Guide
Why “single-family homes are exempt” is wrong twice a day in California.
AB 1482 caps most California rent increases at 5% plus regional inflation, never above 10%. Then come the exemptions — and the most abused sentence in California renting: “single-family homes are exempt.”
The statute says something narrower. A single-family home or condo is exempt only when both of these hold: the owner is not a corporation, not a REIT, and not an LLC with a corporate member; and the tenant received the exemption notice in the words the statute prescribes, in the lease or an addendum. A corporate-owned house with no notice served is not an exempt home that happens to lack paperwork — it is a covered unit whose landlord has a losing exemption claim.
Your lease names the landlord; the county assessor names the owner of record; the Secretary of State’s business search shows whether that LLC has a corporate member. If the owner is an entity, read the exemption claim as failed. If the owner is a person, search the lease and every addendum for the statutory notice — not a sentence that sounds like it, the notice itself.
The other exemptions are cleaner: buildings first occupied within the last 15 years (a rolling window), owner-occupied duplexes, and deed-restricted affordable housing. And above the state floor sit the cities: Los Angeles RSO units (generally pre-October 1978) run on the city’s own allowance — a flat 3% for July 2026–June 2027 — with San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, San José and Santa Monica each holding their own book. Where city and state disagree, the stricter number governs.
The checker runs the exemption engine first because California verdicts are decided there more often than on arithmetic. A landlord who knows the exemption fails usually corrects the increase at the first letter that says so — which is why the kit’s §2 letter quotes the exemption’s own two conditions back at it.
Rules checked October 2026