In news that surprises probably no one: rent is on the rise in California.
Data from Rent.com, an “apartment search engine and online marketplace,” found that rent in a number of cities is increasing significantly year over year.
In Los Angeles, studio and two-bedroom rentals are up 4% from last year; three-bedrooms are up 3%.
The research shows that the average rent for apartments in Los Angeles is between $2,262 and $5,095 in 2022, according to Rent.com.
But despite the rising average rent prices, there are some weird quirks in the data. While rentals on average are going up, a certain specific type of rental is actually on the decline: one-bedroom apartments.
In Los Angeles, the rental price of a one-bedroom apartment is down more than 15% from last year.
Now on average, one-bedroom rentals in L.A. are up 3%, but that includes all different types of rentals, not exclusively apartments, as Rent.com explains.
“My immediate takeaway is that the houses, townhouses, and condos for rent in Los Angeles are priced higher than apartments, which is driving the overall average up,” said Brian Carberry, senior managing editor of Apartment Guide and Rent.com.
So if you live alone or with a spouse and a single-bedroom apartment is what you’re looking for, you might be in luck.
And it doesn’t end with Los Angeles. Some Northern California cities are also seeing a dip. A one-bedroom apartment rental in San Francisco is down about 1% from last year. San Mateo, Milpitas, Walnut Creek, Alameda, and Vacaville are all experiencing similar price drops.
In Southern California, Ventura, Camarillo, Irvine, Huntington Beach and Woodland Hills all saw one-bedroom apartment rent prices drop between 3-17%.
The biggest dips came in Fresno (-28.35%), Long Beach (-24.36%) and Santa Clara (-19.97%).
Again, it’s important to note that those decreases are only for one-bedroom apartment rentals. Other rental types appear to be impervious to the dip and other major metro areas like Pasadena, Burbank, Sacramento, San Jose, and Oakland did not experience similar drops. One-bedroom apartments in those cities all went up.
Moral of the story: rent prices are all over the place, but you can get lucky in some cities, proving the age-old adage true once again, it’s all about “location, location, location.”
For more information on the methodology, Rent.com uses to determine rental prices of one-bedroom apartments in cities across the country, click here.