A small landlord with a four-unit portfolio in the East Bay and one inherited single-family house in Oakland Hills can be looking, in calendar 2026, at four different lawful rent-increase percentages on five units of housing. A covered Berkeley apartment may take 1.0%. A covered San Francisco apartment may take 1.6%. A covered Los Angeles RSO unit may take 3.0% before July 1 and roughly 2.8% after. The Costa-Hawkins-exempt single-family in Oakland Hills, with a post-1996 tenancy, may take the statewide AB 1482 cap of 8.8%. Same calendar year. Same landlord. Same portfolio. Different statutes, different anchor periods, different denial gates, different reset dates, different banking rules, different registration regimes.
This is the post we promised in the Berkeley 1.0% deep-dive and in the most recent newsletter — a head-to-head walk of the four California rent-cap regimes for 2026, with the math that produces each percentage, the coverage map that decides which regime each unit lives under, and the practical sequence for landlords holding units across two or more of them. We will not solve every edge case here; we will leave you able to read a unit's address and lease history and say, with statute citations, which of the four caps applies.
The four numbers, side by side
Here are the four 2026 rent-cap regimes for California, the percentage each one published, and the governing statute. Numbers are pulled from the canonical RentCeiling rule-set at rentceiling.com/rules/index.json, refreshed April 25, 2026.
- AB 1482 (statewide): 8.8% for any 12-month period beginning August 1, 2025 through July 31, 2026 (Cal. Civ. Code §1947.12). Formula: 5% plus the regional CPI percentage change (3.8% for the relevant 2025 reading), capped at 10%.
- LA RSO Year 2025-26 (through June 30, 2026): 3.0% standard, with the historic 1% electric and 1% gas utility add-ons eliminated effective February 2, 2026 (LAMC §151.06, §151.06.01).
- LA RSO Year 2026-27 (from July 1, 2026): ~2.8% projected, computed as 90% of the LA-Long Beach-Anaheim MSA 12-month CPI change ending July, with a 1% floor and 4% ceiling (LAMC §151.06 as amended by Ordinance No. 188558, adopted December 2025). LAHD publishes the final number in or around June 2026.
- SF Rent Year 2026-27 (March 1, 2026 – February 28, 2027): 1.6%, computed as 60% of the SF-Oakland-Hayward MSA March-to-March CPI percentage change (~2.67%), capped at 7% per S.F. Admin. Code Ch. 37 §37.3(a)(1)(B).
- Berkeley Calendar Year 2026: 1.0%, computed as 65% of the SF-Oakland-Hayward MSA July-to-June CPI percentage change (~1.5%) under Berkeley Rent Board Regulation 1271, adopted October 16, 2025 (RSB Item 8E).
That is a 7.8-point spread between the lowest and highest cap on units that may sit within ten miles of one another in the same metropolitan statistical area. The legislative architecture that produces this spread is not an accident: each ordinance is calibrated against a different inflation window with a different multiplier and a different statutory ceiling. We walk that next.
Why the same CPI series produces three different numbers
Three of the four caps — AB 1482's regional component, San Francisco's annual figure, and Berkeley's AGA — pull from the BLS CPI-U series for the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward MSA. (AB 1482 actually pulls a regional CPI per the tenant's region; for a Bay Area unit that is the SF-Oakland-Hayward series.) They produce three different percentages from the same time series because each regime defines a different anchor window with a different multiplier and a different statutory ceiling.
- Berkeley: 65% × CPI change July-to-June, ending June 2025. CPI change measured was approximately 1.5%. 65% × 1.5% = 0.975%, rounded to 1.0%. No statutory ceiling beyond the formula; no floor.
- San Francisco: 60% × CPI change March-to-March, ending March 2025. CPI change measured was approximately 2.67%. 60% × 2.67% = 1.602%, rounded to 1.6%. The statutory ceiling is 7% per Rent Year (S.F. Admin. Code §37.3(a)(1)(B)); not binding here.
- AB 1482 (statewide): 5% plus the regional CPI percentage change ending in the reference month for the increase. For the most recent reading, the regional CPI component is 3.8%. 5% + 3.8% = 8.8%, below the 10% statutory ceiling at Cal. Civ. Code §1947.12(a)(1).
