Those mad, Santa Ana winds are blowing in from the desert, inflating your passion and calling your name. When you’re left-coast bound and singing: “California here I come,” don’t be afraid to dive right into the mouth of the madness and find yourself an apartment in Santa Ana, the biggest city in the O.C.
Like most of the towns and cities in Orange County, however, the neighborhoods in Santa Ana range wildly in price and style
Those mad, Santa Ana winds are blowing in from the desert, inflating your passion and calling your name. When you’re left-coast bound and singing: “California here I come,” don’t be afraid to dive right into the mouth of the madness and find yourself an apartment in Santa Ana, the biggest city in the O.C.
Like most of the towns and cities in Orange County, however, the neighborhoods in Santa Ana range wildly in price and style. To help you pinpoint the perfect pad, here’s a helpful guide to the city’s most popular living locales.
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Downtown:
If you’re the creative type, or you just have a taste for fiery food and people, travel straight to the heart of Santa Ana. Next to the city’s courthouse and town hall you’ll find a proud Spanish-speaking community and burgeoning art scene. Santa Ana’s version of Greenwich is called Artist Village and it’s full of galleries, concerts, art walks, and festivals. Lofts and smaller apartments here are affordable for the starving artist, but you won’t be hungry (or bored) long with food and fun just around the block.
Midtown:
North of downtown, you can stop and sniff up the beauty in Midtown’s Floral and West Floral Parks. Beautiful homes built in the fifties and sixties still bloom in vintage, classic style. Midtown is pricier and lacks the ever-present entertainment of the downtown district, but it’s beautiful and well suited for living a quiet lifestyle (although West Floral Park is known to get a little rowdy around the 4th of July).
The kids won’t get too bored, though: there’s family fun right around the corner. Only a few blocks away are the Bowers Museum (which features classes, exhibitions, and lectures on art from all over the world), Main Place Mall, Santa Ana Zoo, and the Discovery Science Center. Midtown is a bit pricier than Downtown, but if you’re looking to rear some kiddos, this is a better choice for you.
South Coast Metro:
Right up against the Costa Mesa border is the South Coast Metro district of the city. This is the poshest, fanciest, and newest part of Santa Ana.
South Coast Metro is the home to most of Orange County’s Fortune 500 and Forbes 1000 businesses. For the business elite, high quality, luxury apartments, condos, and tract homes have been erected just minutes from Santa Ana’s John Wayne airport.
This section of the city also has the South Coast Plaza, a massive mall full of designer boutiques. In fact, it’s fair to say this neighborhood was built around the plaza and Orange County’s upscale corporate offices.
But, like downtown, “SCM” has its own space for the creatively inclined – specifically the Segerstrom Center for the Arts and the South Coast Repertory theatre. The area is perhaps one of the most contemporary and artfully designed sections of Santa Ana, due mostly to the expansion and renovation of the Repertory building by renowned architect, Cesar Pelli. The city is currently planning to move the main Orange County Museum of Art from Newport Beach to this area of the city.
What does this all mean? SCM is very upscale. If you’re a patron of the arts this may be the place for you, but if you’re an artist yourself (and you have the bank account to prove it) we suggest you look elsewhere.
One thing you should know about Southern California is that traffic is always a problem. Make sure you find a home close to work to avoid often-congested freeways and road-rage induced panic attacks.
Even then, Santa Ana is surely better than most other Southern California cities (we’re looking at you LA) when it comes to the public transportation. Santa Ana has Metrolink commuter railways that connect the city to the rest of Orange Country. If you want to venture further than the county lines, take Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner, which connects Santa Ana to San Diego, Los Angeles, and Paso Robles.
If your destination requires air travel, the nearby John Wayne Airport (SNA) has got your back. No need to worry about your domestic travel needs here, but if you’re looking to go international, Los Angeles’ LAX is your closest option. No matter where the wind decides to take you – you’ll get there easy enough in Santa Ana; just make sure you plan accordingly.
Orange County is more than the location of a surprisingly good, but horribly addictive primetime soap from the early 2000s. It has amazing proximity to a great variety of attractions: hiking in the Santa Ana Mountains, lounging on the beach, or screaming like a baby on Disneyland’s Space Mountain and Knott’s Berry Farms Coasters just a few miles up the highway. Whatever California dream you may have, Santa Ana is sure to accommodate.
Santa Ana has a home for everyone but, like most So Cal locations, it can be a pricey place to live. Make sure you can afford to live here before breaking the bank and making the move (The average monthly rent for Santa Ana ranges from $900 to $2000 and up).
Though the city is diverse, the neighborhoods sometimes aren’t. Like living anywhere, make sure you find a neighborhood where you feel comfortable before you settle down and plant the roots. The closer you get towards downtown, the more heavily Spanish-speaking the populace becomes. Similarly, if you’re not raking in that much dough, you should steer clear of the South Coast Metro area. No matter what, we’re confident that you’ll find something to fit the bill.
Now go forth, you person, you. Listen to those winds and find your home. Drive in the sun - look out for number one - California, here you come.
The representation of ethnic minorities in Santa Ana is higher than the national average. The eight main ethnic groups that make up the population of Santa Ana are Hispanic Or Latino (75.7%), Asian (14.7%), White (8.1%), Two Or More (0.7%), Black Or African American (0.5%), Other (0.1%), American Indian Or Alaska Native (0.1%), and Native Hawaiian Or Other Pacific Islander (0%).
The representation of ethnic minorities in Santa Ana is higher than the national average. The eight main ethnic groups that make up the population of Santa Ana are Hispanic Or Latino (75.7%), Asian (14.7%), White (8.1%), Two Or More (0.7%), Black Or African American (0.5%), Other (0.1%), American Indian Or Alaska Native (0.1%), and Native Hawaiian Or Other Pacific Islander (0%).
