The year started with a mixed picture for the Los Angeles rental market.
January 2023 median rents increased 8 percent for one- and two-bedroom apartments in a year-over-year index comparison by Zumper, a San Francisco-based listing site. Its monthly report will formally be released around Feb. 15.
However, Los Angeles renters might have found relief if they were comparing rent changes month-to-month. Median rent for a one-bedroom unit was down 2.4 percent and two-bedrooms were down 1.8 percent between January 2023 and December 2022.
Renters can credit month-to-month declines to slowness in the market every winter, said Crystal Chen, a Zumper representative. Demand for new apartments is the lowest in the winter months, so property owners often keep prices low in order to fill vacancy, she wrote in an email. Also, many apartment dwellers are putting off big moves due to high inflation and interest rates hikes that shook up the real estate market in 2022.
Month-to-month declines in low single digits were seen almost all over the Los Angeles region, Zumper research found. A one-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica went down 5.8 percent, while West Hollywood rents declined 4.2 percent in a month-to-month comparison. Pasadena rents for a one-bedroom apartment declined 5.7 percent.
The highest January rent in what Zumper defined as the Los Angeles region was Laguna Beach, where the median monthly price for a one-bedroom apartment was $3,710. Santa Monica followed in second place with a median of $3,060. West Hollywood ranked third with $2,740 per month. Beverly Hills ranked fourth with a median rent of $2,600 and Newport Beach finished out the top five submarkets with a median rent of $2,540.
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Low rents range from $1,700 in the South Bay city of Hawthorne to the cheapest rent in the region, a median of $1,010 in the desert city of Twentynine Palms.
Apartment List, another rental listing site, also distributes monthly market reports, albeit it uses a different research methodology than Zumper. It also found a month-to-month decline complemented by a year-over-year increase in Los Angeles rentals. January median rents dipped by 0.3 percent in Los Angeles compared to the previous month. In a year-over-year comparison, median Los Angeles rents increased by 1.1 percent in January 2023.