San Diego rents declined following surge in supply

https://www.kpbs.org/news/economy/2026/03/27/san-diego-rents-declined-more-than-19-of-nations-top-20-markets-following-surge-in-supply

by littlexsparkee • 3 months ago

220 233 3 months ago

kpbs.org

dmitrygr• 3 months ago

Increase in supply lowers equilibrium price? Somebody, pinch me!

ivewonyoung2• 3 months ago

A mainstream view on one side of the political spectrum that increase in new home supply(especially if high end) does not lower prices or reduce shortage.

One well-worn refrain of progressive urban politics is that new, “luxury” housing will not help solve the housing shortage. A 2024 study of U.S. voters found that 30 to 40 percent believed more housing would, instead, increase prices, and another 30 percent believed it would have no effect

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/02/housing-crisis-ric...

mothballed8• 3 months ago

You can make $100-200k in 'easy' profit where I live by dropping the cheapest manufactured home on a plot. If you live in a place that allows it, I don't understand why people don't do it. I literally got a ~270k house for under $100k by being willing to be the guy the develops the plot. The actual house was laughably cheap, like 60k, there is a burnt out house dressed up in new paint selling next to me for like $300,000 and someone will snatch it up shortly.

Detrytus2• 3 months ago

Well, building luxury housing still helps, to some degree: the richest residents of the area would buy it, and they would sell their old house to someone slightly less rich, who in turn would sell their old house… At the end of this chain you get affordable housing.

skrtskrt2• 3 months ago

That's because "progressive" urban politics is generally not progressive at all and dominated by the upper middle those that benefit or think they benefits from squeezing the working class out of their neighborhoods.

acdha3• 3 months ago

Those people aren’t progressives: they’re NIMBYs who learned that certain language can make it easier to get the policies they want. We have a ton of them here in DC, and you can tell by seeing what else they support: they’ll talk about affordability to block luxury apartments, flip to pretending to be staunch environmentalists to block an affordable housing project, talk about traffic or “the poor” when protesting a bike lane before pivoting to block transit projects, etc. It seems incoherent until you look at it through the lens of whether something would add competition to their future home sale or cause the city to subsidize them driving every everywhere less.

fhdkweig• 3 months ago

That part is the obvious part. I want to know how they got all the entrenched landowners to let new builds in their neighborhoods and drive down values. The NIMBYs are usually the problem.

Detrytus2• 3 months ago

Well, once you loosen up building codes to allow apartment buildings instead of single family homes then suddenly the developers will come with a lot of cash to buy those homes from NIMBYs. And cash is always convincing.

mothballed8• 3 months ago

Maybe renters were such a crazy high percent that despite the fact they were all wrapped up in their jobs and children vs retirees with nothing else to do in their $1M house than show up to meeting to influence the political apparatus they they still finally balanced out at the planning and zoning meetings.

crooked-v• 3 months ago

Unfortunately, it's not actually obvious. There are heaps of people, even and especially in the most expensive housing markets in the US, who will outright argue that supply and demand doesn't apply to housing.

acdha3• 3 months ago

California passed a number of laws protecting landowners’ ability to build ADUs, and the San Diego council super-charged those:

https://calmatters.org/housing/2023/11/adu-san-diego/

Tons of San Diego houses have a ton of land thanks to the mid-20th century lawn fetish back when everyone was pretending that there was enough water so there are a lot of places where someone can turn some dead grass into as many as 5 ADUs.

usefulcat2• 3 months ago

If you are an owner of rental houses, I would think that it's in your interest to be able to build ADUs on those properties. Even if everyone does it and prices go down a bit you're still making a lot more per property than you were before, assuming reasonable building costs (and if building costs are not reasonable then not many owners will be building ADUs and prices won't go down).

superfrank• 3 months ago

Except when it doesn't. From the same article, Seattle and Oakland had supply increase 13% and 6% respectively and both saw average rents go up. Long Beach, CA and Santa Ana, CA both had supply increase by over 10% and saw rents stay basically flat.

