Elias: California tenants surprisingly faring best in the pricey Bay Area

A study found that lower costs don't help much in the state's less expensive areas, where rents consume a larger fraction of incomes.

Rents are higher in Silicon Valley and the rest of the Bay Area than anywhere else in California, but the region’s generally higher salaries nevertheless give its tenants more disposable income than anywhere else in this state, even the far lower-priced Central Valley.

Even with prices for necessities like utilities, food, health care and transportation consistently higher than just about all other California locations, the typical Sunnyvale renter, ensconced in the heart of Silicon Valley, spends a smaller fraction of income on the basics than counterparts everywhere else in California.

Yes, rents are sky-high in Sunnyvale, once considered a very ordinary San Francisco Peninsula suburb. The typical monthly cost of an apartment or house there is $3,013, RentCafe reports.

The average renter’s household income tops $145,000 a year, though, about $35,000 more than in San Francisco, where rents are higher, at $3,297 a month — or about $39,565 a year. Utilities in Sunnyvale, taken as a fairly typical Silicon Valley ‘burb, are also lower than in San Francisco, by about $1,000 per year. Health care costs a bit more, at an average of $516 per month in Sunnyvale compared with $489 in San Francisco.

Los Angeles renters could be excused for eating their hearts out at hearing those salary and expense figures and the disposable incomes that go with them. In fact, if the Bay Area numbers were completely typical, it’s safe to guess there would have been no California exodus over the last few years, as it would have been just as comfortable to stay put.

The typical Los Angeles renter draws annual pay of about $87,000 less than his or her Sunnyvale counterpart, in part because of the disparity between high-tech pay levels and those in other jobs.

So where rent eats only about 25% of the average Sunnyvale renter’s income, the typical Los Angeles rent of $2,745, or almost $33,000 per year, takes 56% of an average income. Even with utilities averaging a couple thousand dollars a year less and healthcare and transportation costs far lower than in the Silicon Valley, the Los Angeles renter winds up with much less disposable income than counterparts on the Peninsula.

Meanwhile, tenants in Central Valley locales like Fresno, Modesto and Bakersfield stand out for having far lower average rent, food, transportation and healthcare costs than their coastal counterparts, but their average salaries, all in the mid-to-high $40,000s, are so much lower that the reduced costs don’t help much.

Overall, Stockton has the lowest utility costs among major California cities, but also is among the lower average salary levels. Fresno has the lowest food and transportation costs, while Los Angeles and San Diego are at or near the top in food and transportation expenses and near the middle in salaries.

The Orange County city of Anaheim stands near average in all these costs among California urban centers. With a typical monthly rent of $2,331, or nearly $28,000 a year, and income of about $66,000, the typical Anaheim renter should be able to handle expenses like utilities, food, healthcare and transportation and still have some disposable income left over.

That Anaheim renter will have nothing like the levels enjoyed in the Silicon Valley, though. That makes it somewhat surprising that much of the population leaving California over the last five years, with a total of about 3 million emigrants, was from the Bay Area.

That trend is now slowing, and much of the population loss was made up for with births and legal immigration. It’s still a lesson, though, that in long-distance moves money has not been the only factor pushing people out of California, even if it is the biggest part of the picture.

With much of the exodus coming during the peak pandemic years of 2020-22, the bottom line is that most emigrants were folks who began to seek more space once it became clear they could work outside offices and not worry about having to make long commutes.

Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com, and read more of his columns online at californiafocus.net.