Apartment List has released the results for Santa Ana from the third annual Apartment List Renter Satisfaction Survey. This survey, which drew on responses from over 45,000 renters nationwide, provides insight on what states and cities must do to meet the needs of the country’s 111 million renters.
These Santa Ana neighborhoods are insanely popular right now! Renters are hunting down properties in these places.
Searching for an apartment for rent in Santa Ana, CA? Look no further! Apartment List will help you find a perfect apartment near you. There are 120 available rental units listed on Apartment List in Santa Ana. Click on listings to see photos, floorplans, amenities, prices and availability, and much more!
The average rent in Santa Ana is $2,569 for a studio, $3,075 for a one-bedroom apartment, and $3,587 for a two-bedroom apartment. If you are looking for a deal, keep an eye out for a red pulsing icon that indicates rent specials.
Tired of browsing? Take our personalized quiz. You’ll answer a couple of simple questions and we’ll put together a list of Santa Ana apartments that are best for you. We’ll also factor in your commute, budget, and preferred amenities. Looking for a pet-friendly rental, or an apartment with in-unit washer and dryer? No problem, we’ll provide you with apartments that match that criteria.
You can trust Apartment List to help you find your next Santa Ana, CA apartment rental! After all, everyone deserves a home they love.
Welcome to the Apartment List December 2024 Rent Report for Santa Ana, CA. Currently, the overall median rent in the city stands at $2,179, roughly the same as last month. Prices are now down 2.3% year-over-year. Read on to learn more about what’s been happening in the Santa Ana rental market and how it compares to trends throughout the broader Los Angeles metro area and the nation as a whole.
The median rent in Santa Ana fell by 0.2% over the course of November, and has now decreased by a total of 2.3% over the past 12 months. Santa Ana’s rent growth over the past year has has fallen behind both the state (0.2%) and national averages (-0.6%).
Eleven months into the year, rents in Santa Ana have fallen 1.2%. This is a slower rate of growth compared to what the city was experiencing at this point last year: from January to November 2023 rents had increased 1.7%.
Santa Ana rents went down 0.2% in the past month, compared to the national rate of -0.8%. Among the nation's 100 largest cities, this ranks #20. Similar monthly rent growth took place in Scottsdale, AZ (-0.2%) and Tulsa, OK (-0.2%).
Citywide, the median rent currently stands at $1,911 for a 1-bedroom apartment and $2,253 for a 2-bedroom. Across all bedroom sizes (ie, the entire rental market), the median rent is $2,179. That ranks #14 in the nation, among the country's 100 largest cities.
For comparison, the median rent across the nation as a whole is $1,214 for a 1-bedroom, $1,368 for a 2-bedroom, and $1,382 overall. The median rent in Santa Ana is 57.7% higher than the national, and is similar to the prices you would find in Washington, DC ($2,188) and Los Angeles, CA ($2,072).
If we expand our view to the wider Los Angeles metro area, the median rent is $2,180 meaning that the median price in Santa Ana ($2,179) is 0.0% lower than the price across the metro as a whole. Metro-wide annual rent growth stands at -0.8%, above the rate of rent growth within just the city.
The table below shows the latest rent stats for 23 cities in the Los Angeles metro area that are included in our database. Among them, Newport Beach is currently the most expensive, with a median rent of $3,241. Long Beach is the metro’s most affordable city, with a median rent of $1,750. The metro's fastest annual rent growth is occurring in Orange (5.5%) while the slowest is in Santa Monica (-2.9%).
You can also use the map below to explore the latest rent trends in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
Apartment List is committed to the accuracy and transparency of our rent estimates. We begin with reliable median rent statistics from the Census Bureau, then extrapolate them forward to the current month using a growth rate calculated from our listing data. In doing so, we use a same-unit analysis similar to Case-Shiller’s approach, capturing apartment transactions over time to provide an accurate picture of rent growth in cities across the country. Our approach corrects for the sample bias inherent in other private sources, producing results that are much closer to statistics published by the Census Bureau and HUD. For more details, please see the Apartment List Rent Estimate Methodology.
Apartment List publishes monthly rent reports and underlying data for hundreds of cities across the nation, as well as data aggregated for counties, metros, and states. These data are intended to be a source of reliable information that help renters and policymakers make sound decisions. Insights from our data are covered regularly by journalists across the country. To access the data yourself, please visit our Data Downloads Page.
Welcome to the Apartment List December 2024 Rent Report for Santa Ana, CA. Currently, the overall median rent in the city stands at $2,179, roughly the same as last month. Prices are now down 2.3% year-over-year. Read on to learn more about what’s been happening in the Santa Ana rental market and how it compares to trends throughout the broader Los Angeles metro area and the nation as a whole.
Apartment List has released Santa Ana’s results from the third annual Apartment List Renter Satisfaction Survey. This survey, which drew on responses from over 45,000 renters, provides insight on what states and cities must do to meet the needs of 111 million American renters nationwide.
"Santa Ana renters expressed general dissatisfaction with the city overall," according to Apartment List. "Interestingly, ratings for Santa Ana vary widely across categories such as weather and affordability."
Key findings in Santa Ana include the following:
Renters say:
For more information on the survey methodology and findings or to speak to one of our researchers, please contact our team at rentonomics@apartmentlist.com.
Those mad, Santa Ana winds are blowing in from the desert, inflating your passion and calling your name. When you’re left-coast bound and singing: “California here I come,” don’t be afraid to dive right into the mouth of the madness and find yourself an apartment in Santa Ana, the biggest city in the O.C.
Like most of the towns and cities in Orange County, however, the neighborhoods in Santa Ana range wildly in price and style
View Santa Ana City Guide
