AB 1482 Rent Caps – Single Family Homes?

[gzz]

Agree I overstated tax benefit for a typical Cal buyer.

On the other hand, Chuck and Nancy hate the salt limit, and so do blue state suburban republicans, and once such Republican is likely to be the next house speaker, Kevin McCarthy.

So I think the current salt limit will likely be raised if not eliminated.

And of course for investors property tax is deductible. Maybe that irrationally is why investors are growing while homeownership isn’t?

As for rent control, as I said, even those of us exempt still have a market that is partly restrained by those who are limited. My 2/2 with parking in a free market might have gone to someone who instead is sticking with a smaller 2/1 with no parking because he’s legally protected from paying market rent increases.

[OnPoint]

I recently had to deal with this. Down the rabbit hole with the YouTubes, property manager friends, etc. There has been a flurry of new rental legislation during lockdown.

I ended up joining https://www.socalrha.org/, glad I did. They have on-call operations advisers, very helpful.

I rent out my SFH, and rent a SFH to live in another part of town. So I’m on both sides of this issue. Out of non-professional soft-heartedness and basic human decency during the lockdown, neither we nor our landlord have raised rent in 3 years.

As I understand it:
– In all cases you must be notified of the AB-1482 status of your landlord (whether exempt or not). If they failed to notify you by the original deadline of July 2020 (I think?), they can notify later. But no other notifications can happen until 30 days after the AB-1482 notification.
– The notice must be served. That’s the landlord’s responsibility. If you sign & return, that’s nice, but not needed. “I never received…” only buys you 30 days, *if* you can prove it. I.e., check your mail pile.
– Assuming your landlord is exempt…
– After that, rent increase of <= 10% requires 30-day notice. - rent increase of > 10% requires 90-day notice.
– max 2 increases per year; but no limit on the total increase %
– there are several active CA State-of-Emergency orders, but none currently relating to rentals
– The City of San Diego currently has some additional constraints on tenant removal. If the owner wants to remove the tenant so they themselves or “direct-line” family member can move back in, 90-days notice is required. There had been City Council talk of disallowing even this, which really had me freaked (“paging Dr. Zhivago”). However, this expires Sept 2022 at latest.

So to your original post, yes, the landlord can get 20% increase, but sounds like a 120-day notice is required (30-day AB-1482 notification then 90-day for > 10% increase).

Re pushing back, check around. Econ 101, landlords don’t set rent, tenants do (“the market”). Given the current situation, 20% doesn’t sound too bad. Our landlord is asking for 60%. We’ve negotiated 25%, for now.

We’re in a pinch, deciding whether to stretch to buy another home. In which case we’ll have to “domino” with market pricing on our rental (~40% increase) to help with the mortgage. Likely lose the tenant, etc. We may go with a property management agency, I don’t have the heart to charge people that much!

However, Mr. Toscano’s latest market reports give pause to buying sentiment.

[Author]

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