(The Center Square) – According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, San Francisco permitted zero homes in November 2024, with just 744 homes permitted in the consolidated city-county through the first 11 months of the year.
Of those 744 homes, just 24 permits were issued for single-family homes, with 26 issued for units in duplexes, 6 for units in triplexes or quadplexes, and 688 for units in multifamily buildings with five or more units. This means San Francisco has permitted an average of 68 homes each month, most of which are in larger apartment buildings.
While San Francisco is currently pursuing entitlement reforms that could make it more enticing to build in the future, excerpts say present conditions make it difficult for new construction to make sense; in 2022, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that it takes 627 days to get a permit to build a new home, during which time developers are still paying interest on borrowed money.
“What I’m hearing from developers is that projects aren’t penciling in the San Francisco market,” Los Angeles Housing Production Institute Director Joseph Cohen told The Center Square. “I am optimistic that the new mayor of San Francisco will help turn things around. But, as much as the city has control over, they can’t control interest rates or construction costs.”
For multifamily housing, permitting can take even longer; a University of California, Berkeley study found that for multifamily housing, permitting in San Francisco takes a staggering 26.3 months. However, with San Francisco’s pioneering adoption of a new state law limiting permitting timelines to six months, things could start to turn around if national financing conditions improve.
San Francisco’s home permitting contrasts with that of Austin, Texas, which has grown from smaller than San Francisco at the start of the last decade, to far surpassing it in size today.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, San Francisco has a population of approximately 810,000, while Austin, has a population of approximately 960,000. In 2010, San Francisco’s population was estimated to be approximately 805,000, or roughly 15,000 residents larger than Austin.
In November 2024, Austin permitted 738 homes, or nearly as many as San Francisco had in the first eleven months of the year. Through November, Austin permitted 8,917 homes, or nearly twelve times as many as San Francisco.
According to apartment listing service Apartments.com, the average apartment in San Francisco is 584 square feet and rents for $2,916 per month — or nearly $5 per square foot per month — and rents have increased by 0.9% in the past year.
Meanwhile in Austin, the average apartment is 713 square feet and rents for $1,434 per month — or just over $2 per square foot per month — and rents have declined 4.6% in the past year.