Neighborhoods in Los Angeles and Riverside counties in Southern California dominated a list of the 10 most popular search destinations for rental properties during the month of September, reported online real estate company Zillow.

Two neighborhoods in King County, Wash. — of which Seattle is the county seat — also made the list.

Zillow reported that rental homes in the downtown neighborhood of Bellevue, Wash., were more frequently searched than rentals in any other U.S. neighborhood tracked by Zillow during that month.

Zillow has created a database of thousands of neighborhood boundaries for the largest U.S. cities.

Neighborhoods in California cities accounted for seven of 10 spots on the list. Four of those neighborhoods are in Los Angeles. All 10 neighborhoods are in cities in Western states.

Monthly median rental list prices between the cities varied from $1,380 in Denver to $2,100 in San Jose, Calif. Of the five neighborhoods on the list for which median rent-price data was available at Zillow.com, all had higher rent prices in September than the overall cities in which they were located.

Beverly Glen in Los Angeles, a neighborhood in which the median household income is more than twice that of Los Angeles as a whole, showed the biggest rent-price difference between a neighborhood and its city. While Los Angeles’ median rent price stood at $2,000 in September, Beverly Glen had a median rent price of $7,800 — a difference of 290 percent.

At the other end of the spectrum, while the median rent price in Corona, Calif., stood at $2,050 in September, the city’s Corona Valley neighborhood had a median rent price of $2,400 that month — 17.1 percent higher than the city as a whole.

Methodology: For this report, Zillow identified neighborhoods with the highest volume of rental-related home searches on Zillow.com during the month of September.

Zillow queried 11,005 neighborhoods in its database, measuring page views and number of properties. The neighborhoods with the most rental searches were measured by looking at how many page views each property in a given neighborhood received, rather than just the total number of rental properties in that neighborhood.

Zillow also examined the number of rental properties to ensure a statistically significant sample — the query included neighborhoods with 25 or more rental properties.

For example, a neighborhood with 500 rental properties with 10 page views each is considered less "hot" than a neighborhood with 100 rental properties with 50 page views each, for the purposes of this report. This better tracks neighborhoods with high demand, rather than just a high number of rental homes. 

The charts in this report compare Zillow’s median rent list price for each neighborhood area, where available, to the median rent list price for the entire city area. —Source: Zillow.

The full list of top 10 neighborhoods:
1. Downtown (Bellevue, Wash.)
2. West San Jose (San Jose, Calif.)
3. Magnolia (Seattle)
4. Sawtelle (Los Angeles)
5. Beverly Glen (Los Angeles)
6. Orangecrest (Riverside, Calif.)
7. Corona Valley (Corona, Calif.)
8. Westchester (Los Angeles)
9. Speer (Denver)
10. West Hills (Los Angeles)

Neighborhood: Downtown

City area: Bellevue, Wash.

 

September 2011 median rent list price (Downtown)	N/A
September 2011 median rent list price (Bellevue)	$1,800
Value difference of neighborhood (by percent)	N/A
Value difference (in dollars)	N/A

City of Bellevue from Lake Washington. Bill Perry/Shutterstock

…CONTINUED

Neighborhood: West San Jose

City area: San Jose, Calif.

 

September 2011 median rent list price (West San Jose)	N/A
September 2011 median rent list price (San Jose)	$2,100
Value difference of neighborhood (by percent)	N/A
Value difference (in dollars)	N/A

Plaza de Cesar Chavez in Downtown San Jose.  Mariusz S. Jurgielewicz/Shutterstock

…CONTINUED

 

Neighborhood: Magnolia

City area: Seattle

 

September 2011 median rent list price (Magnolia)	$1,850
September 2011 median rent list price (Seattle)	$1,500
Value difference of neighborhood (by percent)	+23.3%
Value difference (in dollars)	$350

Seattle skyline and harbor from the Magnolia neighborhood. Mark Payne/Shutterstock

…CONTINUED

Neighborhood: Sawtelle

City area: Los Angeles

 

September 2011 median rent list price (Sawtelle)	N/A
September 2011 median rent list price (Los Angeles)	$2,000
Value difference of neighborhood (by percent)	N/A
Value difference (in dollars)	N/A

Downtown Los Angeles at night. EpicStockMedia/Shutterstock

…CONTINUED

Neighborhood: Beverly Glen

City area: Los Angeles

 

September 2011 median rent list price (Beverly Glen)	$7,800
September 2011 median rent list price (Los Angeles)	$2,000
Value difference of neighborhood (by percent)	+290%
Value difference (in dollars)	$5,800

Apartment balconies in Los Angeles. RonGreer.com/Shutterstock

…CONTINUED

Neighborhood: Orangecrest

City area: Riverside, Calif.

 

September 2011 median rent list price (Orangecrest)	$2,000
September 2011 median rent list price (Riverside)	$1,500
Value difference of neighborhood (by percent)	+33.3%
Value difference (in dollars)	$500

Detail of an older brick building in Riverside, Calif. Lowe Llaguno/Shutterstock

…CONTINUED

Neighborhood: Corona Valley

City area: Corona, Calif.

 

September 2011 median rent list price (Corona Valley)	$2,400
September 2011 median rent list price (Corona)	$2,050
Value difference of neighborhood (by percent)	+17.1%
Value difference (in dollars)	$350

 
A view of Corona, Calif., with the San Gabriel Mountains in the background. FredBren/Wikipedia

…CONTINUED

Neighborhood: Westchester

City area: Los Angeles

 

September 2011 median rent list price (Westchester)	N/A
September 2011 median rent list price (Los Angeles)	$2,000
Value difference of neighborhood (by percent)	N/A
Value difference (in dollars)	N/A

High-rise apartment living in downtown Los Angeles. trekandshoot/Shutterstock

…CONTINUED

Neighborhood: Speer

City area: Denver

 

September 2011 median rent list price (Speer)	N/A
September 2011 median rent list price (Denver)	$1,380
Value difference of neighborhood (by percent)	N/A
Value difference (in dollars)	N/A

Downtown Denver through Speer Boulevard, Colorado. Evan Meyer/Shutterstock.com

…CONTINUED

Neighborhood: West Hills

City area: Los Angeles

 

September 2011 median rent list price (West Hills)	$2,850
September 2011 median rent list price (Los Angeles)	$2,000
Value difference of neighborhood (by percent)	+42.5%
Value difference (in dollars)	$850

 
Los Angeles at sunset. Kinetic Imagery/Shutterstock

The full list of top 10 neighborhoods:
1. Downtown (Bellevue, Wash.)
2. West San Jose (San Jose, Calif.)
3. Magnolia (Seattle)
4. Sawtelle (Los Angeles)
5. Beverly Glen (Los Angeles)
6. Orangecrest (Riverside, Calif.)
7. Corona Valley (Corona, Calif.)
8. Westchester (Los Angeles)
9. Speer (Denver)
10. West Hills (Los Angeles)

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