AB 1482 single-family rental exemption Two prongs, both required: non-corporate owner AND verbatim notice. Miss either, the unit reverts to the 8.8% cap.

The two-prong test at §1947.12(d)(5)

The exemption requires both conditions to be true on the date of the rent increase notice. Either condition failing — at any time during the tenancy — strips the exemption and the unit becomes subject to the 8.8% cap.

1. Ownership profile. The owner must not be: (a) a real estate investment trust, as defined by 26 U.S.C. §856; (b) a corporation; or (c) a limited liability company in which at least one member is a corporation. Sole-proprietor ownership in a natural person's name qualifies; a single-member LLC whose member is a natural person qualifies; a multi-member LLC whose members are all natural persons qualifies. A single-member LLC whose member is itself an LLC, corporation, REIT, or trust does not qualify. Family LLCs with corporate trustees of revocable trusts as members are a recurring trap — the trustee identity flows up to the LLC member roster.
2. Tenant notice. The tenant must have been given the verbatim §1947.12(d)(5)(B)(i) notice of exemption — see the required notice language section below. The notice must be in writing, must be in the rental agreement (for tenancies starting on or after July 1, 2020) or as an addendum signed by the tenant (for tenancies that began before July 1, 2020), and must be served before any rent increase notice is issued in reliance on the exemption. There is no constructive notice or oral substitute.

The two prongs are independent and conjunctive. A natural-person owner who never served the notice is covered by AB 1482; an LLC owner with a corporate member who serves the notice is covered by AB 1482; only the combined profile of non-corporate ownership and the verbatim notice escapes the cap.

Ownership profile in detail

§1947.12(d)(5)(A) defines the eligible owner negatively — the owner is eligible unless they fall into one of three buckets:

• REIT. Real estate investment trusts as defined by 26 U.S.C. §856 (the federal tax-code REIT definition, not state-law trust concepts). Most institutional rental REITs are categorically ineligible regardless of unit type.
• Corporation. Any C-corp, S-corp, or professional corporation. The fact that the corporation has only one shareholder doesn't change the analysis. Title in a corporate name is a categorical disqualifier.
• LLC with a corporate member. The trickiest prong. The test is the membership roster of the title-holding LLC at the time of the rent increase. If any member is a corporation, a REIT, or another LLC that itself has a corporate member (the rule looks through tiered structures), the LLC fails the test. The test is satisfied only when every direct and ultimate member is a natural person, a natural-person-only trust, or a natural-person-only partnership.

The eligible-owner profile that captures the largest share of small California SFR landlords:

• Title held in a natural person's name (sole proprietor).
• Title held in joint tenancy or tenancy-in-common between natural persons.
• Title held by a revocable living trust with natural-person trustees and natural-person beneficiaries.
• Title held by an LLC whose members are all natural persons (most common: family LLCs, two-spouse LLCs, single-member LLCs where the member is the property owner personally).

Holdings that fail the test and fall back to AB 1482 coverage:

• Title in a corporation, even a single-shareholder S-corp.
• LLC with a parent LLC member that itself has a corporate member somewhere up the chain.
• LLC owned by a trust where the trustee is a corporate trustee (common with bank-administered family trusts).
• Title in a syndication LLC where one of the limited partners is structured as a corporation.

Practical guidance for small landlords: review your operating agreement and the most recent secretary-of-state Statement of Information for the actual member roster. Members listed by entity name should be traced to natural persons; if any branch of the ownership tree contains a corporation or REIT, the SFR exemption is not available.

The required §1947.12(d)(5)(B)(i) notice language

Cal. Civ. Code §1947.12(d)(5)(B)(i) prescribes specific notice language. The statute reads in pertinent part:

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.

Several aspects of the language matter for compliance:

• The notice cites both §1947.12 and §1946.2. The rent-cap exemption and the just-cause exemption are paired in the statutory notice. Serving a notice that omits either citation leaves you with at most one of the two exemptions. The just-cause companion deep-dive walks the §1946.2 just-cause regime in detail.
• The wording is verbatim. Substantial-compliance arguments have been litigated and have generally failed in landlord-tenant courts when the deviation from the statutory language was material — for example, omitting the IRS §856 REIT definition or paraphrasing the LLC-with-corporate-member test. The safe path is to copy the statutory text into your lease or addendum, place it in a clearly-titled section (e.g., "Notice of Exemption from California Civil Code §§1947.12 and 1946.2"), and keep the wording byte-for-byte identical to the codified version.
• Placement matters. §1947.12(d)(5)(B)(ii) requires the notice to be in the rental agreement itself for tenancies beginning on or after July 1, 2020. For pre-July-1-2020 tenancies, a separate written addendum signed by the tenant satisfies the statute, but oral notice and unsigned written delivery do not.
• One-time service plus retention. The notice does not need to be re-served at every renewal, but landlords who retain only the original lease on a tenant who has continued month-to-month for several years sometimes lose the original — at which point the burden of proving service shifts to the landlord and ambiguities are read in favor of coverage. Best practice: serve via certified mail with receipt at lease signing, scan to your RentCeiling compliance log, and re-serve at every formal renewal.

The §1946.2(e)(8) just-cause parallel

AB 1482 has two operative components: the rent-cap regime in Cal. Civ. Code §1947.12 (covered above) and the just-cause regime in Cal. Civ. Code §1946.2. Each has its own SFR exemption with the same two-prong test, but the citations are paired in the standard notice:

• §1947.12(d)(5): rent-cap exemption. Eligible owner + verbatim notice → not subject to the 8.8% cap.
• §1946.2(e)(8): just-cause exemption. Eligible owner + verbatim notice → not subject to the 11 enumerated just-cause categories at §1946.2(b)(1)–(2).

