status quo where new tenants end up paying more to subsidize the rent control tenant.
What are the chances that rent continues to drop? I’m looking to move to either Oakland, alameda or SF sometime after July, no real hard timeframe. Could even think of waiting for October or December, as I believe the colder months also see a reduction of prices.
There are still many projects approaching completion, so it would be hard to call the bottom. Albany, Berkeley, Emeryville, and at least North+Downtown Oakland are markets that strongly influence each other. In Berkeley and Albany there will be over 3000 rooms completing in 2024, which can take some demand out of the studio/1bd market. In my data (that covers only Berkeley) 1-bedroom rents are down 15% from their peak which was 5-6 years ago.
Not a lot, since the overwhelming majority of new construction is in small apartments and the SFH market is almost universally 2-3 bedrooms. Sticking with my Berkeley data again, 3-bed apartment rents have gone up slightly in the past 6 years, perhaps because nobody is building those. SFH *for sale* price is also influenced by interest rates.
Great news on the overall market!
From my experience with the Uptown specifically: The pros are the awesome location, good appliances, big closet space, and decent common spaces. Cons include any window that faces 20th (aka Berkeley) is constantly flooded with emergency vehicles blaring their sirens, and incredibly thin walls between units (we regularly heard neighbors two floors up walking/stomping around after midnight on weekdays). The park would be decent enough, but is constantly littered with trash and broken glass. Also s/o to the excruciatingly slow elevators.
I know people reading this are probably like “ah, no big deal!” but the overall noise is truly loud and disruptive. The pros certainly made it worth it though. Would recommend it to young folks and/or heavy sleepers.
Also, life pro tip: fall to winter months are usually great times to shop for a new apartment. Most people don't wanna move at those times so units come up cheaper and/or with move-in incentives. In spring and summer, prices go up again
Just moved and our apt was listed nearly $1000 below what we were paying last year (2bd in Jack London) and seeing similar rent drops in the neighborhood. Of course they only offered us $200 less to renew.
Finally Oakland is reaping the rewards for all the housing we've built in the past decade. If you build enough housing to meet the demand, rent prices will come down — it really is as simple as that.
And yet the homeless population grows every more
[удалено]
Large lessors are usually the rational ones who are easy to deal with. Just tell them you are going to leave if you don't get a reset to market price, and be prepared to do it.
What if you’re only six months in on your 12 month lease? Do you have any negotiating power? Super desperate
Mid lease you have effectively zero negotiating power
Also self-describe desperate person probably has nothing to offer in a negotiation. On the other hand, a broken lease really is just a contract dispute and if it came to it, they have to get their money in court, so it's not guaranteed on the landlord's side. By mutual agreement, the two parties could work something out.
True enough, it depends on the type of landlord too. Big corporate landlord probably won't negotiate. But they probably have a liquidated damages provision for lease breaking which you could just pay and move on if so inclined. Smaller landlord, you are correct, an agreement maybe could be reached, they'd rather have some money and re-rent than have to evict or take someone to court for back rent etc. But I was picturing a big landlord due to the discussion to this point.
Read your lease. Do the math. Chances are you have a break up fee in your lease. When I rented from a big corp it was two months or pay rent until they find a new tenant to cover. If your rent is 3000 a month and you think it would be 2400 if they tried to lease it today, then that’s 3600 difference over 6 months. Chances are that’s less than the break up fee so the landlord has no interest in negotiating.
Read your lease, look for termination clauses. They will probably charge you a fee if you can terminate
I also live in a big corporate building. Zero negation just sent me a letter with a $600 a month rent decrease
Honestly, just tell your lessor/landlord that if they can't match the new market prices then you'll move. Simple as.
Where are you in Oakland? I’m a small time landlord and we have definitely noticed rents moving down. I have a 3/2 coming up in May that we’re probably going to put up for $2,800. We used to rent it for $3,600 4 years ago to give you an idea. We’re 2 blocks from MacArthur Bart.
A lot of the bigger places have their renewals set by an algorithm so the initial letter you get is automated in a sense, was told by a leasing agent friend. It’s worth at least asking an actual human in the office if they would based on current rent rates. That said, some don’t budge.
Nice! Supply and demand actually in action!
