Bay Area Rental Price Heatmap by ZIP Code
We created Kwelia because residential real estate information is unstructured, messy, informal, and overall - not helpful. A glaring example of this problem is the lack of granularity of real estate data on rentals in urban markets. While it is not difficult to find indexes and other metrics on pricing movements in a city level, it is difficult (if not impossible) to find such information on pricing movements within a city. Good luck finding pricing information per ZIP code, or better yet, by neighborhood.
Well, consider this problem solved. After tinkering around with a mountain of fresh rental data from the SF Bay Area, Kwelia’s Chief Data Scientist Chris Connell was able to plot the average rental price per square foot in each ZIP code on a map. He describes the technical details for how he put it together in R on his blog. Check out the map below or an enlarged version here:
It’s always interesting to view things geospatially. One key takeaway (besides the obvious one that the SF Bay is PRICEY!) is that there is incredible price disparity among different parts of this massive MSA. Although it is obvious that the East Bay is cheaper than the West, it is insightful to see that is it nearly $2/sqft cheaper. For further granularity, check out below for the actual raw data that was used for the map (enlarged link and raw data).
Can you find your ZIP?