The standard notice form covers both with one block of text — the §1947.12(d)(5)(B)(i) language quoted above explicitly recites both statute numbers. Splitting them is a common compliance failure: a landlord who serves only the §1947.12 notice retains the rent-cap exemption but is bound by §1946.2 just-cause for terminations, meaning they can raise rent without limit but cannot terminate without statutory cause. A landlord who serves only the §1946.2 notice has the inverse — termination flexibility but rent capped at 8.8%. Use the combined notice to avoid this asymmetry.

The 11 just-cause categories at §1946.2(b)(1)–(2) and the §1946.2(d) 1-month relocation rule that attaches to landlord-no-fault terminations are walked in full at /seo/just-cause-eviction-california-ab-1482/.

Local-ordinance overlays that re-cover SFRs

The AB 1482 exemption operates only at the state level. Local rent-control ordinances are independent regimes; whether they reach SFRs depends on the ordinance's own coverage definition and on Costa-Hawkins preemption.

• Costa-Hawkins (Cal. Civ. Code §1954.52(a)(3)). Preempts local rent control on SFRs and condos statewide, with exceptions for units that became available for separate alienation before February 1, 1995 (rare in modern SFR ownership). Most California cities cannot apply rent control to a contemporary SFR.
• Berkeley (BMC §13.76). Berkeley applies its rent-stabilization ordinance to some SFRs that are part of pre-1980 multi-unit complexes (e.g., a duplex where one unit is the "primary" SFR). Pure separate-titled SFRs are typically not covered. Berkeley jurisdiction landing walks the §13.76.040 coverage test.
• Oakland (OMC §8.22). Oakland's rent adjustment program covers some SFRs through the §8.22.030(B) coverage rules — particularly SFRs that were once part of larger ownership and were severed post-Costa-Hawkins. Most modern SFRs are exempt.
• Santa Monica (Charter Art. XVIII). Santa Monica applies rent control to SFRs that were tenancies under prior owners — the "covered tenancy" concept under the city's interpretation of Costa-Hawkins. New tenancies on SFRs are typically not covered.
• Los Angeles RSO (LAMC §151.02). Los Angeles excludes SFRs from the RSO. AB 1482 fills the gap for LA SFRs meeting both prongs.
• San Francisco (S.F. Admin. Code Ch. 37 §37.2(r)). SF excludes SFRs from rent control under §37.2(r). AB 1482 controls SFRs in SF that meet both prongs.
• Saint Paul (Saint Paul Legislative Code Chapter 193A). Outside California, Saint Paul's ordinance covers all single-family rentals as part of its general 3% rent-stabilization regime. The AB 1482 SFR exemption is irrelevant in Minnesota; what matters is the §193A.03 coverage and the May 2025 amendment's permanent post-2004-CoC exemption. See /seo/saint-paul-rent-increase-2026/.

Practical takeaway for California SFR landlords: the AB 1482 §1947.12(d)(5) exemption is the operative state-level exemption, and Costa-Hawkins typically protects against local-ordinance overlays. The trap is the notice — landlords assume Costa-Hawkins alone is enough and forget the verbatim §1947.12(d)(5)(B)(i) requirement.

What happens if the exemption is lost

If the unit fails the two-prong test on the date of a rent increase notice, AB 1482 applies and the rent increase is constrained to the 8.8% cap (year ending July 31, 2026; updated each August under Cal. Civ. Code §1947.12(c)). Overshoot consequences:

1. Notice unenforceable to the extent of the overage. §1947.12(h)(2) voids any rental-agreement provision that purports to waive the cap as against public policy. The rent in force is the lawful 8.8% step-up, not the noticed amount.
2. Treble damages on willful violations. §1947.12(h)(3) lets the tenant recover three times the overcharge where the violation was willful — and tenant counsel routinely argues that an SFR landlord who knew about §1947.12(d)(5) and served no notice acted willfully.
3. Attorney's fees and costs. §1947.12(h)(3) makes attorney's fees recoverable, eliminating the small-claim economic barrier that otherwise discourages tenant enforcement.
4. Just-cause loss. If the §1946.2(e)(8) notice was also missing or non-conforming, the unit is also subject to the 11 just-cause categories at §1946.2 — meaning a no-cause termination during the same 12-month period is independently unenforceable.

How RentCeiling protects the SFR exemption

The free California calculator walks the §1947.12(d)(5) two-prong test against your unit's ownership profile and notice status. Inputs (current rent, building first-CoC date, ownership entity, notice-served date) return either the exempt status with the exemption-citation summary, or the AB 1482 8.8% cap with the §1947.12 citation. The California notice generator emits the verbatim §1947.12(d)(5)(B)(i) exemption notice as a separately printable addendum, dated and signature-blocked, ready to attach to a new lease or to serve via certified mail on a continuing tenancy. The compliance log retains the served notice, the certified-mail receipt, and the entity-ownership documentation for audit purposes. The /compare hub shows AB 1482's interaction with the 9 other modeled rent-control regimes; the all-California catch-all page walks the seven 2026 California rent-control regimes including AB 1482 statewide; the just-cause deep-dive covers §1946.2 in parallel detail. Open rule-set at /rules/index.json.

Run the AB 1482 SFR-exemption check (free)

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