The reason Berkeley produces a lower number than San Francisco even with a higher 65% multiplier is the anchor window: Berkeley's July-to-June window ended in June 2025 with 1.5% growth; San Francisco's March-to-March window ended in March 2025 with 2.67% growth. The earlier-ending Berkeley window caught less of the late-2024-into-early-2025 inflation impulse than San Francisco's later-ending window did. We walked this in detail in the Berkeley deep-dive; the same dynamic is the reason a year of cooling inflation in the spring will compress the SF figure relative to Berkeley's, and a year of accelerating inflation in the spring will widen the gap.
LA RSO does not use SF-Oakland-Hayward CPI — it uses LA-Long Beach-Anaheim. And until July 1, 2026, LA RSO does not use a CPI formula at all for the 2025-26 RSO year: the cap is the fixed 3.0% set by LAHD Order in mid-2025. The new formula introduced by Ordinance No. 188558 takes effect July 1, 2026, and from that date forward LA RSO joins the formula club — but with a different MSA, a different multiplier (90%), a different anchor month (12-month change ending July), and a different statutory ceiling (4%, down from the prior 8%).
The coverage map: which regime governs which unit
The percentages above are inert until you map your unit to one of them. California layers four interlocking regimes, with two switches deciding which one applies: jurisdiction (the unit's address) and Costa-Hawkins (the building's age, type, and tenancy history). Get the switch wrong and you cap at the wrong percentage, with disgorgement and treble damages on the menu under each ordinance's overcharge provision.
The decision tree, in order:
- Is the unit's address in a city with a local rent-stabilization ordinance? If yes — LA, SF, Berkeley, Oakland, Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Glendale, Inglewood, Pasadena, and a handful of others — check the local ordinance first. The local cap, if applicable, supersedes AB 1482 for that unit. If no, AB 1482 statewide governs (subject to its own age and SFR exemptions).
-
Does Costa-Hawkins exempt the unit from the local ordinance? The Costa-Hawkins Rental
Housing Act (Cal. Civ. Code §§ 1954.50–1954.535) preempts local price-control ordinances
for three categories of housing:
- single-family homes (with a tenancy-onset cutoff specific to each ordinance — January 1, 1996 in Berkeley; the date the SF Rent Ordinance attached at the unit in San Francisco; and so on);
- separately-conveyed condominiums (typically post-1979 in SF; lawfully separable in Berkeley);
- multi-unit buildings whose first certificate of occupancy was issued after a jurisdiction-specific cutoff — June 13, 1979 in San Francisco; February 1, 1995 in Berkeley; October 1, 1978 in LA RSO.
- Does AB 1482 exempt the unit? AB 1482's own carve-outs at Cal. Civ. Code §1947.12(d): single-family homes owned by a natural person (not LLC, REIT, or corporate-member LLC) where the landlord has given written notice of the exemption to the tenant; buildings less than 15 years old on a rolling basis (recompute every January 1 against the building's first certificate of occupancy); deed-restricted affordable-housing units; college-owned dorms; and short-term hotel/motel units. An AB 1482-exempt unit is not subject to any annual price control under California state law. Cal. Civ. Code §1946.2's just-cause-eviction protections may still apply.
Three concrete examples a small Bay Area portfolio might hit:
- Pre-1980 four-unit Berkeley apartment with a 2024-onset tenancy. Berkeley local ordinance covers it; Costa-Hawkins does not exempt it; the 2026 AGA at 1.0% applies. The unit must be registered with the Berkeley Rent Board, the AGA-denial gate at BMC §13.76.110(B)(2) must clear, and the eligibility-deferral rule at §13.76.110(B)(1) must allow the increase (a 2024 tenancy is fine; a 2025 tenancy is not, because the 2026 AGA's CPI reference year is 2025).
- A pre-1979 SF apartment building, four units, with a 2018-onset tenancy. SF local ordinance covers it; Costa-Hawkins does not exempt it; the SF RY 2026-27 cap of 1.6% applies for any notice with an effective date between March 1, 2026 and February 28, 2027. The landlord may stack any unused banked increases from prior Rent Years under SF Rent Board Rules §4.12, subject to the 7%-per-Rent-Year and 10%-per-notice ceilings.
- A 2008-built single-family home in Oakland Hills with a 2021-onset tenancy. No local Oakland ordinance covers post-1979 SFRs; AB 1482 statewide is the floor. The unit is over 15 years old (rolling AB 1482 age exemption: it crosses the 15-year cutoff in 2023, so 2026 puts it in scope), and if the landlord is a corporation, REIT, or member-LLC the SFR carve-out at §1947.12(d)(5) does not apply. AB 1482's 8.8% cap governs. If the landlord is a natural person and has issued the written exemption notice, the unit is not capped at all.
