San Diego Rents Are Some of the Highest in California

• Neighborhoods and News
• August 2, 2016

According to a new article posted today by the San Diego Union-Tribune, San Diego County rents are some of the highest in the state. A recent study was done to measure rent prices against median household income of renters in various California counties to get percentages of income spent on rent so counties with differing incomes could be fairly compared. According to this format of comparison San Diego County’s rent is technically higher than San Francisco and even some parts of Silicon Valley.

However, San Diego County’s rent is not quite as bad as a few other counties in California. Santa Barbara County’s median rent uses up 48% of the median income of renters and Santa Cruz County takes up 41%. San Diego County and Orange County’s is at around 35% while San Francisco and Mountain View, in Silicon Valley, is at 27%.

Home and apartment building in San Diego County is not keeping up with the current job growth rate which is one of the reasons for the increasing rental rates. The county is predicted to have added 460,462 jobs by 2050! That is an amazing thing but it causes real problems if those jobs don’t have places to live that can go along with them.

This part of the article really caught my eye:

“Real Estate economists say that whenever people pay more than 30 percent of income on housing, the local economy suffers because households have less money to spend on other stuff, like food and consumer goods.”

That sure makes sense to me.

Check out the article here:

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2016/aug/02/rent-wages-housing-concern/