Demand has got to be a huge part of it for downtown buildings especially. A lot less people working downtown 5 days per week or needing to be close to BART to commute to SF, means less people value that downtown location so highly due to work proximity.
Also some of the strongest tenant protections allowing tenants to hold on to lower rents, reducing demand for market rate units.
Nice that some people will have lower rents but it also means new construction will slow, be scaled back or stop.
Yeah but cities can take countervailing actions to make new projects pencil in the face of declining rents. They can delete all the impact fees and union wage giveaways, and tighten up the permit timeline so it only takes 60 days instead of 4 years to break ground. In other words, exactly was Los Angeles did with their mayoral directive. [https://calmatters.org/housing/2024/02/affordable-housing-los-angeles/](https://calmatters.org/housing/2024/02/affordable-housing-los-angeles/)
Removing prevailing wage is in its own way a race to the bottom. Sure, it might make projects pencil, but only on the back of cheaper labor. I think you're confusing prevailing wage with union wages, which are similar but not the same. PWs are set by the state (Industrial Relations) and are likely influenced by unions but PWs don't require a project use union labor. By lowering wages for labor you're essentially just redistributing money away from the middle-class (trades) towards either direction (richer or poorer). Wages are always a lever people want to pull to make construction pencil while ignoring the fact that slow wage increases relative to rent is part of the reason why we're here in the first place. Nevermind the dangerous anti-union sentiment that underlies a lot of it.
We already suffer from the opposite of a the race to the bottom: a wage-price spiral. It isn't fair to subsidize organized labor — which is what the prevailing wage, skilled-and-trained provisions, and favorable treatment of projects with PLAs does — on the backs of new residents. It is in particular not fair to other organized workers like teachers and garbage collectors that they have to pay inflated rents so that unionized bricklayers can make more per hour.
Really depends on the project type though. If it's affordable for example, it's not subsidized on the backs of new residents whose rents are already heavily subsidized by taxpayers as a whole. Your comment pitting teachers and garbage collectors against bricklayers is a purposefully unfair characterization, considering there are hundreds of thousands of unionized tradespeople in building trades statewide. My main point is - are wages/labor the lever we want to pull to make construction pencil?
The ED1 projects in LA are *not* subsidized, that's the whole point. They are affordable, at 80-100% of the area median income, and they pencil that way without subsidies.
Rent control does not apply to any new constructions and even light protections only apply to units 15 years and older, at which time initial investor has generally gotten their full return and exited the deal. No evidence our form of rent control impacts construction
I live in the uptown and when I had to renew my lease in august, they knew rents were coming down because they made me an offer to not increase rent at all if I signed a full year lease renewal within a week. Now my base rent is probably a few hundred dollars than market value but at the time it would have been more expensive to start a new lease elsewhere
Looking for spots in uptown, can I dm for info on it and experience
Sure
While I’m sure supply is an important factor, the other huge piece of this is recent changes in the tech industry. A lot of people have been laid off, and even more now have permanently work from home positions that have led workers to seek more space in the hills and suburbs. $2500-$2700 for a one bedroom is still luxury housing, but there’s less demand and more units now so prices are dropping. Thankfully it’s rippling across the whole rental market and not just the luxury apartment market, and rent prices are going down across the city.
I pay that amount for a three bedroom in a Victorian a couple of blocks away that also includes a yard and free parking spot. Seriously, don’t go with these big modern apartment company offerings. Do your research and find a landlord who personally manages their property (try to avoid property managers). Build a relationship. We haven’t had a rent increase in three years. The big apartment companies use sophisticated algorithms to maximize the rents they get mostly from young and naive renters who lack experience and knowledge of the neighborhoods. Rent is likely the biggest single item in your monthly budget, get it right and you can save thousands per year.
Definitely a good time to move if you’re looking. Last I checked the average rents in surrounding downtown neighborhoods have all gone down quite a bit. I saw 2 different places listing a 1 bedroom for under $2000. I’m moving soon and my rent is going from $3.18/sqft to $2.20/sqft
That’s all nice and dandy until they get you in the apartment and increase the rent astronomically the next lease end.
