Bakersfield apartment rental prices decline | News

A new report says apartment rental prices in Bakersfield, already among the very lowest in the state, have gotten even cheaper during the last 12 months.

Rental data company Zumper reported the median price of a one-bedroom apartment in Bakersfield went for $650 per month in July, a decline of 1.5 percent from a year before.

The state’s median — the point at which half the apartments rented for more and half cost less — was listed as $1,600, almost 1 1/2 times more than Bakersfield’s. Zumper said the most expensive city to rent in was San Francisco, where the median one-bedroom cost $3,500 per month.

Bakersfield was the only one of California’s 10 largest cities where rents actually fell during the past year, Zumper reported. By comparison, July rent prices in San Francisco were up 12.9 percent year over year. In Santa Monica, which ranked fifth with a one-bedroom median of $2,450, rents climbed 2.5 percent since July 2014.

Only two cities on Zumper’s list of 94 had one-bedroom median rents less expensive than those found in Bakersfield. They were Visalia ($590 per month) and Merced ($550).

Bakersfield multifamily housing specialist Marc A. Thurston attributed Bakersfield’s inexpensive rental prices to the city’s low cost of living and overall low wages.

The city’s low-cost environment makes it less expensive for people to buy Bakersfield apartment buildings as an investment, said Thurston, senior vice president of Newmark Grubb ASU & Associates' Investment Services Group. The tradeoff is that the cash flow is less, too.

Because investors generally prefer apartment buildings with greater cash flow, he said, there is less competition among people trying to buy rental properties in Bakersfield. That means the return on a multifamily housing investment here is generally higher than the 3 percent to 4 percent often seen in Southern California.

“They can come to Bakersfield and get a 5, 6 or 7 percent return,” he said.