Hi from LA! I’m Rachel, your ApartmentHomeLiving.com Local Expert for Los Angeles, CA. I'm an East Coast transplant, but I've been living in LA long enough to give you a thorough rundown of what it's like to live in this wonderfully chaotic and unique place. The lens in which I experience LA also speaks to my NYC origins in being transit-oriented, which I get into here and in my work on LA Digs.
LA is a city of intense duality. You’ll find breathtaking natural vistas a hop and skip away from concrete-laden industrial areas. (No exaggeration, it stunned this Bronx kid to be in abject wilderness barely two miles from the bustle of DTLA.) There’s dollar pizza and storied Beverly Hills restaurants that serve $300 appetizers.
Current Pricing for Apartments for Rent in Los Angeles
| Bedroom | Average Rent | Cheapest Rent | Highest Rent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Studio Apartments | $2,139 | $695 | $10,000+ |
| 1 Bedroom Apartments | $2,728 | $600 | $10,000+ |
| 2 Bedroom Apartments | $3,560 | $899 | $10,000+ |
| 3 Bedroom Apartments | $4,880 | $700 | $10,000+ |
| 4 Bedroom Apartments | $4,091 | $1,040 | $10,000+ |
| 5 Bedroom Apartments | $3,889 | $999 | $10,000+ |
| 6 Bedroom Apartments | $6,141 | $5,200 | $6,895 |
| 7 Bedroom Apartments | $1,226 | $1,085 | $1,356 |
Current Rental Home Pricing in Los Angeles
| Bedroom | Average Rent | Cheapest Rent | Highest Rent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Studio Apartments | $1,893 | $695 | $9,000 |
| 1 Bedroom Homes | $2,621 | $600 | $10,000+ |
| 2 Bedroom Homes | $4,079 | $1,200 | $10,000+ |
| 3 Bedroom Homes | $6,153 | $599 | $10,000+ |
| 4 Bedroom Homes | $10,590 | $600 | $10,000+ |
| 5 Bedroom Homes | $17,203 | $650 | $10,000+ |
| 6 Bedroom Homes | $34,387 | $900 | $10,000+ |
| 7 Bedroom Homes | $35,527 | $3,995 | $10,000+ |
There’s truly no other city like LA, which is why it’s the second-largest city by population in the United States, and millions of people from around the world flock here.
Popular Neighborhoods in LA (And What Actually Isn’t the City of Los Angeles)
If you’ve been in LA long enough, you’ll know that west side neighborhoods are among the most desirable: trendy Venice Beach, the proximity to major employers in Westwood Village, the loud luxury of Beverly Hills, and the quieter luxury of Brentwood where you can have the proximity to Culver City studios and Bel Air mansions while bumping into celebrities without makeup on at the Brentwood Farmers Market.
Unlike its East Coast counterparts NYC and Boston, the City of Los Angeles doesn’t fully encompass some of these popular neighborhoods: they’re literally separate cities. Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, and Culver City are all independent cities in LA County with their own mayors, City Councils, and local ordinances separate from what the City of Los Angeles does, even though you’ll walk, drive, or bus down the same exact block before the border arbitrarily shifts.
For all intents and purposes, however, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, and Culver City are considered part of LA by most people who live, work, and play there.
West Hollywood (WeHo) is also an incredibly popular place to live on the west side, particularly among younger people swayed by the infamous Chappell Roan ballad. Where NYC has nearly all of downtown and the Village as a central nightlife district, WeHo is the closest that you have to that in LA. WeHo is also a separate city while Hollywood proper is part of the City of Los Angeles.
Central and east LA neighborhoods are also having their moment in the sun nowadays. Spurred by a desire for affordable and dense housing and fueled by the explosion of K-pop in the early 2020s, Koreatown is a popular choice if you embrace a transit-first life like I do. LA is notoriously car-centric, but I’ve been living in Ktown almost five years and have even more transit options literally at my fingertips than I did my entire life in The Bronx. The sheer convenience is 100% worth hearing my friends kvetch about the lack of parking!