More supply generally will help, but it's not a silver bullet.

littlexsparkee5• 3 months ago

Maybe more recently it's up but Oakland has been a supply success story as prices diverged with SF starting around 2021. There's a chart past the fold that illustrates it well:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/realestate/article/oakland-rent-...

wallst0712• 3 months ago

So does decrease in demand! Pinch you again.

exabrial• 3 months ago

Incredible. So what you're saying is... we should just build more housing? Who would have thought that was the answer?

mothballed8• 3 months ago

Building the house is the easiest part of building a house.

rockskon• 3 months ago

I'm not sure half the country would agree!

itopaloglu83• 3 months ago

Some: Not in my backyard.

A lot of people have vested interest in keeping the housing pricing high. That’s also pretty much why zoning and other regulations never get updated to match the demand.

darksaints14• 3 months ago

I've been told repeatedly by people who have a vested interest in maintaining high housing prices that supply and demand don't work at all, ever, for any reason, and high prices are no reason to build more housing. How do I reconcile these facts?!?

seanmcdirmid7• 3 months ago

If demand picks up because supply increases, you will reach the previous equilibrium even with more supply. It isn’t rocket science, there is a price people are willing to pay to live in SD, and the market will keep gravitating to that price unless demand is somehow limited. The price people are willing to pay can even increase as density makes brings in things (eg culture, job opportunities) that make the city more desirable (eg see Hong Kong).

WillPostForFood• 3 months ago

If the alleged people actually said this, and they wanted to "maintain high prices", then why would they oppose more building? If they believed "supply and demand don't work at all", then more supply wouldn't hurt their goal of maintaining high prices.

pydry4• 3 months ago

If demand for cars skyrockets then you (eventually) get more cars at the same price coz the manufacturer can just make more.

If everybody wants to buy up land because "god isnt making it any more" you get less land at an even higher price which makes it even more attractive as a store in value.

So no, supply and demand doesnt really work for land the way it works for everything else.

Land needs to be taxed a lot to create enough supply and in California prop 13 quite deliberately did the precise opposite of that.

vkou7• 3 months ago

Easily.

Many of those people have a correct observation in that new construction is just luxury housing, which is obviously unaffordable for people struggling with rent.

What they fail to miss is that for every luxury unit that's built and is occupied, some well-off person moved into it... And out of a shitty, cheap unit that's now on the market.

jareklupinski• 3 months ago

you're not the one with stuff to reconcile

simply ask the people on the vested side: "why do you want rents to stay high?" and stand back

pydry4• 3 months ago

The trick is in creating new supply when faced with:

* Existing land/property owners who dont particularly want to give up their land.

* Property developers who would rather flog one ultra luxury unit to a foreign buyer than 3 to somebody on a median income.

* NIMBYs with multimillion dollar mortgages terrified that denser housing will push them into negative equity.

LudwigNagasena5• 3 months ago

There is abundance of housing. It's just that people want to live in big metro areas that have extreme concentration of economic opportunity and amenities.

I don't understand how transforming every urban area into Kowloon Walled City will solve that unless your plan is to make it so dense that people will finally find it undesirable to live there?

darksaints14• 3 months ago

At the density of Kowloon Walled City, the entire population of India could fit within the city limits of San Diego. Nobody is asking for that, silly.

We could 1.5x the density of San Diego and still have the livability of Copenhagen. We could 3x the density of San Diego and still have the livability of Vienna. We could 5x the density and still have the livability of Paris. 8x and still have the livability of Tokyo. We have a ridiculously low bar to pass, all we have to do is allow it.

marcosdumay• 3 months ago

Well, that will work in a 1M people city, but in larger ones you also have to fix transit.

Another impossible problem, that nobody has ever been able to discover the solution is to build mass transit. Maybe one day people will manage to solve it.

