San Francisco

New Study Says San Francisco Has the Highest Rents in the World

San Jose wasn’t far behind, ranking at No. 4 with an average rent of $2,500

Let's face it, San Francisco is expensive.

To make matters worse, a new study has now ranked the city No. 1 in the world with the highest rent and the list also includes three more Bay Area cities in the top ten: San Jose, Oakland and Berkeley.

According to a study released by financial advice site Walletwyse, the average rent in San Francisco is about $3,500.

The high rent average was followed by Hamilton, Bermuda at No. 2 with an average rent of $3,400 and Manhattan, New York at No. 3 with $3,050.

San Jose wasn’t far behind, ranking at No. 4 with an average rent of $2,500. Oakland came in at No. 5 tying with Hong Kong, China with rent at $2,450 and Berkeley came in at No. 6, tying with Boston, Massachusetts, at $2,400.

The study used data from Numbeo, a database of world living conditions including cost of living, housing indicators, health care, traffic, crime and pollution.

The list is made up of 540 cities across the globe with the cheapest U.S. city rent coming from Springfield, Missouri with a super low rent of $550.

Aaron Ansel, chief growth officer at Walletwyse, posted the study on Reddit, from where it quickly went viral. He also included a caveat:

“There's no a clear definition of ‘city,’ which leads me to think there are probably some discrepancies based on how the numbers are reported. It's possible that downtown high-rise apartments go for twice the rent listed, or if you live in the suburbs where large apartments rent for far less than the given number. This is part of why indices are really better for comparison-purposes than for locate-specific data.

Comments from Bay Area residents flowed in about how they were coping with the high rents.

"I live in Walnut Creek and pay 1850/mo for 500 sq feet studio and live by myself," one Redditor said, "I am about 80 minutes door to door with my office in downtown SF, and I got a pretty sweet deal for living by myself."

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