[fountainofage]

I guess it depends on what question you're asking. You seem to be pointing out that you think the real question is: "what is the median rent for anyone living in San Francisco?" whereas Zumper seems to be more answering the question: "if someone moved to San Francisco today, and has zero connections, what rent would they pay?" Both are valid questions, but I think it's good to set the context for if you're having a conversation about "general median rent" vs "newcomer median rent."

[ehsankia]

Even then, it's not as clear. First off, median caries the implication that these are all "valid" places, whereas in reality, most apartments that are still up for grabs probably aren't rented for a reason, therefore including them in a median is misleading.

Next up, the data itself needs to be "fresh" for this to work. It could be that cheaper apartments appear on the market frequently, but are rented right away. So as someone new in the city, you could find these cheap places if you looked for a bit, but a single survey will probably not catch these.

A better approach would be to look at the median of all new rented apartments throughout the year. That will give you an idea of what someone who comes to the city will realistically pay.