Moses Kagan on Real Estate

Landlords must think so. After all…

A 1 bed / 1 bath apartment in Echo Park rents for $1,150, compared to $925 in Highland Park. That means EP comes in 24% higher, even though in Highland Park you almost always get parking and in EP, you almost never do.

Here are the other highlights of our survey:

• Median asking rent for a 1 bed / 1 bath apartment in Echo Park was $1,150 (and these were mostly without parking)
• Median asking rent for a studio was $1,050 (and there were only 5 on the market)
• Median asking rent for a 2 bed / 1 bath was right around $2350 (though this was based on just 4 units)

Two more things worth noting:

1. The total number of apartments available in Echo Park was 24. That’s an incredibly low number for a neighborhood with such a strong brand.
2. A lot of the units we saw were in fairly rough shape. I’m kind of surprised that EP landlords haven’t spent the money to upgrade their units… because I know you can do A LOT better on the rents there if you do!

As always, our survey looked at Craigslist postings tagged with the name of the neighborhood (in this case, Echo Park) and cross-checked against the LA Times neighborhood map. In this case, we arbitrarily removed the piece of Echo Park south of the 101, which has very different demographics and rental rates. Here’s the raw data: Echo Park Rent Survey – February 2012.