The same five-unit portfolio above might therefore be capped at 1.0% on the Berkeley apartment, 1.6% on the SF apartment, and 8.8% on the Oakland SFR — all in the same notice cycle. Berkeley, SF, LA RSO, and AB 1482 each have their own draft-notice form on RentCeiling that runs the per-unit math and emits the statutorily-compliant notice with citations.
Reset dates: the calendar is not aligned
A second source of avoidable error: each of the four regimes resets its allowable percentage on a different date.
- Berkeley: January 1. The new AGA percentage takes effect for any 12-month period commencing on or after January 1, applies for the calendar year, and never moves until the following January 1. The Rent Board adopts each year's AGA before June 30 of the prior year (the 2026 AGA was adopted October 16, 2025, ahead of the deadline).
- San Francisco: March 1. The Rent Year is March 1 through the last day of February of the following year. A notice with an effective date of February 28, 2026 uses the RY 2025-26 cap of 1.4%; a notice with an effective date of March 1, 2026 or later uses the RY 2026-27 cap of 1.6%. The Rent Board publishes each Rent Year's allowable percentage in early January-February.
- LA RSO: July 1. The RSO year is July 1 through June 30 of the following calendar year. Effective dates between July 1, 2025 and June 30, 2026 use the RY 2025-26 cap of 3.0% (with the utility add-ons eliminated as of February 2, 2026). Effective dates on or after July 1, 2026 use the new-formula cap of approximately 2.8% (final number to be published by LAHD in or around June 2026).
- AB 1482: rolling. The cap is a function of the regional CPI reading for the most recent published month at the time the increase is imposed. The statewide AB 1482 cap can change month-to-month as the BLS publishes new CPI readings. RentCeiling's AB 1482 draft-notice form uses the regional CPI in effect at the notice's draft date and re-pulls the BLS reading on each draft.
Practical consequence: the same notice cycle — say, an effective date in July 2026 — will see LA RSO units cross the 3.0% → ~2.8% boundary, while Berkeley units stay locked on the 1.0% set the prior January 1 and SF units stay locked on the 1.6% set the prior March 1. A landlord who issues notices in May 2026 for July effective dates is straddling regime boundaries on at least three different cap tables. The math has to be done per unit, per effective date, against the percentage in effect on the effective date, not the percentage in effect when the notice was drafted.
Banking models: zero, intra-tenancy, stacked-with-ceilings, accumulation
If the previous landlord skipped a year — or several — can the current landlord catch up? Each regime answers differently.
- AB 1482: No banking. The statute says one increase per 12 months, period, capped at the 5%+CPI/10% ceiling. A landlord who skipped 2024's increase forfeits it; the 2026 cap is just the 2026 cap, not the cumulative 2024 + 2025 + 2026 figure.
- LA RSO: No banking under either the pre-July-2026 fixed-percentage regime or the new-formula regime. One increase per 12 months under LAMC §151.06.
- San Francisco: Stacked banking with statutory ceilings. SF Rent Board Rules §4.12 permits a landlord who skipped or under-applied an allowable annual increase in a prior Rent Year to bank it and combine it with a future Rent Year's allowable increase. The combined increase in any one Rent Year may not exceed 7%; the cumulative increase imposed in any single notice may not exceed 10%. A landlord who skipped 2024's allowable percentage of 1.7% and 2025's 1.4% and now wants to combine them with 2026-27's 1.6% can move the rent by 4.7% in one notice (1.7% + 1.4% + 1.6% = 4.7%, below the 10%-per-notice ceiling; below the 7% per-Rent-Year ceiling, since the most recent Rent Year's allowable is 1.6%).
- Berkeley: Rent-ceiling accumulation, no stacking ceiling. Under BMC §13.76.110(B), the lawful rent ceiling automatically rises by the AGA each January 1 whether or not the landlord applies the increase. There is no per-Rent-Year or per-notice ceiling on the catch-up. A landlord who skipped 2024 (5.0%), 2025 (1.6%), and 2026 (1.0%) has a rent ceiling that has risen multiplicatively by approximately 7.7% from the January 1, 2024 baseline, and may issue a single notice that moves the rent up to that ceiling — subject to Cal. Civ. Code §827(b)'s 90-day notice requirement for any increase of 10% or more.
