"My trusty spreadsheet reviewed rental stats from ApartmentList, which tracks costs by combining federal housing figures and pricing patterns from its own listing service for 49 cities in the six-county Southern California region. The stats include both apartments and rental homes. Population-weighted averages of rentals across all sizes were used to track local markets, which were split into two groups: 20 cities near January 2025's inferno vs. 29 farther from the firestorm."
"In those 20 fire-adjacent cities, where typical rents were $2,127 per month in December, rents fell 0.8% in 2025. Yes, a drop. And that was a slightly larger slip than the 0.1% dip of 2024. These minor slips followed the average 2.1% yearly gains in the pandemic-twisted 2018-2023 period. Contrast those trends with the slightly firmer pricing in the 29 Southern California cities farther from the destruction. December's $2,296 monthly rent was up 0.1% from the previous year, after rising 0.2% the year before."
ApartmentList data combine federal housing figures and listing-service pricing for 49 cities in a six-county Southern California region, including apartments and rental homes. Population-weighted averages tracked local markets split into 20 fire-adjacent cities and 29 farther cities. In the 20 fire-adjacent cities, typical December rent was $2,127 and rents fell 0.8% in 2025, a slightly larger slip than the 0.1% dip in 2024, following average gains of about 2.1% annually in 2018–2023. In the 29 farther cities, December rent was $2,296, up 0.1% after a 0.2% rise the prior year, roughly flat after faster pandemic-era increases. Individual experiences vary and rent statistics are imperfect, but overall rent swings remained minor compared with earlier pandemic-era hikes.
Read at www.ocregister.com
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