Sell Your Commercial Property In Santa Ana, CA

Who rents in Santa Ana

Santa Ana is Orange County's county seat and a renter-majority city. The Census Bureau's American Community Survey for 2020–2024 counts 312,534 residents in 81,069 occupied homes, and 44,898 of those homes, or 55.4%, are rented. The Orange County share is 43.6%. Median household income in Santa Ana is $93,999, compared with $116,289 countywide.

Households here are large. Dividing the city's population by its occupied homes gives about 3.9 residents per home, a figure that reflects the working families our Santa Ana page describes as the core of the renter base. For an owner, larger households can mean more wear on units, and they make unit size, parking and laundry more important than finishes.

Government and the courts anchor the local job base. The Superior Court of California, County of Orange, lists four of its nine facilities in Santa Ana, including the Central Justice Center on Civic Center Drive and the Civil Complex Center. As the county seat, the city also hosts Orange County government offices. To the south, office and retail employers around South Coast Metro add private-sector jobs, and Santa Ana College and the city's hospitals add education and healthcare employment.

Rents and affordability

Median gross rent in Santa Ana was $2,082 a month over 2020–2024, below the county median of $2,434. Of renter households, 51.8% pay 30% or more of income on rent and 24.1% pay half or more (ACS table B25070), lower than the county's 54.0% and 28.4%. Part of that difference likely comes from large households pooling incomes, which spreads the rent across more earners.

HUD's FY2026 Fair Market Rents for the Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine area, which set voucher payment standards, are $2,682 for a studio, $2,746 for a one-bedroom, $3,236 for a two-bedroom, $4,393 for a three-bedroom and $5,246 for a four-bedroom. Because Santa Ana caps annual increases on covered units, the gap between in-place rents and these market-level benchmarks tends to widen the longer a tenant stays.

The apartment stock

Of Santa Ana's 83,701 housing units, 27,926, or 33.4%, are in buildings of five or more units, per ACS table B25024. The breakdown is unusually even: 5,919 units in 5–9 unit buildings, 6,328 in 10–19 unit buildings, 5,927 in 20–49 unit buildings and 9,752 in buildings of 50 or more. Buildings of 5 to 19 units hold 12,247 units, or 14.6% of all housing in the city. Another 8,464 units, about 10.1% of the total, are in duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes, consistent with our page's note that the market is built on older small apartment buildings and fourplexes. Larger complexes still matter: the 9,752 units in 50+ unit buildings make up about 35% of the city's 5+ inventory.

The stock is old by Orange County standards. Santa Ana's median year built is 1969, eight years earlier than the county's, and 73.9% of units date from before 1980, against 56.8% countywide (ACS table B25034). The 1950s alone produced 17,408 units, about 20.8% of today's stock. In older neighborhoods such as French Park, Downtown and Artists Village, buildings from that era are common. Buyers will focus on unit condition, parking and the age of building systems.

New supply

Very little of Santa Ana's housing is new. Units built from 2010 to 2019 total 4,056, and only 896, about 1.1%, date from 2020 or later. Those newer units are exempt from the city's rent limits while they are under 15 years old, so they lease at market rates. The 1990s added 3,697 units, and because the ordinance's cutoff falls on February 1, 1995, buildings from that decade can land on either side of it, so buyers will check the certificate of occupancy date. For an owner of an older building, limited new supply supports occupancy, but the rent ceiling on covered units, not competition from new buildings, is the main limit on income growth.

Santa Ana rent stabilization

Santa Ana has its own rent control. The city's Rent Stabilization and Just Cause Eviction Ordinance covers residential buildings built on or before February 1, 1995, and mobilehome parks established before 1990. Housing produced in the last 15 years, deed-restricted affordable housing and several other categories are exempt. At least 84.4% of the city's housing units were built before 1990, so the ordinance reaches the large majority of older apartment buildings.

The annual cap is the lower of 3% or 80% of the change in CPI, and only one increase is allowed in a 12-month period. The maximum was 2.42% for September 1, 2025 through August 31, 2026, and the city has set it at 2.87% for September 1, 2026 through August 31, 2027. Owners can petition to pass through the cost of capital improvements completed after November 19, 2021.

In dollar terms, the 2026–27 cap lets a unit renting at the city's $2,082 median rise by about $60 a month, to roughly $2,142. Even at the 3% ceiling every year, that unit would reach only about $2,414 after five years, still well below HUD's FY2026 one-bedroom Fair Market Rent of $2,746 for the area. That arithmetic is why buyers of covered buildings focus on turnover, capital improvement pass-throughs and the condition of each unit rather than on market rent growth.

The ordinance also changes eviction and registration. Just-cause protections apply after 30 days of occupancy, much sooner than the 12 months in state law. For a no-fault termination, owners must pay three months of relocation assistance or waive the last three months' rent. All landlords must complete an annual rental registry filing. The fee for the July 2026 to June 2027 cycle is $100 per unit if paid by July 31, 2026, rising to $104 from August 1, and a delinquent fee cannot be passed through to tenants.

Statewide rules still apply on top. Civil Code 1950.5 limits most deposits to one month's rent, and CCP 1161 requires a three-day nonpayment notice excluding weekends and judicial holidays. The state Tenant Protection Act cap governs units outside the local ordinance that are not exempt.

Property taxes in Orange County

The Orange County Assessor values apartment buildings under Proposition 13: a base rate of 1% of assessed value plus voter-approved bond levies, with assessed value rising no more than 2% a year until a change in ownership, as the Board of Equalization explains. A sale resets the base to market, and under the BOE's Assessors' Handbook 401, so does a transfer of more than 50% of an owning entity. In a rent-stabilized building, the buyer's higher tax bill cannot be recovered quickly through rents, so it weighs directly on price. The county may also charge a documentary transfer tax of $0.55 per $500 of value.

What this means if you own a building here

Leases transfer with the sale, as our Santa Ana page notes, so a buyer inherits every tenant and every in-place rent. With increases capped at 2.87% for 2026–27, buyers will value a Santa Ana building mostly on its current rent roll, its registry and fee compliance, and its physical condition, then deduct for a reassessed tax bill. Clean registry filings and documented rent histories reduce the discount.

Our rent control and property tax guide covers California's rules, and the cap rate calculator shows how in-place income sets value. Skyline Capital Investments buys 5+ unit buildings across Santa Ana, including Downtown, Artists Village, French Park and South Coast Metro. Our seller page explains how we review a property.