NELA (northeast LA) neighborhoods like Silverlake, Highland Park, and Glassell Park have popped off in recent years since you can often find a more spacious apartment at a better price compared to the west side, and be a stone’s throw from the 101. They have bobs and bits of nightlife, niche stores and clubs, and loads of hipstery restaurants.
Nestled below the storied Hollywood Hills is Los Feliz, an aspirational enclave for locals and transplants alike. The leafy hideaway near the breathtaking mountainous trails of Griffith Park is just south of famous mansions like the Ennis House and celebrities’ homes, and you’ll even catch a hungover famous person at House of Pies every so often. The more pedestrian side of the neighborhood has stellar restaurants, classic bungalow and dingbat housing unique to LA, and a friendly vibe that makes people yearn for a Los Feliz address.
From the Golden Age of Hollywood to Influencer Culture
As you may be aware, the state of the entertainment industry has been in flux for some time. There are multiple factors that go into this: the entertainment strikes, rising cost of living, streaming services changing the game, and a major one being that filming costs and tax incentives in other U.S. states and foreign countries are frequently more favorable to production companies than the current landscape in the City of Los Angeles. Per the Hollywood Reporter, 2024 had some of the lowest logged shoot days of all time.
Movies and TV are what built Hollywood, metaphorically and literally. Granted, there’s plenty of film work to be found in NYC, Chicago, Philadelphia, and massive states like Texas and Florida also have film and TV production, game development, and music sectors as well. But LA’s reputation as an industry town has literally entire micro-economies that depended on film, TV, games, music, and digital media having a permanent home here: we think of the studios first, but there’s all the ancillary services like lighting, wardrobe, on-set technology, post-production, and catering. Restaurants, local boutiques, those off-beat clubs we all love? They need well-paid professionals constantly getting gigs to stay afloat too.
Think of Hollywood proper like Disneyland. Neighborhoods like Valley Village and North Hollywood are where the Imagineers live. Studio City literally got its name from the major studios clustered there in this heaving megalith, with entertainment worker housing scattered around the area alongside places like Residuals Tavern, where you can get a free drink if you show them the laughably tiny SAG check from a bit part you did in 2007.
Well, the days of syndication providing actors and writers with a solid income well after a show went off the air are gone with the days of streaming. Game studios reliant on remote work are relocating to lower-cost states with state-level technology incentives like Texas and North Carolina. I’ve sadly seen friends in the games and film industries have to leave LA because they literally couldn’t find any work.
Influencer culture has usurped much of the space that the film industry used to have in LA. If you’re moving to Hollywood nowadays, you’re likely coming because you have a TikTok with millions of followers rather than the traditional path of going from an extra to an A-list star over several years.
The Instagram glitterati still gravitate to those trendy west side neighborhoods, and you’ll find plenty of cars with IG decals all over Fairfax and Melrose as well.
When Both Transit and Traffic Make You Take an Hour Plus to Get There
There’s an ongoing joke among Angelinos that you’ll never date or be friends with someone depending on which side of the 10 that they live on. Take a look at a map and you’ll see that the sprawl literally goes on forever. The city limits are large, but LA County as a whole seems like traversing the entirety of Rhode Island.
Ironically, LA’s roots are in streetcars! A streetcar used to stretch all the way to San Bernardino. To put this in my New York context, that would be tantamount to hopping on the E train at Penn Station and being able to ride all the way to Trenton, New Jersey without ever getting up.
LA County is slowly bringing this back and becoming more transit-forward: LA is home to the longest light rail line in the world, the Metro A line. In late 2025, four new stations were just added in the San Gabriel Valley, making it even longer with the origin in Long Beach and the terminus in Pomona. The passage of SB 79 at the state level, a law that facilitates development of transit-oriented denser neighborhoods, will also contribute to building more housing in LA and making it more accessible to Metro’s growing system.
