It is still too early to tellhow severe the oncoming recession will be or how long it will last.However, there is a plausible scenario that class-B and class-Chousing in Los Angeles could see substantially higher demand as aresult of the downturn, leading to rent gains in that marketsegment. Apartment List released a survey of Marchrents, showing flat rents consistent with long-term trends in LosAngles. The data was still to early to show the impacts of thevirus, but the forecast might not be total doom.

"It seems highly possible that when moving activity returns tomore normal levels, an uptick in downgrade moves could result ineven tighter competition for rental units at the middle and lowerends of the market, while luxury vacancies get harder to fill. Inthis scenario, it wouldn't be unreasonable to see rents fall forclass-A properties, while class-B and C actually see acceleratedrent growth.," Christopher Salviati, housingeconomist at Apartment List, tells GlobeSt.com.

The demand shift to this market segment is largely due to LosAngeles' exposure to job loss resulting from closures and socialdistancing restrictions. "A recession of some magnitude seemslargely inevitable at this point, but it's exact severity andduration, as well as the specific local impact to the L.A. area,are all a bit tougher to speculate on," says Salviati. "That said,in a reportwe released last week, we found that the L.A. metro has theeighth highest share of workers facing immediate economic risk fromwhat we've deemed the quarantine economy."