By Jorge Casuso

August 30, 2024 -- Santa Monica has seen the steepest rent drop in LA County over the past year, despite a slight increase this month, according to the monthly rent report by Apartment List released Thursday.

After dipping during each of the past four months, rents in Santa Monica ticked up by 0.7 percent in August, according to listings posted on the popular rental site.

This month's rise marks only the second increase over the past 10 months and represents a -5.7 percent drop since last August, the steepest among the 26 cities in the Los Angeles and Orange County cities included in the site's database.

Despite the drop, Santa Monica's median monthly rent currently stands at $2,451, or 11 percent higher than the metro-wide median rent of $2,207, according to the data.

The slight local increase in August rents comes as the rental market nationwide remained sluggish during the usually busy spring and summer seasons, according to the report.

"This signals the end of the rental market’s annual busy season, as well as the second consecutive summer of modest rent growth, as the market remains sluggish thanks to a windfall of new supply," the researchers wrote.

Over the past two years, the seasonal decline in rent prices during the fall and winter "have been steeper than usual and seasonal increases of the spring and summer have been more mild," the report said.

"As a result, apartments are on average slightly cheaper today than they were one year ago."

That was the case in California, where rents dipped -0.5 percent, as well as nationwide, where they dipped -0.7 percent, based on data drawn monthly from the millions of listings on the site.

If fact, 52 of the nation's 100 largest cities have seen rents drop over the past 12 months, with most of the rent decreases taking place in Florida, Texas, Arizona and along the West Coast, according to the report.

Meanwhile, many large cities in the Midwest and Northeast -- including Cleveland, Grand Rapids, Milwaukee and Detroit -- are continuing to see modest rent growth, with supply growth failing to meet a "steady rental demand," researchers said.

In Santa Monica, the current median rent stands at $2,320 for a one-bedroom apartment and $2,781 for a two-bedroom, according to the data.

Calabasas remains the most expensive city to rent an apartment, with a median rent of $3,415 after seeing a -1.1 percent dip in August, while Long Beach is the metro’s most affordable, with a median rent of $1,765 after rents remained steady.

The report calculates one-bedroom and two-bedroom rents and "aims to identify transacted rent prices, as opposed to the listed rent prices." To view the full report click here.