It comes as no surprise to anyone who has tried to find an apartment in Silicon Valley. But in case you had any doubt, the U.S. Census Bureau confirmed on Tuesday that rents there are the highest in the country.

The Census says that its 2011 American Community Survey found the estimated “gross median rent” in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara area—that’s supposed to be a measure of rent plus utilities—was $1,460.
No. 2 of the 360 or so metro areas the Census surveyed: Honolulu, with a gross median rent of $1,419. The San Francisco area’s median, including most of the East Bay and Marin County, was at $1,345. By comparison, the median rent for the nation was $871. The lowest was $501, in Wheeling, W.Va.
(Do these Bay Area rent numbers seem a little low? Remember the definition of median: That’s supposed to represent a midpoint, with half the rental costs in the survey above that number and half below it. Also remember that the Census report is the result of a survey, not a compilation of all rents. In the Bay Area, the survey’s reported margin of error for median rents is 20 percent in the South Bay and 14 percent in the San Francisco area.)
The bureau found that rents had dropped very slightly in the Bay Area from 2009 to 2011—by an estimated 10 bucks in Silicon Valley and 17 dollars in the San Francisco area.