No, first month free or similar incentives has been common for at least fifteen years in the Bay Area. It's sadly also not uncommon that the first lease is considerably lower than following ones (for no other reason than the landlord betting on the inertia of the tenant).
First month free has definitely been around at times, but I think less so in the most recent pre-COVID years. This article mentioned we might start seeing 2 months though, which I think is much rarer.
My complex charges existing tenants greater than 5% more than new ones because they know that few people want to go through the pain of moving out. I haven been able to use the obviousness of this to keep negotiating the "new tenant" rate with them.
