San Mateo County rents both higher or flat

The high-rent cities often have more luxury-style apartments on the market or minimal housing construction as of late — often a combination of both. In May, median rents for one-bedroom units in Foster City and Menlo Park were $3,500 and $3,510, respectively, according to Zumper data. Redwood City came in third at $3,300.

It’s likely the highest countywide median rent the area has seen.

Foster City saw a double digit spike in one-bedroom rents, going from $3,170 in May 2025 to $3,500 last month. With only 3.8 square miles of land, the city is making room for ongoing expansions of its large employers, including Gilead and Zoox. Rental demand is increasing as a result, and the lack of new supply is piling on market pressure.

“Foster City has not built a lot of housing in the recent past, and then we’ve brought in all these jobs,” Robert Pedro, president of Signature Realty and Foster City planning commissioner said. “If you bring in 2,000 jobs, that’s a massive impact. We’re still only 32,000 people.”

The city has only seen six new housing units built between 2025 and 2026 thus far. That’s a stark difference from just a few years ago, when 166 units were completed between 2021-22, according to data from the Department of Housing and Community Development.

Other Peninsula cities are grappling with similar development issues. The number of completed units has plummeted, as lenders began tightening their belts a few years ago. Pipelines remain strong and cities are approving applications, but limited financing means projects are stalling at the construction stage.

“Lenders’ models are being very conservative in terms of what growth is going to be,” Doug Ressler, business intelligence manager at Yardi Matrix, said. “We’re probably not getting a [Federal Reserve] rate cut this year. If anything, we might get a rate increase.”

Despite San Mateo’s robust pipeline, for instance, only 155 new units have actually been completed in 2025 and 2026 thus far. By contrast, 514 units were completed between 2023-24.

In places like Menlo Park and Redwood City, much of the newly built housing is luxury, market-rate units catering to high-earning individuals. While that drives up overall asking rents on paper, the market for older housing stock remains flat.

Prodesse Property Management Group maintains a portfolio of 50- to 60-year-old properties and has barely seen a 1% year-over-year increase across all units, which span north to south county.

“We don't have the same pricing power. Our tenants are not working for Google and at high-paying tech jobs,” Prodesse Property Group President Michael Pierce said. “In most cases, our asking rent is still not back to 2019 levels.”

The trend seems to be playing out as housing advocates and economists hoped — that building high-priced, market-rate units frees up older ones for lower- and middle-income residents.

“If you weren’t building the new buildings, the rich tech people would be taking the units that we manage,” Pierce said.

South San Francisco’s median rents for both one- and two-bedroom units are some of the lowest in the county — $2,480 and $3,600, respectively. Daly City has the lowest median rent for one-bedrooms, at $2,050, however, it’s in the middle of the pack for two-bedrooms, at $3,920.

South City also hasn’t seen as much new supply recently — 123 units were completed in the last 18 months, compared to 471 between 2023-24. But because it’s maintained higher density zoning policies for decades, it hasn’t had to play catch-up in recent years like San Mateo and Redwood City, Pedro said.

“They’ve had time to stabilize because they started doing this stuff in the 1970s,” Pedro said. “Now the age of those units are 50 to 60 years old, and they're just not going to rent the same as a newer building.”

High occupancy rates have also kept the rental market strong, as buying a home on the Peninsula remains increasingly out of reach for those who would have historically bought a house by now. The county has the highest median home sale price in the state, over $2 million.

Between June 2024 to June 2025, 4.85% of tenants moving out said they were purchasing a home in the area, which was down to 3% between June 2025 to June 2026, according to Prodesse Property Management survey data.

“People are staying in apartments longer, and they’re waiting longer to buy because the cost of homes are so high,” Pierce said.

For two-bedroom units, Menlo Park, Foster City and Burlingame had the highest median rents, while Belmont, Millbrae, Pacifica and South City had the lowest.