Because if it’s going to take over an hour to get somewhere due to 50 stops on the train, it beats sitting in traffic where you’ll do the same thing.
LA is vast. Getting around reflects that, no matter how you do it. While it’s exciting that Metro is increasing its reach, with even more stations slated to open in 2025 and 2026 with the expansion of the Metro D line to the west side, you’ll ultimately pick a neighborhood that best suits your professional and personal needs. Unfortunately, not all transit is equal yet: some neighborhoods are major transit deserts. Pasadena is a fantastic place to visit, and I go there often for friends and community. But while it has the Metro A line, bus service can be incredibly iffy once you’re not in Old Town anymore.
Consider things like access to parking and the ease of getting on the freeway, or access to transit, or if you’d like the option to switch between both if necessary. Like I said, I’ve been living in Ktown since I arrived in LA. I also don’t have a car. I don’t even use rideshare as frequently as I did in The Bronx, where subway access is infamously fractured and bus service was incredibly spotty in my neighborhood. If it’s going to take forever to get some place just because of the sheer vastness that is La La Land, I’d rather be catching up on my YouTube favorites on the Metro than constantly tapping and releasing the brakes on the 101.
Dualities and Donuts: LA’s Rich Culinary Tapestry
As mentioned at the very beginning, LA is a land of intense duality. There’s no better illustration of this than the food culture here.
LA, and SoCal in general, have a decades-old reputation as being a health food hub. While not the birthplace of things like veganism and macrobiotic diets, California cuisine is literally its own subtype that emphasizes fresh and local produce and meals heavier on vegetables and fresh fish than fried potatoes and red meat. LA even has its own subgenre of California cuisine where you can find anything from mushroom steaks to green smoothie coffee.
Despite this, LA also has the most donut shops per capita. There was even a documentary about this phenomenon, The Donut King, that details the fascinating history of Cambodian immigrants building donut empires that have persisted well into the 2020s. Because there’s no way we’re getting through these times without donuts.
There’s chains like Winchell’s, the west coast equivalent of Dunkin, plus local artisanal donut franchises like Sidecar Coffee and Donuts and Randy’s Donuts. But Angelinos tend to flock to their local indie donut shop, many owned by Cambodian or Vietnamese families, and a stunning many of which still have prices from the 1990s. No, I’m not giving mine away because I love paying a circa-1992 price for a chocolate glazed. Although I will recommend SK Donuts in Miracle Mile and California Donuts in Ktown, they got approval from both my American and Eastern European friends who said the quality was on par with what they had in Europe.
Donuts are so entrenched into LA culture alongside the clean fanatics, that you’ll easily find a donut shop next to a fancy bespoke Pilates studio. That’s why we love this place. I love a creme brulee donut after going to water aerobics. That life did not exist for me back in New York!
Donuts aside, LA’s food scene is truly underrated despite being the second largest city in the country. There’s literally something for everyone: every kind of international cuisine under the California sun, especially authentic Mexican, Korean, El Salvadoran, and Armenian cuisine. You’ll find 5-star ZAGAT destinations and storied restaurants rich with Hollywood history, hidden gems tucked away in unassuming strip malls, and local, national, and international chains everywhere you go.
A Wonderful and Weird Place
I love LA and made a home and life for myself here that I wasn't able to in my homeland, which I also still have plenty of love for. There's some bits of northeast pragmatism I definitely miss, like frequent train service and not being looked at oddly if I ask for oregano on pizza. (Unless you're at Tomato Pie Pizza Joint. They know what's up.) This is a wonderful and odd city that literally has something for everyone. It's not a 9-5 town: sure, those jobs are there, but most people come here to walk on unconventional paths. I know I did.
You might think of movie stars and influencers, but Angelinos are regular people who look out for one another. The devastating wildfires and political unrest of 2025 showed the world that Angelinos come together across races, cultures, generations, and origins to protect and show up for one another. We are indeed a City of Angels and there's no other place like it.
