Rents across Los Angeles have declined modestly over the past year, while Ventura County’s rental market is not moving as one unit at all. Countywide, Ventura rents are up roughly 1.2 percent year over year, but that average hides sharp differences between submarkets: Ventura and Oxnard are seeing rents rise, while Thousand Oaks, Camarillo, and Moorpark are seeing them fall. For an owner of a one to four unit property, the practical takeaway is that citywide or countywide averages are no longer reliable guides for setting rent. The right number depends on the specific submarket, the unit type, and how much new supply has landed nearby in the past two years.
How much have rents actually changed in Los Angeles?
Los Angeles rents are essentially flat to slightly down compared with a year ago, though the exact figure depends on which data source is used and what kind of housing it measures. Apartment List’s August 2026 rent report puts the citywide median at $2,069 across all bedroom sizes, with rent down 1.4 percent over the past twelve months and effectively unchanged over the past month. Zillow’s Rental Manager market data, current as of August 15, 2026, shows a steeper year-over-year decline of about 4.6 percent, with the average rent across all property types at $2,667. The gap between these figures is not a contradiction. Apartment List’s methodology weights heavily toward listed apartments and newer construction, while Zillow’s dataset draws from a broader mix of listing types, including single-family homes and smaller multifamily properties, which is closer to what a one to four unit owner actually competes against. Either way, the direction is the same: after several years of steady increases, Los Angeles rents have leveled off and, in most bedroom counts, are pulling back slightly from where they stood in mid-2025.
What is happening to rents in Ventura County right now?
Ventura County’s overall rental market grew 1.2 percent year over year even after absorbing a substantial wave of new apartment deliveries completed in 2024 and 2025, according to Matthews’ most recent multifamily market report covering the first half of 2026. Countywide vacancy sits at 4.2 percent, down 60 basis points from a year earlier, and the average asking rent across the county is $2,487 per unit. That headline number, though, obscures a genuine split between submarkets that owners need to understand before pricing a vacancy.
Thousand Oaks commands the highest average rent in the county at $2,965 but has seen rents dip 0.1 percent year over year, with vacancy at 4.4 percent. Oak Park, the tightest submarket in the county, holds the second-highest rent at $2,941, vacancy of just 2.1 percent, and a modest 0.5 percent gain. Moorpark has softened the most, with rents down 2.6 percent and vacancy climbing to 8.7 percent, the highest in the county, largely a function of newly delivered apartment supply still leasing up. Camarillo has followed a similar pattern, with rents down 1.7 percent and vacancy at 7.4 percent. By contrast, Ventura itself has posted the strongest gain among the higher-population submarkets, up 1.0 percent with vacancy at a comfortable 3.9 percent, while Simi Valley is down slightly at 0.8 percent and Oxnard is essentially flat with a 0.1 percent gain and vacancy near 4.9 percent.
Why are some Ventura County submarkets rising while others fall?
The divergence traces almost entirely to how much new apartment construction each submarket absorbed in 2024 and 2025. Moorpark, Camarillo, and to a lesser extent Thousand Oaks received a meaningful share of new multifamily deliveries, and that added supply has given renters more options and more leverage during lease negotiations, which is showing up as softer asking rents and higher vacancy in those areas. Ventura and Oxnard saw comparatively little new construction over the same period, so existing inventory has stayed tighter and landlords there have retained more pricing power. This matters for owners of one to four unit properties even though most new construction is large apartment complexes, not duplexes or fourplexes, because renters comparing options do not necessarily separate a newly built unit in a 200-unit complex from a well-maintained house or duplex nearby. When a submarket floods with new apartment inventory, it widens the pool of alternatives a prospective tenant is weighing against a smaller, owner-managed property.
What should owners of one to four unit properties do when setting rent this fall?
The most useful step an owner can take right now is to price against the immediate submarket and comparable unit type rather than a citywide or countywide average, since the data above shows those averages can differ by several percentage points depending on where a property sits. In submarkets showing softness, including Moorpark, Camarillo, and Thousand Oaks, a conservative approach to any rent increase at renewal will typically outperform an aggressive one, since the cost of an extra week or two of vacancy while searching for a tenant willing to pay a premium usually exceeds what that premium would have earned. In tighter submarkets such as Ventura, Oak Park, and Oxnard, modest increases remain supportable without materially increasing the risk of a prolonged vacancy. Owners should also weigh how their specific property type performs relative to apartment-only data. Single-family homes and small multifamily units often draw a different tenant pool, frequently families or longer-term renters, than the studio and one-bedroom apartments that dominate most of these market reports, and that difference can support pricing that departs from the apartment-focused averages in either direction.
Boutique Property Management has managed residential properties of one to four units throughout Los Angeles and Ventura County for more than two decades, and pricing decisions like these are exactly where that local, submarket-level experience matters most. The firm’s concierge-style, bilingual service is built around helping owners set rent using current, verified data rather than guesswork, and the majority of its clients continue to arrive through referrals from attorneys, physicians, CPAs, financial advisors, and business managers who trust that approach. Owners weighing a rent adjustment this fall, or preparing to price a vacancy in Los Angeles or anywhere in Ventura County, are welcome to contact Boutique Property Management for a current, property-specific market analysis before setting a number.