IAmBroom• 3 months ago

Can't tell if serious... like The Onion article suggesting that "there's no solution to reducing gun violence, says nation with unique access to guns".

mcdeltat2• 3 months ago

God most of the "discussion" around housing is such copium by obviously-biased people trying to convince everyone that we shouldn't have access to high quality housing. Yes, in the year 2026, despite all of humanity's achievements, it's of course IMPOSSIBLE to configure any type of society such that housing is decent and fair for all. IMPOSSIBLE, did you hear? Nope, it just won't work. Whatever your reason, you're wrong, society is perfect already and we cannot improve.

And the reasons people try to give... Just hilarious to evaluate from a high level. Oh, no we can't have good housing because supply and demand has determined what we have is optimal. Oh actually even if you did adjust supply and demand, it wouldn't fix the issue anyway, so don't try anything. Ah no you can't have more houses because then how will people commute?! Unsolvable! There aren't enough houses in a reasonable distance from urban centres? God well how about you just build a house in the outback where the supermarket is 200km away then! No we can't have more houses because then it will attract <demographic I don't like>. But think of the children - how will they survive without a 10 acre backyard to play in??

It's so disgustingly painfully obvious to any reasonable person that we have no reason to have a housing crisis other than certain people collecting those fat stacks of cash, sweet cash.

wallst0712• 3 months ago

You say this like it is such a obvious problem to solve, and from a naive point of view, maybe so.

But each of the reasons why things the way they are isn't just stupidity. It's backed by people's preferences for living. EVERYONE is extremely opinionated on housing because it affects us the most (air/food/water/shelter...) . We all have something to say about where we live or have lived and the pros/cons.

kubb• 3 months ago

Yes, after all there are countless examples where doing just that lowered rent long term. Simple as that, a shame that dummies don’t get it.

In fact we should force current owners to sell in order build more densely on their land! And keep doing that until their housing valuation decimates.

underlipton7• 3 months ago

I see the "supply and demand" straw man is propped up well and often in this thread. Let's talk about the actual dynamics in play:

1) Rent-Fixing: This is widespread across the country and the actual reason why inventory increases often (commonly) do not lower prices. There are multiple tactics landlords have used to ratchet up rates without ever letting them drop. These include lease concessions that don't affect the base rent in lieu of rate drops in step with lowered demand, warehousing that artificially limits accessible supply even when new, physical units are hitting the market, and algorithmic price-fixing had allowed landlords within a region to stay in lock step without breaking rank lower. When landlords are able to use such tactics with impunity, they absolutely do warp supply-demand dynamics and allow rent rates to stay high even in the face of expanding actual inventory. For rents to decline, you have to break large landlords' ability to set their price.

2) Builder Subsidies: "Just build more and prices will drop," ignores that the incentive structures municipalities use to draw developers are an additional burden on residents. These for-profit corporations then seek to make a profit on their investment, leading to no direct meaningful inventory increase in the affordable unit range. Worse, developers often target existing affordable units for their redevelopment, destroying the very units that the new inventory is supposed to ultimately reduce demand for. In order for "build more" to drive down rents, it can't be done the way it has been, which mostly ends up being a giveaway to developers at the expense of the tax base and displaced renters.

San Diego is a special case where it seems that the expanding inventory has been driven not by corporate developers, but by the construction of ADUs, which are built by homeowners out-of-pocket, are not tax-subsidized and, in fact, increase the taxable value of property. In this way, they work almost counter to traditional development, and these factors combine with their being created and operated outside of the control of corporate landlords means that they represent new and meaningful competition to those landlords. Thus, efficiencies are sought and prices drop.

Encourage ADUs. Avoid subsidizing large developers and corporate landlords. If there is the political will, get the government directly involved in constructing subsidized owner-occupied, human-scale housing, as in Singapore and the pre-Thatcher UK. Relax zoning and build out public transit and car-free infrastructure in order to reduce the accessibility premium, as in Japan. That is how "build more" actually can work to lower rates.

rossdavidh• 3 months ago

Should note that "top US markets" really means "most expensive US markets", not for example the largest by population.

jupp0r• 3 months ago

It's actually a combination of both, leaving out more expensive smaller markets.

