Have Fresno apartment rents come down from last year’s peak? Here’s the latest data
The average rent prices for apartments in Fresno trickled lower by a few dollars from January to February this year, but remained considerably higher than one and two years ago.
The median monthly rent across all market-rate units in the city in February was estimated at $1,363 in the latest report by ApartmentList.com, a San Francisco-based apartment research company.
That’s down $1 from the January estimate of $1,364 per month. The figure is an estimate of median contract rents for new leases signed each month, according to the ApartmentList methodology. The median is a midway point at which half of new leases were for a higher monthly rent and half for a lower rent.
But over the past 12 months, the average rent for a market-rate apartment in California’s fifth-largest city has increased by between $125 per month for a studio apartment and $250 per month for a 4-bedroom unit. That amounts to an increase of about 13% across the entire range of units.
Between February 2020 – just before the coronavirus pandemic reached the central San Joaquin Valley – and last month, rents in Fresno climbed by about 23%, a percentage that was consistent for apartments from studios all the way up to the larger units:
The ApartmentList data does not include government-subsidized apartments for low-income families.
Median rents in Fresno reached an all-time high last fall, with the overall rate peaking at $1,398 per month in September. Since that time, the rate has dipped by about 2.5%.
Other big California cities
Fresno’s median overall rent of $1,363 per month remains the lowest among California’s largest cities. By comparison, the highest big-city rent estimate reported by ApartmentList in the state last month was $2,338 in San Jose. For the nine largest cities in California, the median rents in February were:
- Los Angeles, 3.96 million residents: $1,970 per month.
- San Diego, 1.4 million residents: $2,314 per month.
- San Jose, 1.03 million residents: $2,338 per month.
- San Francisco, 870,000 residents: $2,315 per month.
- Fresno, 522,000 residents: $1,363 per month
- Sacramento, 495,000 residents: $1,801 per month.
- Long Beach, 469,000 residents: $1,784 per month.
- Oakland, 421,000 residents: $1,792 per month.
- Anaheim, 350,000 residents: $2,182 per month.
This story was originally published March 7, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Have Fresno apartment rents come down from last year’s peak? Here’s the latest data."
