83 percent of Bay Area renters plan to leave, says survey

The rental site ApartmentList released its annual survey of renters in 50 major U.S. metro areas today, with some figures to make locals sit up and take notice: 83 percent of Bay Area renters say they want to move out of the SF metro area.

And, no surprise, about two thirds of those apparently impending emmigrants cite the cost of living here as the factor most likely to drive them out.

The two-question survey (“Do you plan on settling down in another city?” and “What’s your biggest reason for leaving?”) covered 24,000 respondents nationwide.

In most cities it’s jobs rather than housing that’s the big sticking point: 34 percent of renters across every locale say they want to move somewhere with better job prospects (say, San Francisco or Silicon Valley).

But the cost of living in their present cities is still the second most likely complaint, as 30 percent of testy tenants say they hope to move somewhere cheaper (say, anywhere but San Francisco or Silicon Valley).

By an overwhelming margin, the cost of living is the biggest reason Bay Area renters plan to pack up, with 63 percent of the nearly departed marking this as their biggest complaint, the highest rate in the country.

The next biggest Bay Area complaint is jobs, but only 13 percent of those polled cited that. Commute time came in third place with 10 percent of complaints. The hassle least likely to be cited: the weather, at 0.4 percent. Everybody loves Karl.

         By Ridvan Ozdemir

Note that most of ApartmentList’s sample appears pretty volatile to begin with; nationally, some 64 percent of renters in general say they want to be living somewhere else in the near future.

And just because a lot of people say on a survey that they want to relocate doesn’t mean they actually will, or even that they’re thinking very seriously about the idea now.

Still, it’s hard to entirely dismiss the fact that so many more renters in the region felt so glum about continued bayside basking relative to the national average.

Back in March, some 40 percent of locals responded to an annual phone survey saying they want to live elsewhere. But that was a survey of all residents, not just renters alone.

Note that in the same ApartmentList survey last year, San Francisco renters by and large gave the city mostly high marks for resident satisfaction, praising the quality of life, job market, and weather.

But although the city got an A- grade overall in that more flattering survey, renters still gave it an F for affordability. At least that grade hasn’t found a way to drop year over year...

In 2015, the US Census found that about 80,000 people left the SF-Oakland area over the course of a year. But then about 100,000 new people moved in to replace them.

         By Kevin Bluer

• Why Renters Are Moving [ApartmentList]
• Forty Percent Want To leave Bay Area [Curbed SF]
• 2016 Renter Survey [ApartmentList]
• Huge Population Churn In SF-Oakland [Curbed SF]