chao-• 3 months ago

I agree, comparing to other expensive markets seems a bit odd, rather than comparing to markets with some other similarity (population, geography, median income, et cetera). The full table in the original report is much more interesting:

https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/national-rent-report

Many interesting comparisons to be made, especially places where rents fell YoY despite population growth.

throwaway274485• 3 months ago

What is this country's allergy with public housing? Not pursuing that feels like jumping in water with our hands tied behind our backs

mothballed8• 3 months ago

They were historically used, at least most notoriously, for selling crack and sniper fortresses for organized gangs. Your average American envisions something like Cabrini Green when you say public housing.

byigit• 3 months ago

Black communities were bulldozed to make way for highways for being "slums" and forced into isolated "public" housing. This only concentrated the issued of crime and poverty and moved it out of sight of richer whiter communities. This was labeled as "Urban Renewal" and passed under the Housing Act of 1949.

epistasis4• 3 months ago

It's not just public housing it's all housing. Even some public housing advocates argue against housing reforms that would make it possible to build public housing!

I've been supporting an advocacy group looking to build social housing and at least half the pushback is from anti-housing "tenant advocates" that work for non-profits funded by extremely foundations with boards that are all very wealthy with multiple homes, and don't see the need for more housing. The "tenant advocates" seem to view housing similarly and only support public housing to the extent that it doesn't actually get built.

throwaway274485• 3 months ago

Well obviously fuck those guys, but we need to build housing people are going to actually live in

tptacek8• 3 months ago

The obvious reason is that to a first approximation nobody is building public housing, and so appeals to public housing, especially from owner-residents, read to housing activists as a dodge, a way to perform advocacy for housing without actually providing housing.

A subtler reason is that public housing is drastically more expensive to build than private housing. There's multifarious reasons for this, and the underlying problem is absolutely worth solving (it's one of the three big prescriptions in Abundance), but it's a bigger problem than housing. Right now, people are focused on whatever's going to bring the most units online fastest.

throwaway274485• 3 months ago

Is this actually true? Singapore seems to have built, well, their entire country around public housing. I can understand this being more expensive, but drastically so seems hard to believe.

Bringing more units online won't matter much if people can't afford them. Zoning (which is what I take abundance to refer to) can only do so much—we will need to attack housing as a commodity (or an asset, depending on who you listen to) in order to make a dent on the housing issues outside the upper middle class.

prawn• 3 months ago

Is there a current best practice for public housing? I remember a project here in South Australia that integrated some apartments for low-income or homelessness-risk tenants, amongst other tenancies. Idea being that it made for a melting pot rather than risk of only slum or only premium housing. But I don't think it was done at any real scale.

throwaway274485• 3 months ago

No. Housing is a volatile topic. My vociferous rage comes from an american perspective. But mixed-class housing is generally positive

Apreche• 3 months ago

But what about the desirability of San Diego? Was the decrease in rent only because of the increase in supply, or is there also lower demand?

nemomarx2• 3 months ago

Very off the cuff but I do see some news about shrinking population - https://www.reddit.com/r/sandiego/comments/1s71z3a/san_diego...

littlexsparkee5• 3 months ago

That says more about affordability than desirability since rents have gone up over the decade but there's been a steady trickle out to cheaper locales

quacked• 3 months ago

The majority of the "more housing = cheaper rent" success stories crowed about on the internet correspond with net population exodus. Austin, Minneapolis, now San Diego.

Edit: I think we should build several million more units of housing in the US. I'm salty because all the new housing I've seen is ugly shitboxes owned by national property firms that make everywhere feel like nowhere.

tptacek8• 3 months ago

Austin does not appear to have undergone a "net population exodus", at least not one visible on any of the charts I found (I stopped after FRED).

usefulcat2• 3 months ago

Do you have a source for the claim that the population of Austin has decreased recently?

guelo• 3 months ago

Right. What the reporter calls a "surge in supply" is an increase in "active listings", which doesn't differentiate from listings due to new construction vs listings due to people leaving.

Also, I could not find the "active listings" data in Zumper's report[1]. And then I noticed the chart with the active listing data says it was made by Brenden Tuccinardi/KPBS, so this was done by a reporter, not a Zumper data analyst. It's a bit fishy.

