New York City has surpassed San Francisco as the most expensive apartment rental market in the country. 

According to August rental data from Zumper, an apartment listing company, San Francisco has fallen behind New York in median one-bedroom rent, with New York at $2,810 and San Francisco at $2,800. 

“This was unthinkable even two years ago,” reads the report. “In early 2019, median one-bedroom rent in San Francisco was more than $800 more than New York’s, but a combination of rising rent in the Big Apple and falling rent in the Bay Area caused the spread between rent in the two cities to slowly dwindle. In January 2020, the spread had fallen to $520.”

As detailed by Zumper, San Francisco and New York were two of the most impacted cities at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Renters in both cities relocated, leading to increased apartment vacancies and plummeting rental prices. By January 2021, median one-bedroom rent had fallen 23.4 percent in San Francisco relative to March 2020 with New York’s falling by 17.5 percent. However, San Francisco rent was still $330 more than in New York. 

It wasn’t until January of this year that the shift began to occur as vaccine rollouts began. People started returning to New York as certain urban amenities, such as indoor dining, became available again. As a result, rent prices began to rise. Since January, New York rents have increased by 19.6 percent and are down only 1.4 percent relative to March 2020. In San Francisco, on the other hand, tech workers who make up a huge proportion of residents in the city have maintained work-from-home policies. Rent in the city is only up 4.5 percent, down by 20 percent relative to March of last year.

“Tech workers make up a disproportionate share of residents in the city, and tech companies are more likely to have adopted broad or permanent work-from-home policies,” reads the Zumper report. “This allows those workers to live anywhere they want, and many of them have decided they don’t want to live in San Francisco.”