Priced Out, Not Moving Far: What the New Migration Data Means for LA Rental Owners

Three national reports landed in the past month, and all of them say the same thing about Los Angeles: people who cannot afford to buy here are looking elsewhere, and many of them are leaving. None of them is really about rentals. But if you own a rental in Los Angeles, the people they describe are your tenants, your applicants and the people you are competing with for both. Here is what the numbers say and what we think they mean for owners.

Buyers are shopping outside the city

Realtor.com tracks where home shoppers look, not just where they buy. In its second-quarter 2026 cross-market demand report, published August 25, 60.1% of listing views across the 100 largest metros went to homes outside the shopper’s own metro. In the second quarter of 2019 the share was 48.2%. The West had the highest share of any region at 65.0%, and in the Los Angeles–Long Beach–Anaheim metro it was 70.4%, meaning seven in ten listing views from local shoppers were for homes somewhere else. Their top destination was the Riverside–San Bernardino–Ontario metro, where homes viewed by Los Angeles shoppers had a median of $341 per square foot, against $641 for homes viewed within Los Angeles.

Realtor.com’s economists attribute the shift mainly to affordability. The report’s sharpest example is San Jose, where 94.4% of shoppers looked outside the metro and the median listing price was about $1.39 million.

Younger adults are leaving, but not going far

Redfin’s September 15 analysis of Census Bureau American Community Survey data for 2024 found that Los Angeles had a net loss of 16,465 Gen Z adults (born 1997 to 2006), the third largest of any metro, and 31,107 millennials (born 1981 to 1996), the second largest after New York.

Most of them did not cross the country. Redfin found that younger movers mostly made short moves from expensive metros to cheaper neighboring ones, and the example it chose was Los Angeles to Riverside. Redfin’s principal economist, Sheharyar Bokhari, summarized the difference between the generations: “Gen Zers are chasing opportunity, while millennials are chasing space.”

That distinction matters for owners. The millennial household that leaves is often one looking for a yard and a second bedroom at a price it can buy. The household that stays is more likely to keep renting.

Los Angeles County lost more residents than any other high-risk county

A third report, published by Redfin on August 31, looked at counties with a high risk of poor air quality, a list that includes Los Angeles County because of wildfire smoke. Los Angeles County had a net domestic outflow of 105,471 residents in 2025, the largest of any county on the list, although that is down from 195,168 in 2021.

Redfin’s conclusion was that air quality is not what is driving people out. Cost is. The counties losing the most residents are expensive, with a July 2026 median sale price of $913,583 in Los Angeles County. Riverside County, which carries a similar air-quality risk, gained 7,758 residents at a median of $609,260.

Rents are flat to down while costs keep climbing

For owners the numbers that matter most are rents and expenses, and right now they are moving in opposite directions. Realtor.com’s August rental report put the median asking rent for studios through two-bedrooms in the Los Angeles–Long Beach–Anaheim metro at $2,785, down 1.6% from a year earlier, and found that 39.3% of those listings offered a concession. Over the same twelve months the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported consumer prices up 3.4% nationally and 3.6% in the Los Angeles area. The average 30-year mortgage rate was 6.95% in Freddie Mac’s survey for the week of September 17, which keeps buying out of reach for many of the renters who would otherwise leave.

One number runs against the national story. Zillow’s September 14 analysis found residential building permits nationwide 19.4% below their 2016–2020 trend, after 44 straight months of year-over-year declines, with the steepest drops in Sun Belt metros such as Austin and San Antonio. Permits in Los Angeles went the other way, up 30.6% in the twelve months ending July. That growth is from a low base, and Zillow notes the metro’s 34,696 permits were barely half of Dallas’s. Still, more new units mean more competition for the same tenants, especially for older buildings in the same neighborhoods.

What this means if you own a rental in Los Angeles

These reports describe buyers and movers, not tenants, so anything we say about rentals is our interpretation and not their finding. With that caveat, four things follow.

• Price from comparables, not last year’s rent. With metro asking rents down year over year, a unit priced from memory is more likely to sit empty. The right number comes from recent comparables of the same building type and bedroom and bathroom count, a few blocks from yours.
• A good tenant is worth more now. When costs rise faster than rents, a vacant month and a turnover do more damage to the year’s returns. Prompt repairs and clear communication do a lot to keep good tenants.
• Your renters may stay longer, or leave for good. Households priced out of buying often keep renting. The ones that do buy often buy in another county, so a move-out notice may no longer mean a move across town.
• Condition is your edge over new construction. A new building nearby competes on finishes and amenities. An older building competes on location, character and how well it is kept. Deferred maintenance gives away the one advantage you have.

If you would like to know where your units stand against today’s market, request a rental analysis below. We will compare them with current comparables that genuinely match, not a portal estimate.