Given the current pace of vaccination & office reopening plans from most major employers this summer/fall and the boom in RE prices, what’s the current trend for rents?
Are rents slowly inching back up or are they still at last level as last fall?
Do we expect rents to trend up in Fall when offices and schools open up?
I’m not sure. I just had a call with one of our software vendors which is a SF based startup. There’s only 1 person left in SF. Everyone has relocated, and it doesn’t seem they are moving back after covid. It’s not just the old companies looking to cut costs who are having employees leave the Bay Area.
Does this process not look strikingly like offshoring in yearly 2000 except that the employees and jobs are moving just across cities or regions?
They all moved to Tahoe and doubled our rents. Landlords are happy, locals are pissed.
Offshoring was to save money, because salaries were much lower. This is more driven by employees desire to live elsewhere.
There are signs NYC is springing back to life. I expect SF to follow. Rent will rebound. Might not even take that long.
Any actual info from the ground on rents? @ptiemann @SamShuehRealtor @cloud you are usually closest to emerging trends.
Rents in Sunnyvale/Cupertino were down as much as 25% but recovered since February.
Rents in Santa Cruz never budged.
Thanks for the intel @ptiemann. To clarify, when you say recovered since Feb, do you mean rents now are same as pre-COVID in 2019?
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Referring to condo and townhouses? No drop in rent for me. In fact, is UP +8% 
upon renewal.
I don’t have a lot of rentals in Cup/SU
The Cupertino SFR couldn’t get 4k in December (best offer was 3500). It rented for 6k in 2nd half of March.
I have seen Sunnyvale studios and small apartments offered for 1k and below , which would’ve been closer to 2k before.
Big complexes did cut rent 10% and offer 2 months free (effectively 27% discount). I observed that in January.
February suddenly the sentiment changed.
Of course, no existing contract reduced rent. I was talking about new contracts only.
Even I saw this sudden sentiment change in Feb. I am looking to buy in east contra costa. Till mid feb SFH were going 20-40K over listing price and suddenly ppl started paying 100K over the listing price.
I thought you bought already. Prices are going out of sight
yes I booked a new construction but still looking if I can better deal somewhere but I don’t think I will.
zillow shows what actual asking rents are in different places in Bay Area including Cupertino.
I have SFH rentals in SV and Austin. Both places, is very easy to rent out despite increasing rents by 10%+, probably too low if that is so easy 
However, price appreciation in SV is not that good compare to Austin’s 40-60% 
yoy increase.
Thanks for the inputs everyone!
Old tenants moved out our SFH rental in Union City on March, 10% increase without any problem.