Housing Watch: Fresno seeing spike in residents looking to move from Sacramento, data shows

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- Despite the rising price of apartment rent, Fresno has continued to draw major interest from people looking to move to the Valley from other parts of California.

Housing Economist Chris Salviati of ApartmentList.com noticed a surprising trend.

"The most common destination was Sacramento, followed by San Francisco. That accounts for the vast majority of folks looking to move to Fresno."

Research conducted by apartmentlist.com showed 31.7% of people out of the area searching online at Fresno apartments were from Sacramento.

22% of the apartment hunters were from San Francisco, while just 6.7% were in Los Angeles.

"We looked at the IP address of where someone was located to figure out where they're searching from and then they tell us directly where they're looking to move to," Salviatii said. "That can tell us something about what migration patterns might look like."

New, luxury complexes have helped key a 20% spike in Fresno rent prices over the past year but rents remain lower than those in the capital city.

The average price of a one-bedroom unit in Fresno is $1,067, while a similar rental in Sacramento would go for $1402.

"What we're seeing there, I think, is really Fresno looks like it is serving, I would say, as a sort of affordability haven for maybe some of the folks that are moving away from the more expensive California markets," Salviati said.

We checked with several apartment complex managers who said at this point, the online interest shown by Sacramento residents hasn't yet resulted in a significant number of people actually moving into Fresno apartments.

At the other end of the spectrum, apartmentlist.com also found 59% of the people in Fresno using their site were looking to move out of the Valley, with Los Angeles the primary destination.