Rent Prices in Los Angeles City, County Reach Four-Year Low

Los Angeles renters looking for a deal might be in luck.

The median monthly rent in the Los Angeles metro area fell to $2,167 in December, marking the lowest price in four years, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing data from Apartment List. The median rent in Los Angeles County also fell to a four-year low of $2,035 per month.

Rents in L.A. haven’t been that low since January 2022 when apartments were emptier and prices were diminished after former renters went on a pandemic-era homebuying spree.

The decrease in rents is in line with national trends, as the U.S. median rent also dropped a four-year low in December. In Southern California, L.A. stands as an outlier. Over the past four years, rents in Orange, Ventura and San Bernardino Counties either rose or remained flat.

Whether the drop is a sign of a further decline or a simple blip remains to be seen. Some experts believe it’s a harbinger of things to come, while others see it as a brief price plateau before rents rise again this year, according to the Times. The winter rental market is usually slower than the summer, and the December 2025 low is only 4.2 percent below the all-time high of $2,262 in August 2022.

Los Angeles has largely fallen behind other cities like San Diego when it comes to housing construction, but last year marked a significant uptick in new apartments hitting the market, according to the Times. In total, 15,095 multifamily units were completed in Los Angeles, marking an 18 percent increase year-over-year and the second-highest amount in the past decade, per CoStar data cited by Kidder Mathews in its fourth-quarter multifamily report.

Still, as multifamily housing supply increased, demand fell as L.A. County’s population contracted by 28,000 last year. In turn, vacancy rates rose to 5.3 percent in December, the highest point since April 2021, according to Apartment List. — Chris Malone Méndez