Apartments for Rent in Commerce, CA

Frequently Asked Questions About Apartments for Rent in Commerce, CA

• How many apartments for rent are available in Commerce, CA right now?

  There is less purpose-built apartment stock in Commerce than in almost any city its size in the county. Of roughly 3,300 occupied homes, only about 545 sit in buildings of five units or more, and only around 147 in anything above fifty units, so most of what is advertised as an apartment for rent here is either half of a small older complex or a house or duplex let directly by its owner. Against that backdrop Roomster is carrying 29 listings for the area, most of them in Bandini and Rosewood, along the Atlantic Boulevard edge, and out toward Montebello on Washington.

• How much does it cost to rent an apartment in Commerce?

  Two numbers bracket this market and they sit far apart. Households already in place pay a median gross rent of about $1,549 citywide, with one-bedrooms near $1,145 and two-bedrooms near $1,743, because tenancies run long in a ZIP code where vacancy is around 2.2 percent. What is actually on the market asks considerably more, averaging near $2,021, with studios listing between roughly $1,550 and $1,795 and one-bedrooms between $1,900 and $2,875. You can still find apartments for rent under $1,800 in Ayers west of the 710, on the older Bandini blocks, and just over the line in East Los Angeles, and those are the ones to move on quickly.

• Is there rent control on apartments for rent in Commerce?

  Not a local one, and the boundary catches people out. Los Angeles County's Rent Stabilization and Tenant Protections Ordinance covers unincorporated territory only, which takes in East Los Angeles immediately to the west but not Commerce, an incorporated city since 1960 that has never adopted an ordinance of its own. What covers you instead is the statewide Tenant Protection Act, capping annual increases at 5 percent plus local CPI, to a hard ceiling of 10 percent, and requiring just cause once you have been in place twelve months. For the Los Angeles area that works out at 8.7 percent for increases taking effect between August 2026 and July 2027. It reaches units with a certificate of occupancy at least fifteen years old, which is nearly all of 90040, though a single-family house let by an individual owner is exempt where the owner serves the required written notice.

• What deposit and fees should I expect on a Commerce apartment for rent?

  Since July 2024 California has capped the security deposit at one month's rent for most landlords, furnished or unfurnished alike. The exception matters in a city built out of houses: an individual owner, or an LLC whose members are all individuals, holding no more than two rental properties with no more than four units between them may ask up to two months, and that describes a good many Commerce landlords. Active-duty servicemembers are capped at one month with no exception. An application screening fee is limited to what the owner actually spends on the check, under a statewide ceiling adjusted each January, and any unused portion must be refunded to you. There is no tenant-paid broker commission in this market, so treat a demand for one as a warning sign.

• Are there apartments for rent near Commerce's freeway and rail commute routes?

  Commerce is wrapped around its commute routes rather than served by them. The Santa Ana Freeway and the Long Beach Freeway both cross the city and the 60 runs along the north, putting downtown Los Angeles, Vernon and the ports within a short drive of any apartment in Bandini, Rosewood or Bristow. Transit is thinner: the free city buses link the residential pockets to the Citadel and the commercial strip, and the Metrolink stop on 26th Street runs only a handful of weekday trains with no weekend service at all. That picture changes later this decade, when Metro's approved E Line extension brings an underground Commerce/Citadel station to Washington Boulevard.

• How do Commerce apartments for rent compare with Montebello, East LA and Bell Gardens?

  Commerce sits mid-pack on price and last on choice, so the sensible search covers all four. Montebello, along Washington and Whittier, has far more mid-century apartment buildings and therefore more actual vacancies at a similar rent. East Los Angeles is cheaper block for block and, being unincorporated, its older buildings fall under the county rent ordinance that Commerce does not have. Bell Gardens and Maywood to the south run lower again on two-bedrooms. What Commerce offers in exchange for thin supply is the fare-free city bus, small parks like Rosewood and Bristow, and a short drive to nearly every job in the corridor.