[1] https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/national-rent-report

bombcar10• 3 months ago

San Diego also has the strange property of being on an international border!

TJ and SD are really two parts of the same metropolis - any investigation has to see how population ebbs and flows across that border, and what the housing prices did on both sides.

bsder• 3 months ago

I suspect lower demand was more likely (although more supply never hurts).

San Diego has a ton of contractors dependent upon the federal government. I imagine the shenanigans of the current administration caused a bunch of them to pack it in and leave town.

abdullahkhalids4• 3 months ago

Lots of people quoting basic supply and demand.

People in the year 1500 could pretty reliably tell you that a rock would fall down if you released it from a height. People would also tell you that if you threw it up and away, it would go up in an arc and fall down.

The innovation that Newtown and friends brought about was they made quantitative predictions about the rate at which the rock would fall down, or the arc it would follow - both to pretty high level of accuracy.

The point is that, of course, building more houses has a tendency to reduce rents. The question is whether reduction is -0.1% or -10% or there is an increase of +5% because some other factor was more dominant. It would be very hard for policy makers to argue against building more housing, if there was a quantitative model that predicted exact numbers for how much rent fell down given all relevant factors, and this model had been validated over and over again by prediction (not retrodiction). Rather than "rock fall down if you drop it" model that everyone keeps quoting.

pastel8739• 3 months ago

Notably, though, a significant fraction of people seem to believe that building more housing will cause rents to increase. So it seems like it is still important to point to data suggesting the opposite.

abdullahkhalids4• 3 months ago

Housing is a unique market, because every single product in it is unique, and prices and rents can vary quite a bit.

In a city I used to live, the city decided to revitalize a section of downtown by bringing down some old small buildings and replacing them with high rises. The resultant effect was a bloom in shops and restaurants in the area. That meant that 1km^2 area became a lot more attractive, landlords jacked up rents, and existing tenants in the other buildings in the area had to move out for people who were willing to pay 2x the rent. Of course rents probably went down elsewhere in the city to compensate.

You will never get this sort of prediction from simply supply and demand. You need to build quantitative and holistic models that make predictions based on a range of factors. Then use those to make policy.

epistasis4• 3 months ago

We don't need quantitative models if we want the rock to fall. It might be nice to have them, but one of the great things about market economies is that we don't micromanage according to overly complex estimates, and get better results.

Zoning and homeowners are holding on to the rock with a death grip, all while saying "the rock won't fall if we let go, that's fake science, it's far more nuanced you see" as they lie through their teeth to make big profits and immiserate those who don't own land.

abdullahkhalids4• 3 months ago

The quantitative model will tell you whether building housing of type A of quantity B results in more of a decrease in rent than building housing of type C of quantity D. Then you choose the policy that results in the desired decrease in rent. Otherwise, you risk wasting time in pursuing a policy that only results in a 0.1% decrease.

ViscountPenguin• 3 months ago

I don't think the predominant factor causing pollies to shy away from increasing housing supply is a lack of understanding that supply decreases prices, it's a lack of political will to decrease prices.

It's harder than you think to argue for a house price decrease when it's the singular asset that most older adults have most of their wealth tied up in.

wahern• 3 months ago

In a city like San Francisco, relative to the status quo ante easier development is more likely to result in slower growth in home prices, not a reduction in home prices.

But that's not the reason most San Franciscans oppose development. The primary reasons are 1) they're convinced more development will raise prices, 2) they believe affordability must be mandated through price controls or subsidies (e.g. developers dedicating X% of units for below market prices), 3) they insist on bike shedding every development proposal to death, 4) they're convinced private development is inherently inequitable (only "luxury" housing is built).

Pretty much the only group of people in the city worried about housing stock increases reducing prices are developers trying to sell-off new units. But developers are repeat players, and they're generally not the ones lending support to development hurdles. Though, there is (was?) at least one long-time developer who specializes in building "affordable" housing--mostly at public expense, of course--who did aggressively lobby for development hurdles, but carefully crafted so he and only he could easily get around them.

tbrownaw• 3 months ago

It's harder than you think to argue for a house price decrease when it's the singular asset that most older adults have most of their wealth tied up in.

