Single-Family Rental Prices Jump Nearly 30% Nationally — Coastal California Cities Dominate the Priciest List

Families priced out of the for-sale market are pushing single-family rental prices to record highs, and nowhere is the squeeze more severe than along the California coast. According to rental listing platform Dwellsy, the national median asking rent for a single-family home rose from $1,800 to $2,320 over the year ending in fall 2022 — an increase of 28.9%, or roughly $520 a month.

Apartment rents rose too, but far more modestly. Dwellsy pegged the national median apartment rent at $1,655, up 12.2% year-over-year. The gap reflects a simple dynamic: with 30-year mortgage rates near 7%, would-be buyers — especially families with children or remote workers who need the extra space — have shifted their search from purchase to rental, and the supply of detached homes available to rent has not kept pace.

Coastal California is the clearest example of that pressure. Dwellsy's ranking of the most expensive U.S. markets for single-family rentals placed Santa Barbara at the top with a median of $3,800 a month, followed by San Jose at $3,667 and Los Angeles at $3,599. Salinas ($3,550), San Francisco ($3,495), the Oxnard/Thousand Oaks corridor ($3,200), and San Diego ($3,195) rounded out a list in which California accounted for seven of the priciest markets in the country.

The year-over-year moves within that group varied sharply. Los Angeles single-family rents jumped 20.0% over the prior twelve months, San Francisco rose 16.5%, San Diego climbed 10.4%, and Oxnard/Thousand Oaks rose 10.3%. San Jose edged up 6.3%. Santa Barbara, by contrast, cooled off a historically frothy 2021 with a 22.8% decline, and Salinas dipped 2.7%.

Dwellsy CEO Jonas Bordo told reporters the divergence between single-family and apartment rent trajectories is being driven by household formation among millennials with kids — a cohort that overwhelmingly prefers a yard, a garage, and separate bedrooms to a stacked apartment unit. With existing-home sales falling and build-to-rent inventory still ramping up, that demand has had nowhere to go but into the rental pool.

For California homeowners, the data is a mixed signal. Owners considering converting a primary residence to a long-term rental may find stronger gross yields than at any point in the last decade, particularly in Los Angeles and San Diego. Renters looking to become buyers, however, face the reverse: the rent-versus-buy math now favors continued renting in most coastal metros, which in turn keeps pressure on rents.

The Dwellsy analysis tracks asking rents on new listings rather than in-place leases, so sitting tenants under California's statewide AB 1482 rent cap (5% plus CPI, capped at 10%) or local rent control ordinances will not see anything close to a 29% increase on renewal. But anyone moving — or anyone whose landlord invokes a permitted exemption — is entering a market that has repriced dramatically in a single year.