LA Rental Market — Q1 2026 Outlook

Every January we publish what we're seeing across the 180 properties Sunset manages — actual rents collected, actual days-on-market, actual renewal rates. Here's the early-2026 read.

Silver Lake

Silver Lake rents are flat year-over-year. Our 62 Silver Lake homes saw 1.8% rent growth in 2025, down from 4.2% in 2024. Days on market median: 11 days (vs. 8 in 2024). Tenant tenure median: 3.2 years.

Driver: New multifamily completion off Sunset (the Triangle and the Vermont projects) added supply for the first time in years.

Echo Park

Echo Park rents grew 3.4% across our 28-property portfolio. Days on market median: 9 days. Tenant tenure median: 3.8 years.

Highland Park

Highland Park continues to outperform — 4.6% rent growth in 2025 across our 32 properties. Spanish-revival duplexes are the hottest segment in our portfolio: 5 days on market median, 17% rent growth on lease renewals.

Atwater Village

Atwater Village saw 2.9% rent growth in 2025. Tenant tenure median: 4.4 years (highest of any Sunset Eastside market).

Mar Vista

Mar Vista mid-century-tract homes saw 3.7% rent growth. Tenant tenure median: 5.1 years (highest of any Sunset market).

Venice

Venice rents grew 4.1% across our 14-property portfolio. Days on market median: 7 days.

What we're advising owners

For Silver Lake owners: hold rent flat at renewal. The market won't support significant increases this year.

For Highland Park and Mar Vista owners: 3-4% increases are appropriate at renewal — the market will support it.

For Venice owners: let the market decide. Vacancy-tested re-listings are signaling 4-6% increases over expiring leases.

Questions about your own property? Get a free written rental analysis. We respond within one business day.

California's statewide rent cap is six years old, and it's still the question we get most often from owners — usually the week before they want to raise the rent. Here is the version we'd want a friend to read before signing a renewal.

What AB-1482 actually is.

AB-1482, signed in 2019 and effective January 1, 2020, is the Tenant Protection Act of 2019. It does two things: it caps annual rent increases on covered properties, and it requires a "just cause" reason to evict a resident who has been in the unit twelve months or more.

It does not replace local rent control. In Los Angeles, your building either falls under the city's RSO (rent stabilization) ordinance, or — if it doesn't — it likely falls under AB-1482. A small slice falls under neither, and a vanishing slice falls under both with the stricter of the two governing.

Who's exempt.

The exemptions are narrower than most owners think. The big ones:

• New construction. Properties with a certificate of occupancy issued in the past 15 years (rolling). A 2014 build is covered starting 2029.
• Single-family homes & condos, but only if the owner is not a corporation, REIT, or LLC with a corporate member, and the resident has been served the prescribed exemption notice in writing.
• Owner-occupied duplexes where the owner has occupied one unit as their primary residence since the start of the tenancy.
• Affordable / deed-restricted housing, school dorms, and a couple of other specific categories.

If a fourplex you bought through your S-corp or LLC is your only rental, it is covered. The "single-family / condo" exemption does not apply because your ownership entity is corporate-structured.

Owners are surprised, every time, that an LLC means no exemption — even if the LLC is just them.

How the cap is calculated.

The cap is the lower of:

1. 5% plus the regional CPI, or
2. 10%.

"Regional CPI" means the April CPI for the metro area where the property sits — for LA, that's the Los Angeles–Long Beach–Anaheim CPI-U, published mid-May. For 2026 in our region the cap lands at 8.6% (5% plus 3.6% CPI). The cap resets every August 1.

The cap applies over a rolling twelve-month window. If you raised 4% in November, you can raise an additional 4.6% the following November — not all 8.6% on top of the prior raise.

Required notices.

Two notices matter most:

• The AB-1482 disclosure, which must be included on every new lease and renewal. We attach it as an addendum.
• The 30-day notice of rent increase for any raise of 10% or less, or 90-day notice for raises over 10% (which AB-1482 doesn't allow on covered units anyway, but is relevant on exempt units).

Just-cause eviction.

For residents who have been in the unit twelve months or more (or two of the same household 24 months or more), the landlord needs a "just cause" to terminate. There are two flavors:

• At-fault — nonpayment, breach of lease, criminal activity, refusal to sign a similar renewal, etc.
• No-fault — owner move-in, withdrawal from the rental market (Ellis), substantial remodel, government order. No-fault terminations require relocation assistance equal to one month's rent.

RSO + AB-1482 interactions.

Inside the City of LA, RSO covers most multifamily built before October 1978. RSO's annual cap is generally lower (3–8% based on CPI), and its just-cause rules are stricter. RSO wins where it applies. AB-1482 fills the gap for everything not covered by RSO.

So a 1962 fourplex in Silver Lake follows RSO. A 1992 fourplex in Silver Lake follows AB-1482. A 2018 fourplex follows neither (yet — until 2033).

How we handle it.

For every unit under management we track:

• Whether it's RSO, AB-1482, both, or neither, and which controls.
• The maximum allowable increase in the current 12-month window.
• The last increase date and amount, so we honor the rolling window.
• Service of the AB-1482 disclosure on the lease and any renewals.
• Annual LAHD registration for RSO units.

If you want to talk through your specific building, drop us a line. None of this is legal advice, and edge cases exist — when in doubt we loop in a tenant-defense-aware landlord attorney.