AB 1482 exemptions

The new construction exemption runs from the certificate of occupancy and rolls forward continuously. It is not a list of exempt buildings. It is an age test applied on the day the increase takes effect, so a building that was exempt when your tenancy started can be covered later in the same tenancy without anything about the building changing. The date that decides it is the date the new rent starts, not the date the notice was written and not the date you signed.

Here is the same rule on a calendar. Take a building whose certificate of occupancy is dated June 2011. A rent increase taking effect in May 2026 lands while the building is 14 years old, so the state cap does not reach it and the landlord may set the new rent at whatever the market bears. An increase taking effect in July 2026 lands after the building's 15th birthday, and that one is capped. Same building, same owner, same tenant, two different answers three months apart.

Two things follow. The exemption is worth rechecking every year rather than once, and the date that matters is the date the new rent starts, not the date the notice was written or the date you signed the lease.

The certificate of occupancy is the document the test runs on, not the year the building looks like it was built. Building and Safety holds the record, and the Los Angeles County Assessor's property record carries a year built for every parcel. The rent increase calculator runs the current date against the address.

The first condition is ownership. A single-family home or condominium loses the exemption when the owner is a corporation, a real estate investment trust, or a limited liability company with at least one corporate member. Ownership by an individual, by several individuals, or through a family trust generally keeps it.

This is the condition that catches out the largest number of single-family rentals in Los Angeles, because holding a rental property in an LLC is ordinary practice and the exemption asks what is inside the LLC rather than whether there is one. An LLC whose members are all individuals is in a different position from an LLC with a corporate member, and the difference decides whether the cap applies.

It is checkable without asking the landlord. The deed is a public record with the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder, it names the owner as the owner is legally constituted, and a company named on a deed can be looked up in the California Secretary of State's business search. If the owner on the deed is a person and the rent is being collected by a management company, the management company is not the owner and does not change the answer.

The second condition is the notice, and it has its own section below because it is where most exemption claims actually fail.

A single-family home or condominium is not exempt merely because it is a single-family home or condominium. The statute makes the exemption conditional on the landlord having given the tenant written notice of it, in wording the statute itself sets out. An exemption claimed without that notice is generally not properly claimed, which means the cap applies to the increase and the just cause rules apply to the tenancy.

The statute prescribes the wording rather than leaving the landlord to write their own, and this is it, in full: "This property is not subject to the rent limits imposed by Section 1947.12 of the Civil Code and is not subject to the just cause requirements of Section 1946.2 of the Civil Code. This property meets the requirements of Sections 1947.12(d)(5) and 1946.2(e)(8) of the Civil Code and the owner is not any of the following: (1) a real estate investment trust, as defined by Section 856 of the Internal Revenue Code; (2) a corporation; or (3) a limited liability company in which at least one member is a corporation."

Where it has to appear depends on when the tenancy began. For a tenancy that began or was renewed on or after July 1, 2020, the notice has to be a term of the written lease or rental agreement itself. For an earlier tenancy it is written notice given to the tenant. So the document to ask for is not the same in both cases, and a landlord pointing at a letter for a tenancy signed after that date is pointing at the wrong one.

Three things are worth knowing about how this plays out. A notice that paraphrases rather than tracks the statute is open to challenge. A notice given late does not retroactively exempt the increases that came before it. And a landlord who has never given one, then serves a rent increase well above the cap, has usually created a written record of both facts at once.

This is the single most useful thing a tenant in a single-family rental can check, and it takes one email: ask for a copy of the exemption notice. A landlord who has one will send it. A landlord who does not will usually explain instead, and an explanation is not a notice.

The statute's own answer is a list, and the useful version of it is three lists. What follows is every category the law names, grouped by which half of AB 1482 it escapes. Read the group heading before the entries: two of these three groups leave real protection in place, and a category read out of its group is how a tenant concludes they have none.

These fall outside both halves of the law. The state cap does not limit the rent, and the state's just cause rules do not govern how the tenancy ends. A local ordinance may still do either, which is why the address decides the answer rather than the category alone.

