Ah yes, the future we were promised: flying cars, universal basic income, robots doing our chores. The future we got? Rents going up because Chad from Stanford learned how to fine-tune a chatbot. Artificial intelligence isn’t just disrupting industries, it’s disrupting your ability to pay for a studio apartment in Seattle without auctioning off a kidney.
Let’s dive in, city by city, because nothing screams “innovation economy” like skyrocketing apartment rents and desperate renters competing for 300 square feet of drywall and existential despair.
The Big Picture: CBRE Counts the Robots, Landlords Count the Cash
According to CBRE, the number of workers with AI skills ballooned by 50% from mid-2024 to mid-2025, hitting 517,000 across the U.S. and Canada. That’s half a million freshly minted prompt-engineers, machine learning bros, and data wranglers pouring into cities already unaffordable to anyone with a normal human salary.
Where are they? San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Seattle, Toronto, and Washington D.C.—aka the pentagon of “good luck affording rent.” Together, the top three (San Francisco, New York, Seattle) hog 35% of the AI talent pool. Because obviously the universe couldn’t bless Cleveland or St. Louis with a housing boom—no, it had to be the places already held hostage by avocado toast pricing.
New York: The Empire State Strikes Rent
New York added 20,000 AI tech workers in the last year. That’s 20,000 people armed with six-figure salaries, TikTok-inspired fashion, and the kind of startup optimism that makes landlords salivate.
Manhattan rents? Already a blood sport. But now, thanks to AI bros and financial services firms hiring them, the average one-bedroom is less a home and more a subscription model: $5,000 per month, with no refunds if the cockroach refuses to co-sign your lease.
CBRE says Manhattan apartment rents grew more than 14% between 2021 and 2024. Which is adorable, because the only other thing growing faster than that is the size of the rat population.
Oh, and the kicker? Even with Manhattan rents, AI salaries are so bloated that workers are paying just 29% of their wages on rent. Meanwhile, the rest of us are eating dollar-store ramen and praying our landlord doesn’t “innovate” us into homelessness.
San Francisco: Ground Zero for AI and Human Misery
Let’s talk about San Francisco, the city where “innovation” means a $17 oat-milk latte served by a barista with two master’s degrees.
According to CBRE, 1 out of every 4 square feet of office space leased in the last 2½ years went to AI companies. Because nothing says “revolution” like cramming highly paid nerds into open-plan offices to reinvent customer service chatbots that still tell you to unplug your router.
Apartment rents in San Francisco? Up nearly 6% from 2021 to 2024. Which sounds low until you realize that was layered on top of already stratospheric prices. “Affordable housing” in SF now means a shoebox in Daly City with free mold included.
And here’s the kicker: unlike remote-friendly tech bros of yesteryear, AI work is in-office. That’s right, the future isn’t hybrid—it’s back to five or six days a week. Long hours, long commutes, and long sighs from the rest of us who can’t even afford parking near these glass-walled temples of machine learning.
Seattle: Coffee, Clouds, and Code
Seattle’s rents rose more than 7% from 2021 to 2024. Why? Because every time an AI engineer takes a job at Amazon, a landlord adds another $300 to your lease renewal.
Seattle’s housing stock is being inhaled by newcomers who consider “affordable” a $4,000 studio with a view of a construction crane. Meanwhile, the original residents are being gentrified out faster than you can say “triple shot venti caramel macchiato.”
Washington, D.C.: Democracy and Data Science
Ah, D.C., where AI meets the alphabet soup of agencies. Rents here climbed 12% from 2021 to 2024, powered by a surge of AI talent chasing jobs in finance, defense contractors, and government agencies convinced they can “automate oversight.” (Spoiler: they can’t.)
The appeal is obvious: where else can you rent a closet for $3,200 a month and still have a neighbor who works for the NSA and another who lobbies for crypto regulation?
Toronto: Canada’s AI Darling
Toronto’s AI growth clocked in at more than 75% year-over-year, according to CBRE. Which is great news if you’re a landlord and terrible news if you’re a student looking for a basement suite that doesn’t come with raccoon roommates.
Canada’s housing market was already a dumpster fire, but AI talent has turned it into a full-blown inferno. Tech bros arriving from the U.S. with Silicon Valley salaries are treating Toronto’s rental listings like a Costco run: buy in bulk, pay whatever, apologize politely.
The FIRE Sector: Finance, Insurance, Real Estate—AKA the Greedy Trinity
CBRE points out that AI isn’t just for tech anymore. Financial services, insurance, and real estate (the FIRE group) are hoovering up AI talent. Which is rich, considering these industries are basically already one step away from hiring robots to repossess your house.
Wall Street is stuffing itself with AI hires to fend off fintech startups. Insurers are using AI to predict which clients are one bad cough away from bankruptcy. And real estate firms? Oh, they’re loving this. AI lets them price-gouge with “data-driven precision,” which is corporate speak for “you’re paying double for half the square footage.”
The Salary Shield: Why Rent Still Looks Cheap to Them
CBRE’s affordability math is infuriating: AI workers spend just 19–29% of their income on rent in these markets. Which means while you’re coughing up half your paycheck to a landlord who won’t fix the leaky faucet, an AI engineer is comfortably writing rent checks that look like pocket change.
It’s like Monopoly, but the rules are rewritten so that one player starts with all the railroads and hotels while you’re stuck pawning off your thimble.
Office Space: The Return of the Cubicle Cult
The overall tech sector might have downsized, but AI companies accounted for 17% of U.S. office leasing in the first half of 2025, up from 10% in 2022. In other words, landlords in downtown ghost towns are popping champagne while AI startups turn abandoned WeWork spaces into “innovation hubs.”
It’s almost poetic: the same open floor plans where crypto startups once collapsed are now buzzing with AI companies figuring out how to make grocery store robots less terrifying.
The Snarky Bottom Line
AI is not just changing how we work—it’s changing where we live, how much we pay, and who gets squeezed out of the housing market. The “AI revolution” isn’t just about clever code; it’s about juiced-up rents, swelling office leases, and the smug knowledge that the people supposedly “building the future” are making it impossible for you to live in the present.
So, congratulations to the AI workforce: you’ve managed to make chatbots slightly less useless and rents completely unaffordable. Truly, a revolution worth celebrating.