The differences across these four banking models can completely invert the visible cap percentages. A Berkeley landlord with a 7.7% accumulated rent ceiling is “capped at 1.0%” for the headline, but their actual lawful 2026 increase is 7.7%. An SF landlord with three years of unused banking is “capped at 1.6%” for the headline but may move 4.7% in a single notice. An AB 1482 landlord with two prior skipped years is genuinely capped at 8.8% — the prior years are gone. Reading the cap table without reading the banking rule is enough to misadvise a portfolio by several percentage points.
The notice statute is the same; everything else differs
One unifying point across all four California regimes: the notice itself is governed by California state law, not the local ordinance. Cal. Civ. Code §827(b) requires a written rent-increase notice to state the amount of the new rent, the effective date, and the unit address; service must comply with Cal. Code Civ. Proc. §1013 (personal delivery, post-and-mail with five-day extension, or substituted service). The notice-period minimum is the same in every California rent-control jurisdiction:
- Increase under 10% of current rent: 30 calendar days from service.
- Increase 10% or more of current rent: 90 calendar days from service.
At the visible cap percentages for 2026 (1.0% / 1.6% / 3.0% / 8.8%), no California regime produces a notice that crosses the 10% threshold from the headline cap alone. The 90-day notice path triggers on combined banking under SF or accumulation under Berkeley — for example, the 7.7% Berkeley accumulation above stays under 10% and uses 30-day notice, but a Berkeley landlord with five or six skipped years could cross the 10% line in a single catch-up notice and trigger the 90-day requirement.
The local ordinances layer compliance requirements on top of the state notice statute — SCEP registration in LA, Rent Board registration and unit-fee currency in SF and Berkeley, the four-condition AGA-denial gate at BMC §13.76.110(B)(2). A notice that complies with §827(b) on its face but is served on a unit out of compliance with the local registration regime is unlawful at the local level, even though the state-law form is correct. The conservative practice is to include both the state-law minimum and the local-ordinance citation on every notice, plus an attestation that the unit is registered and current.
Just-cause linkage is statewide, not local
A second unifying point: AB 1482's just-cause-eviction provisions at Cal. Civ. Code §1946.2 attach to the same set of units as AB 1482's price-control provisions, plus a few additional categories. A unit covered by a local rent-control ordinance is also typically covered by a local just-cause regime (SF §37.9, Berkeley BMC §13.76.130, LA RSO §151.09); a unit covered by AB 1482 statewide is covered by §1946.2's just-cause regime after the first 12 months of tenancy. A unit Costa-Hawkins exempt from local price control may still be covered by the local just-cause regime — the two regimes have overlapping but distinct scopes.
The practical implication for the rent-cap analysis: a landlord who terminates a tenancy without proper just-cause to reset the rent to market under Costa-Hawkins's vacancy-decontrol provisions (Cal. Civ. Code §1954.53) faces a wrongful-termination claim under §1946.2 or the local just-cause statute, in addition to the rent-cap analysis on the new tenancy. We do not model just-cause analysis in the rent-increase calculator; the four California draft-notice forms surface the just-cause linkage as a warning, not a computation.
Practical: how to identify which regime each unit lives under
If you are holding more than one unit across two or more of the four regimes, here is the sequence we run on every California portfolio walked through RentCeiling:
- Pull each unit's address and first-certificate-of-occupancy date. The CofO date is on the building permit record at the city's Department of Building Inspection (SF), the Berkeley Building and Safety Division, the LADBS in Los Angeles, or the relevant equivalent. This is the single most important piece of information for the Costa-Hawkins analysis — it is the gate that decides whether the local ordinance applies at all.
- Pull each unit's tenancy-onset date. Especially for SFRs and condos, the tenancy-onset date decides whether the unit is Costa-Hawkins exempt from local rent control: Berkeley's pre-1996 tenancy carve-out, San Francisco's parallel rule, and the AB 1482 SFR carve-out at §1947.12(d)(5) all hinge on this.
- Identify the registration regime for each unit. Berkeley units must be registered with the Rent Board and current on the $280/year unit fee. SF units must be registered with the Rent Board and current on the $59/year unit fee (with $29.50 passthrough to the tenant permitted). LA RSO units must be SCEP-registered with LAHD at $38.75/year. AB 1482 units have no registration regime — there is no statewide rent-board equivalent — but the landlord is required to provide the §1946.2 just-cause notice in the lease.