New construction. The certificate of occupancy was issued within the last 15 years. The window rolls: a unit becomes covered on the fifteenth anniversary of its certificate.

Single-family homes and condominiums. Only where both hold. The owner is not a real estate investment trust, a corporation, or a limited liability company with at least one corporate member; and the landlord gave the tenant the written notice of exemption the statute prescribes. It does not apply where more than one unit shares the lot or the building.

Owner-occupied duplexes. The owner occupies one of the two units as their principal residence for the whole of the tenancy in the other.

Deed-restricted affordable housing.

Certain dormitories.

These escape the rent cap and nothing else. The state does not limit the increase, because something stricter already does, and the just cause requirements carry on applying to the tenancy exactly as before.

Units under a stricter local rent control ordinance. An ordinance restricting increases to less than 5% plus CPI. The Los Angeles Rent Stabilization Ordinance is one. The local cap governs the rent; it does not switch off the state's just cause requirements.

This is the group that covers most older apartment buildings in Los Angeles, and the one most often described wrongly. A tenant told their building is "exempt from AB 1482" because the city ordinance covers it has been told something true about the rent cap and nothing at all about their eviction protection, which is untouched.

These escape the just cause requirements and nothing else. The tenancy can be ended without one of the statute's reasons, and the rent cap may still limit what the rent does in the meantime.

Owner-occupied single-family home renting two bedrooms or units or fewer. The count includes an accessory dwelling unit or a junior accessory dwelling unit.

Owner-occupied shared living. The tenant shares a kitchen or a bathroom with the owner, and the owner lives there as their principal residence.

Housing operated by a nonprofit hospital, church, extended-care facility or adult residential facility.

Transient and tourist hotel occupancy. As defined by Civil Code section 1940(b).

The error to avoid here runs the other way. A landlord in one of these categories may end the tenancy without giving one of the statute's reasons, and that says nothing about what they may charge while it continues: the rent cap is a separate question with a separate answer.

Ask which exemption, in writing, and ask for the document behind it. A written claim that turns out to be wrong is a useful document later, and a landlord who cannot name the exemption usually does not have one.

Then check the claim rather than the claimer. If the answer is new construction, the certificate of occupancy has a date and Building and Safety holds it. If it is a single-family home, the assessor's unit count says whether the property is one dwelling or several, and a house divided into two rented units is not a single-family home for this purpose. If it is ownership, the deed names the owner. If it is the exemption notice, ask for the copy.

Keep paying the rent while you do it. An increase you believe is unlawful is a dispute about the increase, and withholding rent turns it into a dispute about arrears, which is a much worse position to argue from. Pay the old rent, put the objection in writing, and say what you are paying and why.

One thing not to conclude from a high rent: nothing. A property can be exempt and cheap or covered and expensive. The rent is the thing being argued about, not evidence about which law applies.

One cap governs the rent, not two. Where the city's Rent Stabilization Ordinance covers a unit, the state cap steps aside and the stricter local rule governs; where the RSO does not reach it, the state cap is what is left. That is what the rent cap only group above describes, and it is why a unit falling outside AB 1482 so rarely means the rent is free.

The half that does not step aside is just cause. Escaping the state cap because a local ordinance is stricter says nothing about how the tenancy may be ended, and a tenant who reads one exemption as covering both has given up a protection they still have. The reverse holds too: a property in the just cause only group can be ended without a statutory reason while its rent stays capped.

The two caps also answer almost every other question differently. The RSO limits the rent to a percentage the LA Housing Department publishes, allows one increase in twelve months, and carries relocation assistance on a no-fault eviction. AB 1482 caps at a percentage plus inflation and allows two increases inside the annual cap.

So the useful question is not "am I exempt from AB 1482" on its own. It is which rules reach this unit, half by half, and the honest answer for most older Los Angeles apartments is that they are covered by the Rent Stabilization Ordinance rather than uncapped. That depends on the address rather than on the category, which is what the calculator on this site checks.