Had to look up that word as a non-native speaker. Didn’t find anything but this article. Anyone ever heard of this term?

Yes.

When an airplane hits the ground, it leaves a crater. "To Crater" is to fall precipitously or crash. In this context, it is in the age-old tradition of financial journalism of selecting exaggerated descriptors of market movement.

"Pork bellies fry in early-market trading, fall 5%."

It is generally helpful to completely remove the descriptors and replace them with "increase" or "decrease".

"San Francisco Apartment Rents Decrease 31%"

That way, you can decide for yourself whether or not it is a big deal.

>When an airplane hits the ground, it leaves a crater.

That's a strange/morbid example. I would have assumed meteor for the obvious example. An airplane leaves a trench since it's speed wouldn't allow it to bury into the ground, and it's trajectory is much more in plane with the ground. Meteors on the other hand plunge deep but do not travel far laterally.

Usually when we say something "cratered" we mean that it fell rapidly, as one might imagine a meteor would fall from space and impact the earth with enough force to produce a crater.

It doesn't get used very often in my experience.

As mentioned in another post, "crater up to" is a bizarre formation of words. "Rents fall by up to 31%" is perfectly understandable phrasing, but replacing "fall" with "crater" makes it sound very strange.

"Crater up to" is not its own phrase. The title would be better written as:

"San Francisco Apartment Rents Crater, up to 31%"

meaning, the rents fell drastically, by as much as 31%.

> The title would be better written as: > "San Francisco Apartment Rents Crater, up to 31%"

No, it wouldn't. The comma makes the “up to” phrase bizarre and detached, and does nothing to improve things. It would only make sense if it was trying to say the rents both “cratered” and somehow went up (though what the % would be measured against in that case is hard to understand.)

As a sentence, it would read better with a “by” after crater, though it would be even better (and be a more accurate title) if it dropped the “up to” and just gave a single measure of the drop rather than one end of a range. “Up to” is a clickbait term that always obscured rather than clarifies.

I'm always amused by "up to" in advertisements and such. "You mean you promise me there won't be any discount over 40%? Good, I was really worried you might give me 50% off in some cases."

Look up the joint NASA/ESA Mars lander that was lost because of a mix up between m/s and ft/s. I'm pretty sure that lander cratered.

Right? This confused me too. I thought rents increased 31% when I initially read the headline.