The only thing they can exchange it for is another house or an alternate form of housing. Because you have to live somewhere.

But what I have seen is worries about social class and sharing space with new neighbors who act like they're from the next rung down on the ladder. Which isn't all that different from the usual objection to short-term rentals.

dghlsakjg3• 3 months ago

Most rent payers aren't concerned with the exact function that will describe the shape of the curve for decline in cost of rent.

They are mostly interested in "rent go down", or at least "rent not go up".

That said, there are people who have studied this. You don't need Newtonian level math to calculate elasticity. Hell, we can look at how rents rise in a constrained market and make a pretty good guess what would happen if supply increases.

There are dozens of papers that have these numbers when you search the academic databases for "rent elasticity"

abdullahkhalids4• 3 months ago

Lots of places in the world have legally mandated percentage by which rent can increase for a unit per year. It might be 2% or 3%, but it is a fixed number that is fought over politically before being decided. That is the function that you are claiming rent payers don't care about. But they do, as evidenced by elected officials enforcing the number they think will get them the most votes.

darksaints14• 3 months ago

We don't need to know how much. We just need to know the direction, and stop caring so fucking much about rich people going underwater on their home.

cortesoft• 3 months ago

It would be very hard for policy makers to argue against building more housing, if there was a quantitative model that predicted exact numbers for how much rent fell down given all relevant factors, and this model had been validated over and over again by prediction (not retrodiction).

Policy makers are experts at completely ignoring objective facts, why would this be different?

thelastgallon2• 3 months ago

Austin’s Surge of New Housing Construction Drove Down Rents: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47433058

thelastgallon2• 3 months ago

San Diego sits at the 11th most expensive rental market in the nation, according to the report, with the median rent for a 1-bedroom at $2,200. Median rent for 2-bedroom apartments is $2,950.

bix6• 3 months ago

San Francisco led the nation in annual rent growth this month, with both one and two-bedroom prices hitting new all-time highs, marking the highest levels in over a decade of Zumper data. One-bedroom rent climbed 18.4% to $3,790, surpassing its previous peak of $3,720 set in June 2019, while two-bedrooms rose 22.6% to $5,270, exceeding the prior high of $5,120 recorded in September 2025.

From the Zumper report. 22% gain on SF 2B is just insane to me.

umeshunni• 3 months ago

San Francisco is notoriously the most anti-new-housing city in the country.

bombcar10• 3 months ago

Frisco (come at me) rent and housing prices have way more to do with the valuation of the latest startup darling than with much else.

diogenescynic• 3 months ago

It's always funny when people see the law of supply and demand in effect.

energy123• 3 months ago

Landlords in San Diego were feeling less greedy this year. Same as lithium miners between 2022-2025.

But SSD manufacturers and oil producers have been feeling really greedy this year.

jmyeet• 3 months ago

So the source for this (which is stated and linked in the article) is something called the Zumper National Rent Report [1]. For anyone curious, this is their methodology [2]. This seems to be a measure of active listings based on advertised prices. So it's not necessarily an indicator of if those listings close and at what price (eg in hot markets, people can offer above the listed price). But it seems reasonably well-regarded.

I'm not sure where the "19 of 20" comes from because I grabbed the data from the report into a Google Sheet and sorted and it's not #19 by 1br Y/Y, 2br Y/Y or average rent. What it shows is 1br -5.6% and 2br -7.5% Y/Y. LA was -3.6%/-2.5%.

It's hard to find a comparable city to this because there aren't actually a lot of coastal cities in the US that aren't mega-cities (eg Boston, New York, Miami, Houston).

It seems like San Diego built ~4000 new housing units in 2025 with a population of ~1.4M. For comparison, Miami seems to have added ~18,000 but it's population also exceeds 6M so is that a fair comparison?

