The article is good but doesn't address one of the most important parts of rent pricing - available housing units in the market. In the higher price areas there are often not enoughtr units to meet the demand. Some of the reasonszs for the lack are the zoning restricting the density of units which are usually against apartment complexes, especially those that could offer lower rents. Also many places are not restricting construction because of Historical Districts, etc. San Francisco also has a physical restriction because of it's location, alltho it hass filled in some shallow portions of the bay but that takes awhile before any construction can begin.

Another cause of higher rents are the renters themselves. One Sunday evening at a church men's meeting we had a rental property owner & a real estate agent there. We got into a discusssion on rents & the owner said he had to make more repairs to his property when the rent was lower than after he raised it higher. Thus, the low renters damaged his property more and it took longer to prepare a property inbetweeen renters, than those who paid higher rents. He prefered to keep his rents lower but was forced to increase them because of the actions of the renters themselves.