Usually, U-Haul truck rentals are advertised at an affordable sticker price, comfortably in the three-digit range. But a trend out of northern California is pushing that sticker price as high as $2,000, and moving Californians to disbelief.

U-Haul truck rental costs from San Francisco to Las Vegas The San Diego Union-Tribune

The cost to rent a 26-foot U-Haul truck — big enough to move a three- to four-bedroom home — out of San Francisco headed to Las Vegas reached as high as $2,085 for four days. To rent the same truck going in the opposite direction is only a fraction of that cost — $132.

We used the uhaul.com website to confirm those numbers.

What’s causing the spike in U-Haul rental prices out of the Bay Area? There are more people leaving the northern California region than there are trucks available, according to the public policy think tank American Enterprise Institute.

This is hardly a new trend: Housing costs across California are so high that some people do decide to leave the state altogether. The cost of U-Haul rental trucks is one way to illustrate that trend, writes AEI economist Mark Perry.

“It’s a great example of supply and demand, and market forces in action — with one-way U-Haul truck rental prices reflecting relative scarcity,” Perry says in a blog post explaining the price hikes.

Perry says he looked at moving costs out of Bay Area cities to other cities across the U.S. including Phoenix, Portland, Austin, Nashville and Atlanta.

The story has been the talk of Twitter where it has become part of a common narrative about the state of California’s cost of living.

Last month, California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office reported that the state has experienced a net loss of about 1 million residents from 2007 to 2016. Most of these residents have relocated to states such as Texas, Arizona, Nevada and Oregon.

An analysis from the real estate website Redfin published last month offers more evidence of this trend — San Francisco was the top city with the highest loss of residents, a net loss of 15,489 in the last four months of 2017, compared to New York City’s net loss of 12,532 residents.

Where did people go? Redfin wrote that people were leaving “expensive, high-tax coastal markets like San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles” in search of homes in cities like “Sacramento, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Nashville, where taxes are lower and housing is more affordable.”

Perry at AEI found that the cost to rent a 26-foot U-Haul truck on a one-way excursion out of San Jose was also much more expensive than a journey the other way.

Adora Cheung, a partner at Y Combinator, shared those rates on Twitter late last month.

We were curious about what it cost to rent a U-Haul truck for one-way trips to and from San Diego, so we checked and found that it was more expensive to rent a U-Haul truck traveling from San Diego to another city than the other way around. That said, prices were not as high as the ones involving San Francisco.

One-way, U-Haul rental costs from San Diego to Las Vegas and vice versa

Price comparisons show what it costs to rent a U-Haul truck from San Diego to Las Vegas (left) and from Las Vegas to San Diego (right). The San Diego Union-Tribune

One-way, U-Haul rental costs from San Diego to Austin and vice versa

Price comparisons show what it costs to rent a U-Haul truck from San Diego to Austin (left) and from Austin to San Diego (right). The San Diego Union-Tribune

One-way, U-Haul rental costs from San Diego to Phoenix and vice versa

Price comparisons show what it costs to rent a U-Haul truck from San Diego to Phoenix (left) and from Phoenix to San Diego (right). The San Diego Union-Tribune

If you live in California, tell us, have you ever thought about leaving the state for another city in the U.S.? If so, where would you go?

Have some thoughts to share?

Join me in a conversation: Shoot me a private email with your thoughts or ideas on a different approach to this story. As always, you can also send us a tweet.

Email: luis.gomez@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @RunGomez

Read The Conversation on Flipboard.

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