This page walks a Bay Area single-family or small-multifamily owner through the rules that actually generate lawsuits: the AB 1482 rent cap and its formula, just-cause eviction, the conditional single-family exemption, the local ordinances that stack on top in cities like Oakland and Berkeley, Costa-Hawkins, the Section 8 source-of-income rule, and the one-month security-deposit limit. It is education, not legal advice: landlord-tenant law is exactly the corner of real estate where owners get sued, so treat this as the map and a landlord-tenant attorney as the guide.
Every statute below is linked to its official text, and every percentage comes with its source or its formula, because the numbers change on a schedule and the formula is what lasts. For the investment side of owning East Bay rentals (yields, expenses, and what the rent cap does to return math), see the companion guide on East Bay rental-property yields.
The AB 1482 rent cap: 5% plus CPI, never more than 10%
The statewide baseline is AB 1482, the Tenant Protection Act of 2019, whose rent-cap half lives in Civil Code §1947.12. On a covered unit, rent may rise in any 12-month period by no more than 5% plus the regional change in the Consumer Price Index, and never more than 10% total, whichever is lower. You may split it into at most two increases, but the sum must fit under the cap.
The CPI component resets every year: the April-over-April change in the regional index sets the cap for increases taking effect August 1 through July 31. For the core Bay Area counties on the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward index (Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo), that produces a cap of 6.3% for increases effective August 1, 2025 through July 31, 2026, rising to 8.8% on August 1, 2026. The California Apartment Association publishes the current table. Other Bay Area counties, including Santa Clara, key off a different CPI series, so check the figure for your county rather than assuming. The law sunsets on January 1, 2030 unless extended, and extension bills surface regularly, so plan as if the regime is durable.
Just cause: ending a tenancy needs a legally recognized reason
The second half of AB 1482, Civil Code §1946.2, says that once a tenant has lawfully occupied a covered unit for 12 months, you can only end the tenancy for a reason the statute lists, stated in the written notice. The reasons split into two families. At-fault causes include nonpayment, an uncured lease breach, nuisance, and criminal activity. No-fault causes (owner or family move-in, withdrawal of the unit from the rental market, a government order, or a substantial remodel) are the ones that trigger money: every no-fault termination requires relocation assistance equal to one month's rent, paid directly or credited as a waiver of the final month.
The SB 567 amendments, effective April 2024, tightened exactly the two no-fault causes owners lean on. An owner move-in now requires the owner or qualifying relative to occupy the unit within 90 days and live there at least 12 months; a substantial remodel must be real, permitted, and described in the notice. Violations expose the owner to actual damages, potential treble damages plus punitive damages, and enforcement by the Attorney General or local prosecutors. The state courts' self-help center shows how closely judges read these notices. Do not serve a termination notice on a covered unit without a landlord-tenant attorney reviewing it first; this is the single most litigated paragraph on this page.
Is my single-family home or condo exempt?
Usually yes, but the exemption is conditional, and the condition most owners miss is paperwork. A single-family home or condo escapes both the rent cap and just cause only if two things are true at once. First, ownership: the owner cannot be a corporation, a real estate investment trust, or an LLC with even one corporate member. A home held by an individual, a family trust, or an all-natural-person LLC qualifies; the moment a corporate entity enters the chain, the exemption is gone. Second, notice: the tenant must receive the exemption notice in the exact words the statute prescribes, and for tenancies beginning on or after July 1, 2020, that language must appear in the rental agreement itself. An individually owned house whose lease is silent is a covered unit, full stop.
Two other exemptions matter to Bay Area owners: housing issued a certificate of occupancy within the previous 15 years is exempt on a rolling basis (a 2013 build ages into coverage in 2028), and a duplex where the owner occupied one unit at the start of the tenancy and still lives there is exempt. Here is the coverage picture in one table:
| Property situation | Rent cap (§1947.12) | Just cause (§1946.2) | What the owner must do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apartment / multifamily, 15+ years old | Yes | Yes | Track the annual CPI cap; serve statute-compliant notices |
| Single-family home or condo, individual or family-trust owner, exemption notice given | No | No | Keep the statutory notice language in the lease; keep proof |
| Single-family home or condo, individual owner, no exemption notice | Yes | Yes | Covered until proper notice is in place; confirm timing with an attorney |
| Single-family home or condo owned by a corporation, REIT, or LLC with a corporate member | Yes | Yes | Full compliance; no notice can create the exemption |
| Certificate of occupancy within the last 15 years | No | No | Recheck the date yearly; the exemption ages out |
| Owner-occupied duplex | No | No | Owner must have lived there from the tenancy's start and remain |
| Any of the above in a city with its own ordinance | Local rule may be stricter | Local rule may be stricter | Check the city rent board before acting |
Ownership structure is a lever here: moving a rental into an entity for liability reasons can quietly change its rent-control status. Weigh that alongside the title questions in how to hold title to a California home, and run the specific structure past an attorney.