My point here is that the direct evidence linking building new housing units to changes in rent is weak.

Not that I'm opposed to building by any means but simply blindly building more units is by itself not an answer. It depends on what you build, where you build it and whether you allow effective or actual cartels to monopolize that supply.

Take Manhattan as an extreme example. There has been a ton of building along so-called Billionaire's Row and also some pockets in the Financial District, West Chelsea, the UES and so on. A lot of this stock is the so-called ultra-luxury market. Prices for some of these new units are now exceeding $7000/sq ft.

That is going to help absolutely nobody. Ultra-wealthy non-residents will park money there and that's it. This blind assumption that it will eventually become prole housing is ludicrous.

Housing should primarily be for shelter, not a speculative asset or investment vehicle to get wealthy by denying someone else shelter.

[1] https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/national-rent-report

[2] https://www.zumper.com/blog/our-methodology-empowering-the-r...

verteu2• 3 months ago

Relevant metric is "New housing units per 1k existing" which is quite low in Manhattan.

For some examples, go https://constructioncoverage.com/research/cities-investing-m... , look at metros that authorized many new units in 2023, and then look at inflation-adjusted home price change from 2023-2025.

Like magic, you will find that post-inflation home value growth was low in the metros that built the most: Austin , Raleigh-Cary, Nashville, Jacksonville, Houston.

Ancalagon• 3 months ago

I’m gonna also say this is because biotech is in decline and major employers are pulling out. People straight up can’t afford to live there on their own.

underlipton7• 3 months ago

I see the "supply and demand" straw man is propped up well and often in this thread. Let's talk about the actual dynamics in play:

2) Builder Subsidies: "Just build more and prices will drop," ignores that the incentive structures municipalities use to draw developers are an additional burden on residents. These for-profit corporations then seek to make a profit on their investment, leading to no direct meaningful inventory increase in the affordable unit range. Worse, developers often target existing affordable units for their redevelopment, destroying the very units that the new inventory is supposed to ultimately reduce demand for. In order for "build more" to drive down rents, it can't be done the way it has been, which mostly ends up being a giveaway to developers at the expense of the tax base and displaced renters.

waterTanuki• 3 months ago

I do wonder how much of this can be attributed to many people leaving biotech for better paying jobs in the AI gold rush (a.k.a packing it up and moving to SF).

More housing is always a good thing though

blendo• 3 months ago

"we've shown a pretty significant increase in the number of new housing permits each year, we’re closing in on the 10,000 mark for the last two years"

Does that mean the "surge in supply" is really a surge in permits?

fragmede• 3 months ago

Funny thing about permits...

latchkey• 3 months ago

This place sucks, don't come here.

https://x.com/HotAisle/status/2046792071521157600 (taken tonight)

culopatin2• 3 months ago

I mean it’s just a sunset on some sand. You can get that all the way from Chile to Alaska, not a big deal.

ButlerianJihad• 3 months ago

Let's be clear about our terms here. The articles in the OP appear to be strictly discussing the City of San Diego. The City of San Diego is a drop in the bucket compared to the expansive San Diego County. If you're talking about being a "border town" or "metropolis" then you're not talking about the City but the County.

San Diego County includes La Jolla and points further north, as well as El Cajon and Jamul and all sorts of suburbs. It's a huge area with many disparate neighborhoods (and even 4 microclimates.)

The City of San Diego includes very undesirable neighborhoods such as most of Downtown. There are a lot of places where normal people would have a terrible time, despite still being expensive. But there are also many different parts of the County which are "bad neighborhoods" and upscale places and ethnic enclaves, etc.

Honestly, I was a little surprised that these articles are specifically referring to only the City in terms of housing supply. The vast majority of San Diegans don't even live in the city. I mean, it's not as pathological as Los Angeles and its county, but it's an important distinction that's often lost on out-of-towners.

wnc3141• 3 months ago

For expensive high growth markets, rents have dropped in most. Part of this is from a freezing of the labor market meaning nobody is really moving to town.

San Diego rents declined following surge in supply

Related Stories