The rental market has reportedly hit its ground and is now starting to stabilize and even improve. Nationally, numbers are showing a great improvement both for rentals and vacancy rates. In Santa Clarita Valley, though, figures reflect a still weak economy – but the improvement, no matter how small, is always seen as a positive thing.

This year’s third quarter has reflected a 1% increase in Santa Clarita’s average rent for apartments, says apartment search and market research website RentJungle.com. The average rent was up by $21 and now sits at $1,482. Though majority of cities had increases of 2 to 5% and Santa Clarita’s look very minimal, rent Jungle CEO Jon Pastor says that 1% is still a welcome thing.

“The Santa Clarita market looks like it has turned the corner. Second quarter rents remained flat, so the third quarter’s increase of 1 percent is encouraging,” says Pastor.

Analyzing over one million apartment ads monthly, Rent Jungle reported that Santa Clarita’s one-bedroom apartments yielded an average $1,125 rental, while two-bedroom apartments are at $1,445. Santa Clarita’s economic development division, which releases a monthly economic report, issued in August the average Santa Clarita rent at $1,438. Whereas Rent Jungle reports a lower rental rate for Santa Clarita versus the local average, EDD says otherwise.

For EDD, the 2009 and 2010 rental averages are very comparable, with only a dollar variance. The October numbers, though, show an upward trend in Santa Clarita’s average rental. The trend is now up to $1,526.

Pastor further predicts, “We are seeing some encouraging signs in the overall national rental market for the second quarter in a row. Rent increased in the second quarter, making this past period the second continuous quarter of increases.”

Both for the national and local markets, one-bedroom apartment rent saw an increase. Nationwide, the rents shot up to 7%. The local market, on the other hand, had a promising 3% increase.

Two-bedroom apartments, however, show differing results. Whereas nationally demand is up 5%, locally it plummeted by 4%.