- Identify each unit's notice cycle. Berkeley resets January 1; SF resets March 1; LA RSO resets July 1; AB 1482 is rolling. Pick the effective date for each notice based on the unit's last-increase date and the once-per-12-months rule. Then look up the cap percentage in effect on that effective date — not the date you draft the notice.
- Run banking analysis where available. SF stacked banking under §4.12 is worth a careful calculation if the prior landlord skipped years — the 7%-per-Rent-Year and 10%-per-notice ceilings limit how much you can recover at once. Berkeley rent-ceiling accumulation has no per-notice ceiling beyond Cal. Civ. Code §827(b)'s 90-day rule for 10%+ increases. AB 1482 and LA RSO have no banking; do not waste cycles trying to recover skipped years.
- Clear the AGA-denial gates for the local regimes. Berkeley's four-condition denial gate is the most aggressive; SF requires Rent Board registration and unit-fee currency but does not have a formal AGA-denial mechanism; LA RSO requires SCEP registration. AB 1482 has no denial mechanism.
The four California-jurisdiction draft-notice forms on RentCeiling (AB 1482, LA RSO, San Francisco, Berkeley) each run the relevant subset of this sequence and emit a notice with the appropriate citation block. Audit-log entries for each notice are versioned against the rule-set in effect at the time of the calculation, so a wrongful-increase petition filed years later can be defended against the rule-set version the calculator used.
What this analysis is not
A few things this post deliberately does not do, in case the absence is conspicuous.
It does not cover Oakland, Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Pasadena, Inglewood, Glendale, or the additional California cities that operate their own rent-stabilization ordinances. The California state page on RentCeiling lists those cities and their controlling ordinances; we plan a future blog post on Oakland's CPI-of-CPI formula at OMC §8.22 and Santa Monica's charter-based regime at SM Charter Art. XVIII. We focus here on the four regimes that cover the largest share of California's rent-controlled housing stock: AB 1482 statewide, LA RSO, SF Chapter 37, and Berkeley BMC 13.76.
It does not cover the rent-stabilized fraction of LA County's unincorporated areas, which are governed by the County's separate Rent Stabilization and Tenant Protections Ordinance (Title 8, Chapter 8.52) rather than the City's RSO. The County regime parallels the City RSO closely but has different effective dates, covered-unit definitions, and registration requirements.
It does not cover capital-improvement passthroughs (SF §37.7), operating-and-maintenance passthroughs (SF §37.8), utility passthroughs in any regime, or the petition-based hardship pathways available under each ordinance for above-cap increases. Each is a distinct procedure with its own evidentiary record and its own approval gate at the relevant rent board. The headline cap analysis is the floor of what a landlord may take; the petition pathways are the ceiling for landlords willing to bear the procedural burden.
It does not cover the various tenant-side defenses available under each regime — wrongful-increase petitions, harassment claims under SF §37.10B and Berkeley BMC §13.79, code-enforcement-driven rent withholdings, or the relocation-assistance regimes that apply to no-fault evictions. Those are downstream of a notice that goes wrong, and a notice that follows the analysis above should not produce them in the first place.
Closing thought
California does not have one rent-control regime; it has four, and they are calibrated to deliver different outcomes on the same metropolitan housing stock. A landlord who reads the AB 1482 cap of 8.8% in the news and applies it across a Bay Area portfolio will overcharge their Berkeley tenants by 7.8 points, their SF tenants by 7.2 points, and their LA RSO tenants by 5.8 points — and will be on the receiving end of overcharge findings, treble damages, attorney-fee awards, and registration-currency violations under four different statutes. A landlord who reads the Berkeley cap of 1.0% as their personal cap will undercharge their statewide-AB-1482 tenants and will leave money on the table that compounds across the portfolio's hold period. The right answer is the per-unit answer, and the per-unit answer requires reading the unit's address, building age, tenancy onset, and registration status against the four interlocking statutory regimes above.
If you want to run that analysis for your portfolio without keeping the four regimes in your head, the four California draft-notice forms on RentCeiling do exactly this — one form per regime, each emitting a notice with the appropriate citation block, each writing an audit-log entry versioned against the rule-set in effect at the time of the calculation. The free tier covers a single unit per form; the $9 pay-per-notice tier covers any number of one-off notices; the $19/month Pro tier covers up to 20 units with unlimited notices and full audit-log export. Pricing here; side-by-side comparison of all ten RentCeiling jurisdictions here.