Turns out the good times may last for never

San Francisco is building more, everybody agrees on that. But how much is more—and for that matter, how much is enough?

The apartment rental site RENTCafe tapped research firm Yardi Matrix to take stock of the city’s new housing stock last week. And the numbers look superficially good: The Bay Area as a whole should yield 5,415 new apartments by the end of this year, with 1,860 in San Francisco itself.

The next biggest contributor is Oakland, with 599 new units, and then Berkeley with 402. Pleasanton ranked fourth place with 345 on the block.

The catch is, Yardi Matrix says that rate of construction is down 12 percent year over year. And in San Francisco it’s down 48 percent.

Last year the Bay Area-wide product came to almost 6,200, which RENTCafe credits with putting the skids on space shuttle-velocity rent increases.

“While demand is still strong in the city, this flood of new rentals [put] a damper on incessant rent growth,” RENTCafe’s Ama Otet writes.

That might seem like a generous assessment by renters, who have seen only nickel-and-dime savings on a barely noticeable wavelength since 2016, as rents remain the highest in the country.

On the other hand, Otet points out that, while rents went up 49 percent since 2012, the last 18 months have seen a slight decrease. A small break, sure, but a little bit for which to be grateful.

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