County may lead rental market rebound; Area's prospects are called best in Southern California
San Diego Union Tribune
By Roger Showley
... San Diego County, with its relatively strong economy, stands to lead Southern California's apartment market out of the doldrums in the next year, according to a University of Southern California report being released today. Rents will rise here first and vacancies will fall the most in the five-county region during the next 12 months, the report said.
"After a dismal 2008, Southern California's apartment markets showed signs of improvement in 2009," said the report to be presented to the annual Lusk-Casden multifamily housing conference in Los Angeles. "San Diego will continue to outperform the other Southern California markets in rents and vacancy rates, just as it has over the last year."
Co-authors Richard K. Green and Tracey Seslen forecast a 0.4 percentage point decline in San Diego's apartment vacancy rate to 4.5 percent...
..."San Diego is probably a little more amenable to recovery because of the characteristics of where the jobs are, in firms that are more likely to be hiring faster," Green said. "It's not like Riverside County, where home building was the principal driver, or San Bernardino, where distribution is the principal driver. Orange County, if you look at its overall history, has unemployment that is very high by its own standards. It was the center of subprime lending. That's a whole lot of jobs that won't be coming back anytime soon."...