Local ordinances stack on top, and they are stricter
AB 1482 does not replace local rent control; it fills the gaps around it, and wherever both layers touch a property, the stricter rule governs. The Bay Area is dense with local regimes: San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond, East Palo Alto, Mountain View, San Jose, Hayward, and Alameda all run their own programs, and the local caps are far below the state formula. San Francisco's Rent Board set the allowable increase at 1.4% for the period from March 1, 2025 through February 28, 2026, against a 6.3% state cap. Oakland and Berkeley tie their annual adjustments to a fraction of CPI, which has produced allowances in the low single digits in recent years, and Richmond publishes its own annual general adjustment.
Local layers also bring obligations the state law does not: rent registries, per-unit program fees, petition processes, and just-cause rules that can start on day one of a tenancy with higher relocation payments than the state minimum. The operational rule is simple: before you raise rent or serve any notice, check the current figure and procedure with the city's rent program for that address, and when the two layers seem to conflict, assume the stricter one wins until an attorney tells you otherwise.
Costa-Hawkins in two minutes
The Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act of 1995 is the state law that limits how far local rent control can reach. It does three things. It keeps local rent caps off single-family homes and condos. It keeps them off newer construction: statewide, anything first occupied after February 1995, with older cutoffs baked into older ordinances (San Francisco's, for example, covers buildings from before June 1979). And it guarantees vacancy decontrol: when a tenancy ends, you may reset the rent to market, after which the caps apply to the new tenancy. That last piece is why turnover, not the annual increase, is the real pricing moment for a rent-controlled property.
Two things Costa-Hawkins does not do: it does not limit AB 1482, which is why a corporate-owned single-family home in Oakland can be exempt from Oakland's cap yet still covered by the state cap, and it does not block local just-cause ordinances. Voters have declined to repeal it three times, most recently rejecting Proposition 33 in November 2024, and repeal attempts keep returning to the ballot.
Can I say no to a Section 8 voucher?
No. Since SB 329 took effect in 2020, a housing-assistance voucher counts as a protected source of income under the Fair Employment and Housing Act (Government Code §12955). That means no "No Section 8" line in a listing, no rejecting an applicant because they hold a voucher, and no steering them to different units or terms. This applies to every landlord (there is no small-owner exemption), and it covers single-family homes just as it covers apartment buildings.
What you keep is the right to screen everyone by the same uniform standards: credit, references, rental history. The one adjustment the law forces is arithmetic: any income requirement must be applied to the tenant's own share of the rent, not the full contract rent, since the housing authority pays the balance. A denial has to stand on a voucher-neutral reason you can document. Violations are housing discrimination under FEHA, enforced through the Civil Rights Department, with damages and attorney's fees on the table. If a specific application worries you, write down the neutral basis and confirm it with a fair-housing attorney before you act.
Security deposits: one month, photographed, returned in 21 days
Since July 1, 2024, AB 12 caps the security deposit at one month's rent, furnished or unfurnished, by amending Civil Code §1950.5. There is a small-landlord exception that fits many Bay Area owners: if you are a natural person (or a family trust, or an LLC made up entirely of natural persons) and you own no more than two residential rental properties with no more than four units in total, you may collect up to two months, except from an active-duty service member, where one month is the ceiling regardless.
The documentation side tightened too. Under AB 2801, deductions must be supported by photographs: the unit at move-out, after your cleaning or repairs, and, for tenancies beginning July 2025 or later, before move-in as well. The long-standing 21-day deadline to return the deposit with an itemized statement still applies, and deductions are limited to unpaid rent, cleaning to the original level, and damage beyond ordinary wear and tear. Treat the photo file as part of the deposit itself: without it, a deduction is an argument you have already lost.
