|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
A new report from apartment finding app Zumper found that the median price of a one-bedroom in Mountain View is higher than any other city in the Bay Area. City officials say data on Mountain View’s rent-controlled units adds some important context.
Zumper’s San Francisco Metro Area Report, released Feb. 6, analyzed active listings in January 2023 across Bay Area cities to show the most and least expensive places to rent a one-bedroom apartment.
According to the report, Mountain View is ranked as the most expensive city, with a median rent of $3,130 for a one-bedroom apartment, more than $1,000 higher than the state median. Mountain View was the only city to break the $3,000 barrier, with San Francisco coming in second at $2,950 for a one-bedroom apartment, and Milpitas in third at $2,930.
The report also found that Mountain View’s rent prices are among the fastest growing in the Bay Area. Mountain View’s rent climbed a whopping 23.7% in the past year, coming in second only to Santa Clara, which increased by 24.1%. The report found that Mountain View also had the largest monthly rental growth rate in the Bay Area, up 6.1% from the previous month.
But Mountain View city officials said that median rent only tells part of the story. The city keeps track of average rent, rather than median, which is important because the majority of the city’s rental housing stock are units fully covered by the city’s rent control laws, city officials said.
“Comparing average rent versus median rent is not an apples to apples comparison,” Mountain View Chief Public Information Officer Lenka Wright told the Voice.
According to city data, the average rent for all one-bedroom apartments in Mountain View is $2,816. For units that are fully covered by the city’s rent control law, it’s $2,313. For those partially covered, it’s $3,633. And for newly built units, which aren’t covered at all, it’s $3,826.
The city’s 2018-19 Community Stabilization and Fair Rent Act report states that 71% of the city’s rental housing stock falls into that first category, fully covered units, which have the lowest average rent among one-bedroom apartments in the city.
“Based on this data, the median rent (the rent that is the midpoint between the lowest and highest rental unit) of a one-bedroom rental in Mountain View is likely less than the average rent of $2,816,” Wright said.
Tenants and landlords can check whether their unit is covered using the city’s Rent Stabilization Program database.
Wright added that both Zumper and city data use asking rents, which is what the property owner lists the rent to be.
“However, concessions or discounts may be provided, which can result in actual rents being lower than asking rents,” Wright said.
One thing Zumper’s report shows unequivocally is the growing divide between the cost of living on the Peninsula versus the East Bay. The least expensive Bay Area cities to rent a one-bedroom apartment, according to Zumper’s list, are Vallejo, Antioch and Richmond, all cities on the other side of the bay. Meanwhile, seven of the 10 most expensive cities on Zumper’s list are on the Peninsula.
Doesn’t take a Rocket Scientist to know that about Mtn View! Need to protect the seniors and low income residents or Mtn View will lose the most vulnerable.
For the most part, people agree that because the housing supply is so tight in MV it’s hard to find a good rental. If we want a lot more apartments and homes, we have to make it much more attractive for people to provide those great places to rent. We can’t solve it by creating a few subsidized homes for teachers and firefighters by throwing a few million $$ at the problem each year and patting each other on the back. The fix is just not proportional to the enormity of the demand. That means that for starters the city has to do more to reach out to potential landlords and understand what’s holding them back. What keeps you from renting your mother in law unit, buying a property for renting, or building more rentals? What rules, regulations, and fees are the problem? It’s not just the rent control, it’s the totality of it all.
As someone who’s lived in town for just shy of 30 years, I wanted to rent my beautiful home to a good tenant but it’s not smart to do that. The current rent control laws do not affect me but everyone who is a small landlord is keenly aware those laws could change at any time. Essentially, there is a long list of things that make it unwise to become a landlord in MV (and more broadly in CA) and we need to have a frank and open conversation about some of this mess, and that means understanding that a lot of these well-intentioned laws ended up doing the opposite of their desired effect. That probably means less yelling at the town hall from the people who are angry about their rent hike and a bit more input from the people who could create more apartments but don’t.
Typically California is ranked dead last in terms of good states to become a landlord and I’m not sure if we can become a more landlord-friendly place or even a landlord-neutral state. If we vilify each other and if people who rent can’t understand it also kind of sucks to be a landlord here we’re going to talk past each other.
Jay, I agree with you.
There have been a lot of new projects built in the city in the past few years. Prometheus and Greystar have built more than one each, and they are large projects with 250+ units each. Greystar has 700 new units nearing completion at San Antonio and Showers Drive. You have Equity Residential adding many units onto an existing older apartment build over by the Sunnyvale border. You have this plan to replace the water features and parking lots at 555 W. Middlefield Road and bring it from 400 to 720 units. There are massive new apartment blocks planned for the East Middlefield Area and NASA Ames is preparing to add 1900 apartments up on their property near the Ellis Street gate.
I just shake my head when the council talks about “affordable housing.”
Just an Observation,
The City has a real problem on its hands, 184 Centre Street is non conforming to zoning and yet the city issued a building permit to the building to renovate a unit on the building that surpasses the numbers of units it is allowed in this R3.1 zone.
This lot is allowed only 2 units under 2013 City of Mountain View codes. But the City Housing agency not only issued building permits, but testified that the property was being well maintained twice.
The facts is for unit 7 of this building, there is no legal building permit allowed if the building is not conforming to the land zones.
This is a demonstration of how bad the city even understands what is actually going on. And thus the city is likely not going to see any approval of the element plan. In fact given that Alphabet/Google let go 20% of the workers in Mountain View, and other news about how they are PAUSING their projects in San Jose and Mountain View, those “proposed units” cannot be accountable as planned affordable units in any way.
I suspect the City will lose this housing element and wind up being bypassed by the State, and that is going to demolish the city because it relies too much on housing permits and building permits where they do not ensure they are allowed to issue them under the zoning system we have here.
In any event the City must rezone 184 Centre Street to a R4 in order to correct the problem.
The best thing that could happen to housing in MV would be for the city to temporarily (say 2-3 years) dramatically reduce restrictions and costs for developers to build housing. It would be of minimal cost and effort to the city and would allow housing of all types to be built.
Just an Observation,
Reducing fees will not solve this problem, the problem is systemic and involves the inability of the City to perform simple routine items, like checking to see if apartments are operating legally in the City.
And with projects taking at least 3 years to design to complete that will not work either.
The bottom line is the City WILL get rejected regarding the Housing Element plan, and the city WILL lose control over the building process and the fees will be charged to the state, from now on.
Face reality, cutting fees or taxes and reducing regulations DOES NOT provide affordable housing, MANDATORY INCLUSIONARY HOUSING STANDARDS does work.
I don’t really understand ‘the maths’. The City seems to talking about one metric (existing rentals) and the survey is about “active listings” – which is (???) entirely about the very small subset of rental units where landlords are looking to get new tenants.
This does not seem to be anything (really) about “median” vs. “average” (mean).
I dred the day I have to find a new place. I’ll probably be one of those that throws in the towel and goes to TX or FLA.
What they don’t mention is that in Palo Alto the new units rent for more and in Sunnyvale they rent for less. Rather than moving to Texas you could try Sunnyvale for a while. Just because it’s a different zip code and area code doesn’t really change the location that much.