A couple earning a combined annual income of more than $365,000 has revealed that they still could not find an apartment within their budget in San Francisco, highlighting the city's soaring cost of living.
Katrine Razniak, 27, joined LinkedIn in 2022 as a recruiter with a salary of $70,000.
After moving to tech company Rippling, her annual pay jumped to $180,000. Her partner, Adam Woodbury, 39, is a software engineer earning $185,000 a year.
Despite their high incomes, the couple struggled to find a one-bedroom apartment they could afford.
They were looking for a rental priced below $5,000 a month. After touring more than 30 apartments, they found that most were either beyond their budget or had intense competition from other applicants. Eventually, they decided to stop searching.
“I’m not completely hopeless, but I feel like I can’t stay in San Francisco anymore,” Razniak said.
Woodbury echoed the sentiment, saying, “At some point, we both gradually realized that staying here no longer made sense.”
Razniak admitted she once believed earning $200,000 a year would eliminate financial worries. Instead, she found herself cutting back on spending.
Last year, she and her friends stopped eating out regularly and began cooking meals at home while watching reality TV together.
According to reports, San Francisco's already high cost of living has climbed even further since 2024, driven largely by the AI boom.
Sky-high salaries offered by AI companies have pushed up housing costs, making the city increasingly unaffordable for many professionals outside that sector.
According to Redfin, the median home price in San Francisco crossed $1.7 million in April, compared with the national median of about $450,000.
Data from CoStar also shows that the average monthly apartment rent in San Francisco has reached $3,827, recently overtaking New York City to become the highest in the United States.
The rising cost of housing is also driving more Californians to leave the state.
According to a recent report cited by FOX Business, many residents are relocating to more affordable areas, where they save an average of $672 a month on housing costs.
