In this post, I’ll talk about when is the best time to rent in the SF Bay Area.
Part 1: When
TLDR; best time to sign a lease is in the winter months (October-February)
The worst time to rent is summer months (May-September) as there is a fresh supply of new grads with chunkay tech offers.
If you’re looking to sign a new lease, one way to get a better deal is to use a HAAS like Blueground or Airbnb until winter then sign a lease.
I actually built a scraper to track historical rent prices, but due to legal risk I shut it down. Large landlords work with each other using RealPage to keep prices high, and there are several antitrust suits going on.
Prices are changed daily and even marked up on the weekend (when you are viewing the apartment). 😱
This asymmetrical information only hurts renters and helps these companies increase profit, but somebody should make a startup that helps renters find the best deal (free idea 💡) 🙂
Some apartments that are present through the Bay include Avalon, Equity and Quarterra. I would do a quick Google search and try to avoid apartments with really low Yelp rating like under 2.0 stars.
Another option is to get roommates with e.g. Bungalow or Facebook groups.
Part 2: Where to live
I like to use Hoodmaps, a free crowd-sourced app made by Levels. Starting from SF, Peninsula, to SJ.
I’d recommend living somewhere near your work place, and ideally quiet + safe, and close to amenities/food/restaurants.
Here’s a useful map of all the tech companies in SV.