{"id":4965,"date":"2026-09-08T17:03:04","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T00:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/julianalee.com\/blog\/?p=4965"},"modified":"2026-09-08T17:05:42","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T00:05:42","slug":"best-city-for-rental-income","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/julianalee.com\/blog\/best-city-for-rental-income\/","title":{"rendered":"Best City For Rental Income?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For decades, people have wondered whether it is better to rent a house or buy it. An easier question to consider is: if you buy a house and rent it out, which city historically gives the highest rental income per dollar of house cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/julianalee.com\/images\/rent-vs-city.png?ssl=1\" alt=\"Measure of rental return for various Silicon Valley cities.\n\nCompares rent vs puchase price relative to San Jose.\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You can&#8217;t just accept the table of results without thinking about it. If you own a very expensive house in Atherton, are you going to rent it out and see it on Zumper? Probably not. The few less expensive houses in Atherton are probably going to tilt the rental cost away from what a median house is. For typical cities, the table should give a pretty good indication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Another anomaly in median rental prices reported by Zumper is East Palo Alto with a reported monthly rental price of $6,850, which is only surpassed by Palo Alto and Los Altos Hills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It appears that Newark and San Jose are likely the best cities to be a landlord in. If the value of a house is proportional to its price then Los Altos and Los Altos Hills may have the best houses to actually own to live in because they have the worst return as a rental and are least likely to have their price pushed up by rental income opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/julianalee.com\/newark\/newark-statistics.htm#houses-price\">Newark real estate prices<\/a>.<br><a href=\"https:\/\/julianalee.com\/san-jose\/san-jose-statistics.htm#houses-price\">San Jose real estate prices<\/a>.<br><a href=\"https:\/\/julianalee.com\/atherton\/atherton-statistics.htm#houses-price\">Atherton real estate prices<\/a>.<br><a href=\"https:\/\/julianalee.com\/palo-alto\/palo-alto-statistics.htm#houses-price\">Palo Alto real estate prices<\/a>.<br><a href=\"https:\/\/julianalee.com\/los-altos\/los-altos-statistics.htm#houses-price\">Los Altos real estate prices<\/a>.<br><a href=\"https:\/\/julianalee.com\/los-altos-hills\/los-altos-hills-statistics.htm#houses-price\">Los Altos Hills real estate prices<\/a>.<br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For decades, people have wondered whether it is better to rent a house or buy it. An easier question to consider is: if you buy a house and rent it out, which city historically gives the highest rental income per dollar of house cost. You can&#8217;t just accept the table of results without thinking about [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":790,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[135],"tags":[239,240],"class_list":["post-4965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-real-estate-investment","tag-rent-vs-buy-2","tag-rental-return-vs-city"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Jeff - Juliana Lee Team","author_link":"https:\/\/julianalee.com\/blog\/author\/jeffrey-r-keller\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"For decades, people have wondered whether it is better to rent a house or buy it. An easier question to consider is: if you buy a house and rent it out, which city historically gives the highest rental income per dollar of house cost. You can&#8217;t just accept the table of results without thinking about&hellip;","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/julianalee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/julianalee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/julianalee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/julianalee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/790"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/julianalee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4965"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/julianalee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4966,"href":"https:\/\/julianalee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4965\/revisions\/4966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/julianalee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/julianalee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/julianalee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}