Akshyae Singh has a lot going for him. A recent graduate from UCLA and the founder of Bruin AI, he has received multiple six-figure job offers in the last few weeks. But since the summer began, Singh has been staying in the absolute worst place he’s ever lived.
For about $2,300 a month, he is posting up in an Airbnb near 16th and Mission streets. His bedroom, the size of a large table, also serves as an office. He shares a bathroom with a dozen other people.
“My professional life is great,” Singh said, “but my living situation is, like, the total opposite.”
Singh is not alone. Tech workers brought to the city by the AI boom say finding a good place to live has become as demanding as a full-time job. The founders who a year ago descended upon San Francisco to plan the AI revolution and share their big ideas are now back, with a slew of employees to boot, causing rents to rise higher than ever before.
There are so many people looking for housing in the city, in fact, that dozens of prospective tenants attempt to one-up one another publicly at showings, as they would to a college admissions counselor visiting their high school. Some take the initiative to make an offer before even seeing the apartment.
At one showing attended by The Standard — a three-bedroom, 1.5-bath in Chinatown with downtown views — two young women offered their “tenant résumés” to the leasing agent as more than 20 other prospective renters, who appeared to be younger than 30, stumbled in. They FaceTimed friends who couldn’t make it and asked the leasing agent basic questions, like if the heating was gas or electric or, in true Gen Z fashion, if they could connect the building’s front-door buzz system to a smartphone.
Joh Farmer, a 28-year-old software engineer who was at the showing, has been living temporarily at a hotel. While one of his potential roommates works long hours in finance, Farmer works remotely, which affords him the freedom to visit showings in the afternoon. But it’s causing stress and desperation.
“This is by far the worst moving experience I’ve had,” said Farmer, who, since graduating from Minnesota’s Carleton College, has lived in Seattle and San Diego. “It’s so cutthroat.”
Farmer and his future roomies don’t want to settle for the first thing that’s available, but when they’ve found something they like, they get ghosted.
While other fresh transplants are still kicking tires to make sure a rental is perfect for them, Singh is done with that approach. At one showing for a three-bedroom, he told the agent he was willing to pay three months’ rent in advance on the spot and move in the next day.
“I don’t know if they give a shit or not, but it’s literally like you’re beggars in this situation,” Singh said. “The leasing agent can do whatever they want.”
‘Absolutely insane’
Leasing agents agree that the AI-driven real estate boom is particularly chaotic.
Lisa McCarrel, a relocation specialist and the founder of Move Bay Area, said that in 2012, when Twitter and Facebook went on hiring sprees and the rental market skyrocketed as a result, the companies offered services to help employees find housing, including consultants like herself.
“They didn’t want their employees focusing on finding a place instead of working,” McCarrel said.
But now, with the exception of hacker houses where staff can sleep and work, most AI startups are operating by the seat of their pants without HR departments or services to help swaths of workers find beds. At the same time, some companies are incentivizing — or requiring — employees to live close to the office in order to maximize productivity. Transplants with identical budgets are dueling for the same floor plans in the same neighborhoods, along with interns and workers from other industries.
Brian Brown, a leasing agent who has worked in San Francisco for more than two decades, said the supply of rental housing is the lowest he’s ever seen. During Covid, his firm listed as many as 80 rental properties at a time. In March, the number dropped below 15 for the first time in the history of his brokerage. Now, Brown has only a handful of listings on a given day.
“I pretty much feel like I’m out of business,” Brown said, noting that he’s seeing a third as many listings on Craigslist as he did at the end of 2024.
Relocation consultants who used to take clients on tours around the city, viewing as many as 10 properties a day, have abandoned the practice altogether. Now, they vigilantly scout for upcoming listings and move quickly to make strategic offers that can be as much as $2,000 over the asking rent.
It’s not just in the northern neighborhoods, like the Marina and Cow Hollow, where the market has exploded. One realtor, Brett Van den Eikhof, said a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment — one of the most in-demand floor plans, according to agents — on Hayes Street near the Divisadero corridor was leased this month for $4,500, up 25% from a year earlier.
“It’s the AI boom,” Van den Eikhof reasoned. “Everybody knows that. Also, I think a lot of people got good deals during Covid and are staying put. It’s putting a strain on inventory.”
Across the city, rents on homes with two bedrooms are up more than 14% since last year, according to Zumper, for an average of $4,600 a month. Meanwhile, rents on homes with three bedrooms are up 15%, and rents on homes with four bedrooms are up 17%.
McCarrel said she had one client offer $5,800 for a one-bedroom with a den in Rincon Hill’s exclusive Lumina apartments that was listed for $4,500, only to get rejected, likely because she was outbid.
Inna Rubinchik, a high-end leasing agent, said there’s so little supply that deep-pocketed renters looking to settle down quickly are willing to go to extreme lengths to secure a property. Rubinchik recently listed a two-bed, two-bath unit in Pacific Heights for $12,000 a month, only to see it rented within 24 hours for $14,500 a month. All 15 properties she’s put on the market this year have gone over the asking price.
“This year has been absolutely insane,” Rubinchik said.
In some neighborhoods, the statistics are indeed off the chain. In North Beach, the average two-bedroom home is now renting for $5,475 a month — a 79% increase since last year, according to Zumper. In Russian Hill, the average three-bedroom home is renting for $12,500 — also a 79% increase. In the Mission, one-bedrooms are up 18% since last year, while two-bedrooms are up 26%, three-bedrooms are up 39%, and 4-bedrooms are up 109%.
Leasing agent Chris Meza represents properties in 191 buildings throughout the city from the Richmond to Hayes Valley to the Bayview. He said he’s adding a minimum of a 10 percent increase to all of his properties this year, with many being substantially higher, including a home in Pacific Heights he’s currently renting for $9,800 a month, 50% more than last year.
“It’s finance and AI,” said Meza. “The city has a magnificent buzz.”
Realtors say that when a unit is listed, tens of applications fly in within hours before a showing time is set. But unlike the pandemic years, when more people were moving out of the city than in, the current market requires more than being the first person to offer the asking price or the one to make the highest offer. It often takes a perfect application, along with a personal connection to the landlord or owner — something that’s hard to navigate for a young person new to the area.
“They don’t know what to expect,” McCarrel said, “and they don’t know what to do.”