Apartment rents got more expensive in Fresno last year. Here’s what they cost now
Five cities in the San Joaquin Valley experienced some of the highest rates of apartment rent increases in the state in 2019, yet they remain some of the least expensive places in California to live.
A year-end apartment rent report released this week by RentCafe.com, an apartment-search website, shows that the average market-rate apartment rent in Fresno climbed 6.3% from January 2019, when the average was $1,048 per month, to a monthly average rent of $1,114 in December. That’s the seventh-highest percentage increase out of 60 California cities included in the report.
But it’s also the city with the second-lowest rent among the communities in the RentCafe data.
The cheapest rents in the state – and the largest increase in rent in percentage terms – were in Bakersfield, in the southern San Joaquin Valley. The average rent climbed from $975 per month in January to $1,060 per month in December. While that’s a difference of only $85, it amounts to more than 8.7%, half of a percentage point higher than second-place Oakland, a city with some of the highest rents in the state.
RentCafe, based in Santa Barbara, issues a report each month evaluating average rents in the 260 largest cities across the U.S., including 60 in California. The company’s analysis evaluates cities with populations of more than 100,000 and a rental stock of at least 2,900 apartments in buildings or complexes with 50 or more units. It does not include government-subsidized affordable-housing projects.
The data also makes no distinctions based on the size of number of bedrooms in apartments, instead providing an overall average estimate across the entire range of apartments in a market.
In counties neighboring Fresno County, December rents in cities with what RentCafe calls a “statistically relevant stock” of apartments in buildings with 50 or more units were:
- Merced (Merced County): $1,083 per month, compared to $1,047 in May, the earliest month for which RentCafe issued a regional report for the Central Valley.
- Atwater (Merced County): $1,037 per month, compared to $1,091 in May.
- Madera (Madera County): $956 per month, May not available.
- Lemoore (Kings County): $1,005 per month, compared to $981 in May.
- Hanford (Kings County): $1,106 per month, May not available.
- Visalia (Tulare County): $1,161 per month, compared to $1,104 in May.
The six California cities with the highest average apartment rents were all in the San Francisco Bay Area, followed by cities in the Los Angeles area. The single most expensive city was San Francisco, where the average rent was estimated by RentCafe at $3,688 per month in December, followed by San Mateo, Sunnyvale, Oakland, Santa Clara and San Jose. The top-10 high-priced list was rounded out by Pasadena, Daly City, Los Angeles and Glendale.
While apartments in Fresno and the Valley tend to cost far less to rent than much of the rest of California, rent affordability remains a concern for many renters in the region, not only low-income families. About 60% of renters in Fresno County are considered “rent burdened” under federal guidelines because they pay at least 30% of their gross income on rent and related utilities.
In lower-income neighborhoods, however, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that as many as three-quarters of all renter households are rent burdened. Typically, the lower the income of a household, the greater the share of the family resources spent on rent and utilities, local housing officials said.
Fresno’s inventory of rental housing includes more than 112,000 units, including about 73,000 apartments, according to the city’s database of rental properties. Almost 48,800 are in complexes that contain 50 or more individual units. The city’s database makes no distinction between market-rate and affordable-housing properties.
Fresno rental database
This story was originally published January 20, 2020 at 10:49 AM.
