The 11 Hottest Rental Neighborhoods in Los Angeles Right Now

Apartment hunting in Los Angeles isn’t easy. We’ve got a low vacancy rate, rents are expected to continue their upswing, and the city’s got a deserved reputation as being a rough place to be a renter. (Only the Bay Area and New York are harder on tenants.) Everybody’s gotta live somewhere, we can’t just drop the search, but maybe it’s possible to narrow the playing field by looking into (or totally avoiding) places where others are already combing through listings. To figure out which neighborhoods in LA were generating the most interest, we asked Zumper to take a look at the most searched-for neighborhoods in Los Angeles. They came back with a list of ‘hoods that was a mix of what we expected to see on the list (Echo Park, Koreatown) and several that we were surprised to see in the top ten (Boyle Heights, Brentwood).

Zumper calculated the hot ‘hoods list by looking at the percent of total searches that each neighborhood accounted for in April. The top ten hottest neighborhoods together make up just 40 percent of total results, with the remaining searches spread out over the nearly 90 other ‘hoods Zumper recognizes in LA.

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1 Koreatown

Zumper’s most frequently searched neighborhood for apartments was Koreatown/Wilshire Center. According to the site, the average one-bedroom rents for $1,550 a month—below the average for Los Angeles as a whole by about $500. In addition to affordability, Koreatown’s draw for many are its walkability and cool older buildings.

2 Westwood

Westwood took second place on Zumper. The neighborhood is convenient to freeways, but what the listings always mention is its proximity to UCLA. Westwood is a bit more expensive than the city overall.

3 Boyle Heights

Number three Boyle Heights has seen rising interest from people who some view as gentrifiers priced out of other parts of the city by rising housing prices; that attention has been met in a variety of ways, but mostly with wariness and swift opposition.

4 Echo Park and Historic Filipinotown

The area referred to on Zumper as “Greater Echo Park Elysian” tied with Silver Lake for fourth place. The ‘hood as Zumper sees it is made up mostly of Echo Park and Historic Filipinotown. Echo Park is considered a pretty cool neighborhood, and attracts all sorts of artsy types with large-brimmed hats and Coachella tickets across a wide range of ages.

5 Silver Lake

Sharing fourth place with Echo Park and HiFi was Silver Lake. The hilly ‘hood is renting one- and two-bedroom apartments for roughly the going rate of the rest of LA, though there are plenty of options to veer off into more expensive territory.

6 East Hollywood

East Hollywood is right up next to Los Feliz but always seems to have more affordable options. Very affordable compared to the rest of LA, East Hollywood is fairly close to transit and has easy access to one of the two Red Line stops in the area (Vermont/Santa Monica and Vermont/Sunset).

7 Mid-Wilshire/Fairfax/Beverly Grove

Zumper’s “Mid-City West” is mostly made up of Mid-Wilshire, Fairfax, and some Beverly Grove thrown in, too. The neighborhood is close to a lot of popular shopping and cultural destinations, like LACMA and The Grove.

8 West LA

Zumper includes Sawtelle and West LA in their West LA designation, and the area was in a three-way tie with East Hollywood and Mid-Wilshire/Fairfax/Bev Grove for popularity. Apartments here rent for about $1,925 for a one-bedroom and $2,800 for a two-bedroom, but you might get to see a guy driving around on a motorized Papasan chair in your neighborhood, so it all evens out.

9 Brentwood

Despite the snarling traffic mess on Sunset in Brentwood, the neighborhood still managed to eke out the eighth place ranking in terms of most searched LA ‘hoods. Rents here are expensive (this is the Westside, after all).

10 Mar Vista

In last place, Mar Vista is a Westside neighborhood with some good deals left for renters. Freeway close and next to Venice, a Mar Vista studio will run about $1,795.

Filed under: Headlines by daniel federowicz
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