The practical playbook for a Bay Area owner
Reduced to practice, the layers above become a short checklist. Classify each unit: covered or exempt under AB 1482, inside or outside a local program: the table above plus one call to the city rent board settles it. Paper the single-family exemption: the statutory language in the lease, a copy in your file. Verify the current cap (state or local, whichever is lower) before serving any increase. Never serve a termination without attorney review. Screen every applicant, voucher or not, by one written standard. And keep the deposit file boring: one month, photos, 21 days.
These rules also shape transactions. A tenant-occupied sale carries its own disclosure and timing questions (my guide to reading California disclosures covers the seller's side), and coverage status changes what a buyer can do with the property, which feeds directly into the price an investor will pay. That interaction between the legal layer and the return math is exactly where the East Bay yields guide picks up.
Let's pressure-test your rental
If you own a rental house or a small building anywhere in the East Bay or the wider Bay Area, or you are deciding whether to keep one, buy one, or sell one with tenants in place, bring me the specifics. I will help you classify the property against the state and local layers, read the numbers the way a buyer or an appraiser would, and tell you plainly when the next step belongs to a landlord-tenant attorney rather than an agent. I am not a lawyer, and I will never pretend to be one; what I bring is the market side of these rules, learned across 104 documented closings and more than $115M in volume.
Reach me directly at lilyagaripova@gmail.com or (415) 910-3958, or at lilygaripova.com. I work out of Fremont, CA, and I would rather you ask the question before the notice goes out than after it comes back with a lawyer's letterhead.
Lily Garipova, REALTOR®, in real estate since 2007, California licensed since 2016 (Cal DRE #02010731).
Email: lilyagaripova@gmail.com
Phone: (415) 910-3958
Web: lilygaripova.com
Fremont, CA
FAQ
How much can I raise the rent on a covered Bay Area rental right now?
For units covered by AB 1482, the annual limit is 5% plus the regional change in CPI, and never more than 10%. For the core Bay Area counties, that works out to 6.3% for increases taking effect August 1, 2025 through July 31, 2026, and 8.8% starting August 1, 2026. If your property sits in a city with its own rent control, such as Oakland, Berkeley, San Francisco, or Richmond, the local cap is usually far lower and it governs. Verify the current figure before serving any notice.
Is my single-family rental exempt from AB 1482?
Only if two things are both true: the owner is not a corporation, a REIT, or an LLC with a corporate member, and the tenant has received the exact written exemption notice the statute prescribes. For tenancies that began on or after July 1, 2020, that language must be in the rental agreement itself. Miss either condition and the home is covered, no matter what type of property it is.
Can I refuse an applicant because they have a Section 8 voucher?
No. Since SB 329 took effect in 2020, a housing voucher counts as a protected source of income under California fair-housing law. You cannot advertise that you do not accept Section 8, and you cannot reject an applicant for being a voucher holder. You may still screen every applicant with the same uniform criteria, but any income test must be applied to the tenant's own share of the rent, not the full contract rent.
How large a security deposit can I collect in California?
One month's rent, furnished or unfurnished, under AB 12, in effect since July 1, 2024. A small landlord who is a natural person (or a family trust) and owns no more than two residential rental properties totaling no more than four units may collect up to two months, but never more than one month from an active-duty service member.
Do I owe the tenant anything for a no-fault eviction like an owner move-in?
Yes. On a covered unit, every no-fault termination requires relocation assistance equal to one month's rent, paid directly or credited as a waiver of the final month. Since the SB 567 amendments, an owner or qualifying relative doing a move-in must actually occupy the unit within 90 days and live there for at least 12 months, and violations expose the owner to actual damages, potential treble damages, and enforcement by the Attorney General or local prosecutors.
Does AB 1482 expire?
The rent-cap and just-cause provisions sunset on January 1, 2030 unless the Legislature extends them, and extension proposals come up regularly. Local rent-control and just-cause ordinances do not expire with the state law, so in cities like Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco the stricter local layer would remain either way.
My property is in Oakland or Berkeley. Which rules apply, local or state?
Both layers apply, and on each point the stricter rule wins. Costa-Hawkins keeps local rent caps off single-family homes, condos, and newer construction, but local just-cause and relocation rules can still reach those homes, and AB 1482 can cover what the local ordinance cannot. The only reliable way to classify a specific property is to check it against the local rent board's rules and confirm the result with a landlord-tenant attorney.
