Zillow data show Riverside attracting renters from Los Angeles, but rising housing costs are pushing some families farther into the Inland Empire and beyond.
A recent Zillow report shows that Los Angeles renters are increasingly looking toward Riverside, turning the Inland Empire city into an attractive alternative for people who can no longer afford to rent in the Los Angeles metro area. But a Riverside mortgage lender with more than 27 years of experience says the trend should be viewed with caution.
“Riverside’s market is becoming saturated. It is no longer possible to find those cheap rents. The clients I have, or people I know, are already moving to Perris, Adelanto, or Victorville, where the market is beginning to accelerate. The option that will be left is the Deep Desert. I am talking specifically about the rental market. Buying? That is an impossible mission. In the end, people looking to move are putting on a Band-Aid because there are so many pros and cons,” says Erika Paz, a mortgage lender who has worked in the industry for more than 27 years.
Paz has watched this phenomenon develop for decades. She remembers seeing the same pattern emerge in the 1990s, when her sister left her home in Lynwood and moved to Riverside. At the time, real estate prices were rising substantially in Los Angeles, and selling a home could allow families to capture their equity and purchase a much larger property if they were willing to sacrifice some of the lifestyle and convenience of living in the big city.
“If you sold a two-bedroom, two-bathroom house in L.A., you could get a four-bedroom, three-bathroom home in Riverside. It was a huge difference,” Paz says.
The dynamics changed again in 1994, when falling home prices and an economic recession reshaped the local housing market. The closure of a military base also affected the region, and many people began renting instead of buying because it made more economic sense.
But Riverside has not been immune to the pressures that have transformed neighborhoods across Southern California.
“This area has also been hit by gentrification. You can see it in entire neighborhoods in Riverside. Whole families have had to move out of the Eastside,” Paz says. “And look, these days, a lot of the Latino clients I have can no longer afford to live in Victorville. That is no longer an option.”
The Zillow data provide a glimpse of how significant the connection between Los Angeles and Riverside has become. Renters searching from Los Angeles generated 21.3 percent of all rental listing page views in Riverside, making the Los Angeles to Riverside flow the strongest cross-metro rental search in Zillow’s analysis. The figure measures online rental searches, not completed moves, but it offers a revealing indication of where Angelenos are considering living next.
Affordability is an obvious part of the equation. Zillow’s March 2026 rental data put the typical rent at $2,895 in Los Angeles compared with $2,493 in Riverside, a difference of roughly $400 a month.
But Riverside offers something beyond a lower price.
The city is majority Latino, and its Latino community is not a recent development. Riverside’s own historical account describes it as one of California’s oldest and most cohesive Latino communities, with roots stretching back more than a century through Mexican and Mexican American families, agricultural workers, entrepreneurs, community organizers and civil rights leaders.
That combination of affordability and an established Latino community raises another question. For some Latino Angelenos, could Riverside offer a way to leave behind Los Angeles’ increasingly expensive housing market without leaving Southern California’s cultural and social networks?
Paz says the reality on the ground is more complicated. Years of rising prices have created another barrier, while neighborhoods themselves have changed.
“The situation is distressing. I have clients who commute from Perris to Long Beach for work. Young families with babies are driving many of these changes, but they are looking for a house with a minimum number of bedrooms where their children can grow up and a yard where they can play,” she says.
“Many times, that is simply beyond their means. So they move somewhere else. There is a serious problem. Young people graduating from school cannot find jobs, so they cannot afford to rent. Even people with two professional salaries can barely reach that goal, and they are the exception.”
For families, the housing crisis becomes more than a financial calculation. It can determine where children grow up, whether parents can remain close to their jobs, and whether extended families can stay together.
“You start asking questions like how many children they want, where they want to live, and how much space they need. Those questions hit people hard, and that creates a crisis inside families,” Paz says. “If you have teenage children, it becomes difficult. They do not want to move so easily. There are so many factors influencing and worsening this crisis.”
Buying a home is even further out of reach for many of her clients.
“Forget about buying a house. Mortgage rates are through the roof. The real estate market is dead. For years, I used to close around 40 loans. Do you know how many I closed last year? Zero,” Paz says.
With homeownership increasingly out of reach, Paz believes smaller and more attainable housing could provide one possible solution. Townhomes, she says, could give some families a chance to buy rather than remain renters indefinitely.
At the same time, another housing trend is accelerating: renting individual rooms.
It is a market Paz is exploring herself. She owns a seven-bedroom house and rents the rooms individually, creating an arrangement in which several households share common spaces.
“It is an option. I have a seven-bedroom house, and I rent each room,” she says. “For example, one room is rented by an older married couple, another by their son, and so on. They share the utility areas and have a yard for outdoor gatherings. For $800 a month, they can rent something.”
For Paz, however, the broader outlook remains uncertain. Riverside may still offer an escape from Los Angeles, but she warns that renters need to understand what that escape can cost them.
“The Riverside market is almost exhausted,” she says. “If people are willing to do it, they need two full-time jobs; they have to endure a long commute, deal with extremely hot weather that can become unbearable, expensive rents, expensive food and a new culture.”
And avoiding the commute presents another problem. People would have to find work closer to home, something that is not always possible for families already struggling to make ends meet.
“Well, at least two $ 20-an-hour jobs at McDonald’s could help you live, but you would be living very tightly,” Paz says.
The movement from Los Angeles to Riverside may therefore be less a permanent escape than a series of compromises. As housing costs push renters farther from the city, Riverside becomes the next logical stop. But if prices continue rising there, renters may have to keep moving.
Perris. Adelanto. Victorville.
And eventually, Paz says, the Deep Desert.