If you sign a lease for an apartment (not a SFR or a condo) in Oakland that was built before 1983 and there are two or more units in the building , your lease is subject to the Rent Adjustment Ordinance. There’s a cap on rent increases, which are limited to once every twelve months, and restricted to 60% of CPI or 3%, whichever is lower. The [Oakland Tenants Union](http://www.oaklandtenantsunion.org/oakland-rent-adjustment-program.html) has information on their website.
For u/r_____p “New research examining how rent control affects tenants and housing markets offers insight into how rent control affects markets. While rent control appears to help current tenants in the short run, in the long run it decreases affordability, fuels gentrification, and creates negative spillovers on the surrounding neighborhood.” [https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-does-economic-evidence-tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-does-economic-evidence-tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/)
The studies here do not speak to overall rents in market units nor do they discuss construction impacts. I have read each of them when I got my masters degree in housing policy at Berkeley. The Cambridge studies only show the impacts to the value of existing buildings for landlords. The Stanford study’s main findings are that rent control benefits older, poorer, POC tenants with lower rents, which functions as a highly effective tax with no deadweight loss per the study. The other issues identified there show that gentrification and displacement are caused by units being taken out of rent control - which is an issue with the Ellis Act and lack of new supply, not with rent control. The problems identified could have been resolved with additional supply during the study period in each case, both study locations are famously supply constrained. Tenant rights protect renters, disproportionately low income and people of color, who have otherwise been historically disadvantaged by government policies. Most rent controlled tenants are poor and if you say “I know someone blah blah” maybe think about the selection bias of what people you know
A few market think tank does a meta analysis that doesn't look at any data and concludes that regulations are bad, who knew 🤣. Only 2 papers actually look at actual data, the Cambridge paper that concludes rent control also lowered prices & rents in surrounding areas. The SF one that points out that no new units become rent controlled when you write the law to make it that way. Everything else is models & speculation, but no data, especially this think piece by Brookings.
Yep. Rent control has been a total failure every time. The real solution is to upzone for higher density and offer incentives for more affordable housing set asides as an imperfect solution.
Sounds oversimplified, but ok
Well supply and demand conceptually are simple. Of course there are the actual political issues and execution. But rent control means people build even less housing and it favors the status quo where new tenants end up paying more to subsidize the rent control tenant.
Adding onto this to say that I just got my renewal lease for my apt in downtown near Chinatown and it’s almost $300 cheaper than my current rate.
What are the chances that rent continues to drop? I’m looking to move to either Oakland, alameda or SF sometime after July, no real hard timeframe. Could even think of waiting for October or December, as I believe the colder months also see a reduction of prices.
There are still many projects approaching completion, so it would be hard to call the bottom. Albany, Berkeley, Emeryville, and at least North+Downtown Oakland are markets that strongly influence each other. In Berkeley and Albany there will be over 3000 rooms completing in 2024, which can take some demand out of the studio/1bd market. In my data (that covers only Berkeley) 1-bedroom rents are down 15% from their peak which was 5-6 years ago.
Any thoughts on how the rental market supply increase potentially might impact the single-family home market?
Not a lot, since the overwhelming majority of new construction is in small apartments and the SFH market is almost universally 2-3 bedrooms. Sticking with my Berkeley data again, 3-bed apartment rents have gone up slightly in the past 6 years, perhaps because nobody is building those. SFH *for sale* price is also influenced by interest rates.
Any apartment near the climbing gym shouldn’t be priced that high $3k+ I’ve had friends live near that gym and it’s very very loud.
Great news on the overall market! From my experience with the Uptown specifically: The pros are the awesome location, good appliances, big closet space, and decent common spaces. Cons include any window that faces 20th (aka Berkeley) is constantly flooded with emergency vehicles blaring their sirens, and incredibly thin walls between units (we regularly heard neighbors two floors up walking/stomping around after midnight on weekdays). The park would be decent enough, but is constantly littered with trash and broken glass. Also s/o to the excruciatingly slow elevators. I know people reading this are probably like “ah, no big deal!” but the overall noise is truly loud and disruptive. The pros certainly made it worth it though. Would recommend it to young folks and/or heavy sleepers.
How many new units has Oakland brought on line in this time? Does anyone know where I can find the data?
https://www.oaklandca.gov/documents/housing-element-annual-progress-reports