The average rent for a 1 bedroom apartment in San Diego is $3,024, while the average rent for a 2 bedroom apartment is $3,989.
Rent rates updated 26 days ago. Averages are based on the rental prices of properties listed on Apartment List.
Navigate apartment hunting and city life like a local with our curated articles about San Diego, California.
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Apartment List has released San Diego’s results from the third annual Apartment List Renter Satisfaction Survey. This survey, which drew on responses from over 45,000 renters, provides insight on what states and cities must do to meet the needs of 111 million American renters nationwide.
"San Diego renters expressed general satisfaction with the city overall," according to Apartment List. "With expensive rents in coastal cities, it comes as no surprise that cost of living is a source of dissatisfaction in San Diego."
Welcome to the Apartment List May 2025 Rent Report for San Diego, CA. Currently, the overall median rent in the city stands at $2,322, after rising 0.6% last month. Prices and are now up 0.4% year-over-year. Read on to learn more about what’s been happening in the San Diego rental market and how it compares to trends throughout the broader San Diego metro area and the nation as a whole.
The median rent in San Diego rose by 0.6% over the course of April, and has now increased by a total of 0.4% over the past 12 months. San Diego’s rent growth over the past year has has fallen behind the state average (1.8%) and is similar to the national average (-0.3%).
Four months into the year, rents in San Diego have risen 1.4%. This is a similar rate of growth compared to what the city was experiencing at this point last year: from January to April 2024 rents had increased 1.6%.
San Diego rents went up 0.6% in the past month, compared to the national rate of 0.5%. Among the nation's 100 largest cities, this ranks #37. Similar monthly rent growth took place in Baltimore, MD (0.6%) and Baton Rouge, LA (0.6%).
Citywide, the median rent currently stands at $1,979 for a 1-bedroom apartment and $2,481 for a 2-bedroom. Across all bedroom sizes (ie, the entire rental market), the median rent is $2,322. That ranks #11 in the nation, among the country's 100 largest cities.
For comparison, the median rent across the nation as a whole is $1,223 for a 1-bedroom, $1,378 for a 2-bedroom, and $1,392 overall. The median rent in San Diego is 66.8% higher than the national, and is similar to the prices you would find in Boston, MA ($2,373) and Anaheim, CA ($2,314).
If we expand our view to the wider San Diego metro area, the median rent is $2,292 meaning that the median price in San Diego proper ($2,322) is 1.3% greater than the price across the metro as a whole. Metro-wide annual rent growth stands at 0.5%, above the rate of rent growth within just the city.
The table below shows the latest rent stats for 7 cities in the San Diego metro area that are included in our database. Among them, Chula Vista is currently the most expensive, with a median rent of $2,430. La Mesa is the metro’s most affordable city, with a median rent of $2,083. The metro's fastest annual rent growth is occurring in Chula Vista (2.3%) while the slowest is in Escondido (-1.1%).
You can also use the map below to explore the latest rent trends in the San Diego metropolitan area.
Apartment List is committed to the accuracy and transparency of our rent estimates. We begin with reliable median rent statistics from the Census Bureau, then extrapolate them forward to the current month using a growth rate calculated from our listing data. In doing so, we use a same-unit analysis similar to Case-Shiller’s approach, capturing apartment transactions over time to provide an accurate picture of rent growth in cities across the country. Our approach corrects for the sample bias inherent in other private sources, producing results that are much closer to statistics published by the Census Bureau and HUD. For more details, please see the Apartment List Rent Estimate Methodology.
Apartment List publishes monthly rent reports and underlying data for hundreds of cities across the nation, as well as data aggregated for counties, metros, and states. These data are intended to be a source of reliable information that help renters and policymakers make sound decisions. Insights from our data are covered regularly by journalists across the country. To access the data yourself, please visit our Data Downloads Page.