If the wave of apartment construction will help lower rents in San Diego's city center, it hasn't happened yet.

Almost 8,700 apartments have been built in downtown San Diego since 2013, while the state's housing needs assessment has found the city will have to build more than 108,000 units by 2030.

A report by StorageCafe, an online business that provides storage unit listings, ranks San Diego number thirteen out of 100 of the country's largest cities for downtown apartment construction in the last ten years.

Storage Cafe

The city pales beside the busiest builder – Atlanta, Georgia – which added over 21,500 apartments to its downtown inventory. Los Angeles, in 2nd place, built over 19,000 units.

Like San Diego, about half the total inventory in downtown Los Angeles was built since 2013, a number that more than quadrupled by 2019, which was also San Diego's strongest year.

Los Angeles has added 900 units so far this year to San Diego's 368. In the next few years, L.A. will have completed another 4,700 units, while in San Diego, 2,312 units will come online.

People gravitate to city centers due to the high cost of single family homes.

According to the study, the pandemic only temporarily paused a multifamily building surge taking place in city centers, and downtown San Diego has undergone a "tremendous revival."

Doug Ressler, the manager of business intelligence for Yardi Matrix, said the pandemic has led to a reverse migration, with employees following jobs - and new housing coming to places where people want to live. There will be ripple effects for years, as hybrid and remote work picks up, he said.

People also gravitate to city centers due to the high cost of single family homes, though San Diego's suburbs have seen an even bigger surge in multifamily projects. Data from real estate tracker CoStar found that, countywide, 4,600 new apartments will open in 2022, and the biggest complexes will pop up in suburbs like Chula Vista, La Mesa, and Mission Valley.

If the wave of apartment construction will help lower rents in San Diego's vibrant city center, it hasn't happened yet. In 2021, of the 5,033 units that received building permits, 4,563 units were for people with above moderate income.

The research by StorageCafe points to continued growth of the urban core as people seek walkable access to shops, jobs and entertainment. Even if office workers aren't yet returning in droves, "downtown living never lost its shine."