REAL ESTATE

The apartment vacancy rate climbed to 4.3% in the county in May, but the way the apartment industry fared from one city to another varied widely, according to a recent survey.

Some of the booming areas in the relatively undeveloped south county had new apartment complexes with relatively high vacancy rates, according to the study by the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco.

El Toro, for instance, had a vacancy rate of 8.4% among its 7,600 apartments, and the majority of the empties were in new complexes.

That contrasts with the older neighborhood of Corona Del Mar in Newport Beach, where of 730 apartments only 14--or 2%--were vacant.

Among the county’s larger cities, Anaheim had a vacancy rate of 3.1%, Santa Ana 4.4%, Huntington Beach 3.7% and Newport Beach 4.3%.