So, you are looking for an apartment in Santa Monica or West Los Angeles

 Dear Apartment Shopper,

Ok, so you are not renting from me.  I cannot always be the best choice.  My inventory is mostly full all the time.  I fix stuff and maintain my buildings so I do not get a lot of turnover.

My two bedroom coming up is going to go out at $4,595 price point.  Two bedroom Two Bath + View + Laundry + Two parking + Fireplace + Elevator + Laundry in the unit.

My other availability ( Application pending ) is the cheapest in town at just $1,585 for a Single or Studio apartment.  A very tiny minimalist place but cool and clean and in the choice area of Santa Monica.  That's the value. (as of 12/2023)

So, Good Luck in your search.

Do not rely on Apartments (dot) com.    Only the really big places that can afford overpriced adverts on there nowadays.  It's a lot.

Check out Howard Management Group for local options.  They are good guys.

I highly suggest you Call the Property Management firms directly for their For Rent information.

Drive the areas you like and note the buildings that are maintained. Then call those owners/managers.

Santa Monica used to have the Outlook newspaper.  Then Westside Rentals online when that paper went out of business.  But now that Costar bought out almost all the businesses online and started doing the Bill Gates / Microsoft monopoly model of jacking up the price up those web sites.  Sop they are now almost useless to you the renter.  They killed the biz model that Westside Rentals used that worked for Santa Monica landlords.  Sad that this maga firm did this.

Try…   Zillow, Hotpads, Zumper, and even wacky old CraigsList.org  (craigs list has “too good to be true” scams) but still calling and talking to owners is the best way to get a deal apartment.  So that old fashioned work of driving the area you like to see For Rent signs is still the ticket to the deal unit.   

As it is Off Season it is a good time to negotiate the rate a little.

Good Luck.

And the ones that I suggest you look at and take with a grain of salt are:
The CoStar Group of sites:|
 - apartments.com
 - westsiderentals.com
 - apartmentfinder.com
 - ApartmentFinder
 - ApartmentHomeLiving

Unless you do want a large High-Rise Building.  They are the ones that have the budget for maintaining an Advertising budget and that is who Costar thinks matters most.  Not the medium to small buildings and certainly not the small mom and pops.  That is most of Los Angeles and Santa Monica apartment buildings.  They can not afford those high prices Costar charges to advertize.  But we still need to rent up units.  So where will you find your next Apartment?

Do please let me know if you have good luck and what you found to be most useful of all the web sites you use.  I need the feedback so I too can pick the best places to reach good tenants like yourself. And so will other apartment shoppers.


Sincerely,

Keith Lambert
Real Estate Agent / Income Property / Management
DRE# 00785162
Direct to Desk: 310-437-0677        Cell 310-990-6161