Ventura County rents are not moving in one direction in 2026. The countywide average asking rent reached $2,487 per unit in the first half of the year, up 1.20 percent from a year earlier, according to Matthews’ Ventura County Multifamily Market Report for H1 2026. That modest, seemingly stable countywide figure conceals a much sharper story underneath it. Rents are falling in Moorpark, Camarillo, and Simi Valley even as they climb in Oak Park, Ventura, and Port Hueneme, and vacancy rates across the county’s submarkets range from as low as 2.1 percent in Oak Park to as high as 8.7 percent in Moorpark. For owners of one to four unit rental properties, a countywide average is close to useless as a pricing benchmark heading into the fall 2026 leasing season. What matters is which specific submarket a property sits in.
What is the average rent in Ventura County right now?
The countywide average asking rent stood at $2,487 per unit as of the first half of 2026, according to Matthews, broken down to roughly $2,208 for a one bedroom, $2,713 for a two bedroom, and $2,996 for a three bedroom. Countywide vacancy sat at 4.2 percent, down 60 basis points from a year earlier, a figure that on its own would suggest a tightening, landlord favorable market. Separately, Zillow’s Observed Rent Index put typical Ventura County rent at $2,964 in July 2026, up 1.4 percent year over year and roughly 50 percent above the national ZORI figure of $1,962. The two indexes measure rent differently (asking rent on available units versus a repeat rent index across the broader stock), but both point the same direction: modest, single digit growth at the county level.
Which Ventura County cities have rising rents, and which are falling, in 2026?
Thousand Oaks remains the county’s priciest submarket at $2,965 per unit but was essentially flat, down 0.1 percent year over year. Oak Park, the tightest submarket in the county, saw rents rise 0.5 percent to $2,941 with vacancy of just 2.1 percent, the lowest anywhere in Ventura County. Ventura itself posted rent growth of 1.0 percent to $2,659 with vacancy at 3.9 percent, and Port Hueneme, the county’s most affordable major submarket at $2,075, recorded the strongest rent growth of any submarket at 1.3 percent.
The picture is different on the other side of the county. Moorpark rents fell 2.6 percent to $2,794, and vacancy there, at 8.7 percent, is more than four times Oak Park’s rate. Camarillo rents dropped 1.7 percent to $2,781 with vacancy at 7.4 percent. Simi Valley slipped 0.8 percent to $2,639. Three submarkets separated by only a few miles are seeing measurable rent declines while three others post gains, all inside the same county in the same reporting period.
Why is vacancy so different from one Ventura County city to the next?
The divergence traces back to how new supply lands relative to demand in each submarket. Countywide, developers delivered 306 new units in the first half of 2026 while renters absorbed 575, a sign that demand outpaced new supply on balance. Only 502 units were under construction countywide as of mid-2026, just 1.3 percent of existing inventory, and that limited pipeline is not spread evenly across the county. Moorpark’s elevated 8.7 percent vacancy most likely reflects units still leasing up after recent deliveries there, while Oak Park’s 2.1 percent vacancy reflects a submarket with very little turnover and almost no new supply in the pipeline. A single new building coming online in a small submarket can move its vacancy rate far more than the same building would move a larger city’s numbers.
Will Ventura County rents keep rising through the rest of 2026?
The countywide trend still points upward. The USC Casden Real Estate Economics Forecast, produced by the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate, projects Ventura County annual rent growth of 3.18 percent through 2026, the fastest pace among major Southern California counties and well ahead of Los Angeles County’s projected 1.46 percent. The forecast puts average Ventura County rent climbing from $2,590 in July 2024 to $2,775 by July 2026, with vacancy easing from 5.17 percent to 4.69 percent over that span. The same forecast notes that California added just 0.67 percent of the nation’s new housing stock even as statewide demand continued to outpace supply, a structural constraint that applies to Ventura County as much as anywhere else in the region. Read together with the H1 2026 submarket data, the individual softening in Moorpark, Camarillo, and Simi Valley looks like a local correction inside specific submarkets rather than a reversal of the county’s broader upward trajectory.
What should Ventura County property owners take from this data?
An owner pricing a single family home, duplex, triplex, or fourplex in Ventura County should not lean on the countywide average rent figure alone. Submarket vacancy is the more useful signal. In a submarket like Oak Park or Port Hueneme, where vacancy sits below 3 percent, an owner generally has room to hold firm on asking rent or push it modestly. In Moorpark or Camarillo, where vacancy is running well above the countywide 4.2 percent average, pricing a touch more competitively at the outset, or offering some flexibility on move-in timing, will usually protect an owner’s annual return better than holding out for a rent figure the local market is not currently supporting. A few extra weeks of vacancy at $2,700 to $3,000 in monthly rent can erase most of a year’s modest rent increase, which is exactly the kind of miscalculation that a countywide average, taken at face value, tends to invite.
Boutique Property Management has managed one to four unit residential properties throughout Los Angeles and Ventura County for over two decades, and this kind of submarket level pricing analysis, drawing on current comparable data specific to each city and neighborhood, is part of how the firm sets rent for the owners it represents. The majority of new clients come by referral from attorneys, physicians, CPAs, financial advisors, and business managers who have seen the firm’s concierge style approach to tenant sourcing, screening, and lease management firsthand, and the company’s 5 star rating on both Google and Yelp reflects that same attention to detail, delivered in English and Spanish. Property owners in Ventura County or the greater Los Angeles area who want a current rent analysis for their specific property, rather than a countywide average, are welcome to contact Boutique Property Management directly to discuss their portfolio.