A 773-square-foot, one-bedroom condo on the 23rd floor of Millennium Tower just rented for $10,000 a month, going to a tenant who works nearby in artificial intelligence. The deal closed on Oct. 31 and, according to the Compass agents who brokered it, marks the first time a downtown one-bedroom has crossed into five-figure monthly rent.
The unit’s owners bought the otherwise unremarkable condo for their son in August for $660,000, according to The San Francisco Standard. He had a change of plans, and a month later his parents decided to rent the place out instead. Agents Sean Mamola and Trista Bernasconi, who represented the owners in their purchase, listed the unit at $6,800 a month — nearly double the condo’s last asking rent of $3,600 back in 2022, according to Zillow figures cited by the Standard.
A Price Drop That Backfired, in a Good Way
The listing didn’t move at $6,800, so the agents dropped the asking rent to $6,400 in mid-October. That lower price, counterintuitively, brought out a wave of competition, per the same account. One prospective tenant, who works in AI and needed to be close to the office, offered $10,000 a month along with a Nov. 1 move-in date to lock down the unit over other bidders.
Mamola said the renter needed to live close to work, while Bernasconi pointed to the tower’s specialized programming and sense of community as part of its appeal.
San Francisco’s Rents Are Breaking Records Everywhere
The $10,000 Millennium Tower deal lands amid a broader rent surge across San Francisco. The city’s median one-bedroom rent climbed to $4,400 a month, up 25.4% year over year, according to a Zumper report cited by CBS News. Separately, the median asking rent for a one-bedroom was about $3,920 in September — the highest nominal figure on record — according to the San Francisco Chronicle, which also reported a 26% jump from the $3,110 average the city saw a year earlier using Apartment List data. The two outlets’ figures differ, likely reflecting different datasets, but both point in the same direction: rents are climbing fast…