No, not meaningfully. The multi-year run of steady rent increases across the Los Angeles and Ventura County rental markets has stalled out in 2026. According to RentCafe’s August 2026 data, the average rent for a Los Angeles apartment sits at $2,755 a month, a flat 0 percent change from a year earlier. In several Ventura County cities, rents have actually softened. Simi Valley is down 3.08 percent year over year to $2,580, Oxnard is down 1.49 percent to $2,674, and Camarillo is down 1 percent to $2,869. For an owner accustomed to raising rent by 3 to 5 percent at every lease renewal, that pattern no longer holds in most of this region, and pricing decisions in the coming months need to reflect it.
What is the average rent in Los Angeles right now?
Los Angeles apartments are renting for an average of $2,755 a month as of early August 2026, according to RentCafe, which is essentially unchanged from the same period last year. Broken down by size, RentCafe reports studios averaging $1,964, one bedroom units averaging $2,544, two bedroom units averaging $3,361, and three bedroom units averaging $4,376. Zillow’s Rental Manager market trends tool shows a similar picture using a different methodology, with average asking rent across all bedroom counts at $2,795, down about $5 from a year earlier and effectively flat. Apartment List’s Los Angeles rent report, which tracks a broader base of listings and calculates a median rather than a mean, puts the citywide median rent at $2,075 and shows a 1.3 percent year over year decline alongside a small 0.3 percent uptick from the previous month. The three trackers do not agree on an exact dollar figure, largely because they sample different mixes of unit types and buildings, but they agree on the direction: Los Angeles rent growth has stopped, at least for now.
How do Ventura County rents compare to Los Angeles?
Ventura County rents remain higher than the city of Los Angeles in most submarkets, but the same softening trend is showing up there as well. Thousand Oaks carries the highest average rent among the county’s major cities at $2,955, essentially flat with a 0.21 percent decline from last year, according to RentCafe. Camarillo averages $2,869, down 1 percent year over year. Oxnard, the county’s largest rental market by volume, averages $2,674, down 1.49 percent. Simi Valley shows the sharpest pullback of the group, with average rent falling 3.08 percent to $2,580. For owners of one to four unit properties specifically, which tend to include more three bedroom houses and townhomes than the large apartment communities that dominate these datasets, three bedroom rents in Oxnard now average $3,770 and in Thousand Oaks average $3,662, giving a useful benchmark for single family and small multifamily comparables in those cities.
Why are rents flattening after years of steady increases?
Rent growth cools when the supply of available rentals catches up with demand, and that is the dynamic playing out across much of Los Angeles and Ventura County heading into fall 2026. Zillow’s market trend data for Los Angeles currently shows nearly 16,800 rental listings active in the city alone, more inventory than renters have had to choose from in recent years, and describes current demand relative to that supply as moderate rather than hot. When renters have more options, owners lose the ability to push rent at every turnover the way they could during the tighter markets of the early 2020s. This does not mean rents are falling everywhere or that the region has become an easy market for tenants. It means the automatic annual increase that many self-managing owners have come to expect is no longer a safe assumption, and pricing now needs to be grounded in current comparable listings rather than last year’s number plus a few percentage points.
What should owners do differently when setting rent in this market?
Owners should price new listings and renewals against current comparable rentals in their specific submarket rather than against what the unit rented for a year ago. In a flattening market, a vacant unit priced even slightly above the current comparables can sit for weeks longer than it should, and the lost rent from that extra vacancy time almost always exceeds whatever modest increase the owner was chasing. This is especially true in cities like Simi Valley, where the data shows rent has moved backward rather than simply slowed, and pricing a renewal as if the market were still climbing will likely produce a vacancy rather than a lease. It is also worth noting that averages mask real variation by neighborhood, unit condition, and amenities, so a citywide figure is a starting point for a pricing conversation, not a final number.
Boutique Property Management has spent more than two decades pricing and managing one to four unit residential properties across Los Angeles and Ventura County, and that hyperlocal, block by block knowledge is exactly what a flattening market like this one calls for. The firm’s concierge style approach, bilingual service in English and Spanish, and 5 star reputation on Google and Yelp have made it the property manager that attorneys, physicians, CPAs, financial advisors, and business managers across the region regularly refer their clients to, precisely because those referral sources trust the pricing and tenant placement judgment behind the recommendation. If you own rental property in this market and are unsure whether your current rent, or the rent you are about to ask for on a vacancy, actually reflects where the market stands today, contact Boutique Property Management for a current, data backed rental analysis before you list.