The notice pinned to a Fresno duplex door proposed raising the rent 12 percent, and the tenant's first useful fact is statutory: under the Tenant Protection Act of 2019 — AB 1482 — the annual rent increase on a covered unit is capped at 5 percent plus the regional inflation rate, never more than 10 percent. Most California renters live somewhere the cap applies, and surveys of tenant knowledge, including advocacy-group polling, have repeatedly found most cannot name it.
This site publishes information, not legal advice. Coverage questions turn on building age, ownership type and local ordinance, and tenants can verify specifics with legal aid or the Department of Real Estate's consumer materials.
What the cap covers, and what it skips
The law applies to multifamily buildings older than 15 years — a moving window, so buildings keep exiting the cap as they age out of the new-construction exemption meant to protect supply. Single-family homes and condominiums are exempt when owned by natural persons, which covers most individually owned rentals, but not when owned by real estate investment trusts, corporate landlords or certain institutional holders. Owner-occupied duplexes are out, as are school dormitories, some hospital-affiliated housing and units already subject to stricter local regimes.
Where a city ordinance is stronger, it wins. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland and a few dozen other cities operate rent boards or rent stabilization programs with lower ceilings, and AB 1482 functions there as a floor for everywhere else — the reason a tenant in Modesto and a tenant in Santa Monica can face completely different rules in buildings of the same age.
The cap is not a flat number. Each year the allowable increase equals 5 percent plus the change in the regional Consumer Price Index, up to a hard ceiling of 10 percent, and the regional figures are published each year for roughly 20 areas. When inflation runs high, the ceiling binds; when it runs low, the add-on shrinks and so does the legal increase.
Just-cause: the other half of the law
Price caps alone let landlords end tenancies and re-rent at market, so AB 1482 pairs its cap with just-cause eviction rules. After 12 months of tenancy, a landlord may terminate a covered lease only for enumerated reasons — nonpayment, breach, nuisance, owner move-in, substantial remodel and a short list of others. For no-fault terminations such as owner move-in, the law requires a payment of one month's rent to the departing household.
The vacancy rule matters to both sides. When a tenant leaves, the landlord may reset the rent to market for the next resident — the cap governs increases during a tenancy, not between them. Economists dispute what that design produces: supporters say it balances tenant stability with landlord returns, while critics on both flanks argue it rewards turnover and discourages long-term lease relationships.
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How a real dispute plays out
Consider the mechanics of a challenged increase. A tenant receives a notice raising rent by 11 percent in a covered Oakland building; the city's ordinance caps increases lower, so the local figure governs, and paying under protest preserves the tenant's right to claw back the excess. In an uncovered building — a single-family home owned by an individual, say — the state cap does not apply at all, and the only limits are the notice period: 30 days for increases of 10 percent or less, 90 days above that. The difference between those two buildings, identical in age, is ownership type — the single most consequential fact in California rental law.
No-fault evictions carry their own paper trail. An owner move-in notice must state the qualifying relationship and intent to occupy for a year, senior and disabled tenants in some cities hold additional protections, and bad-faith owner move-ins expose landlords to liability that tenant attorneys pursue regularly. Compliance is cheapest before the notice is printed.
How it sits in the larger rent-control argument
AB 1482 was the Legislature's answer to the 2018 repeal of Costa-Hawkins repeal efforts and the statewide rent-control ballot measure that failed that year. Costa-Hawkins, the 1995 law, still bans vacancy control and bars cities from capping rents on single-family homes and buildings first occupied after February 1995 — so even the strongest local ordinances operate inside those walls. The 2024 attempt to lift them, Proposition 33, failed with about 39 percent of the vote, leaving AB 1482 as the system's center of gravity.
Enforcement is complaint-driven. There is no state rent board; tenants enforce the cap by refusing unlawful increases and raising the statute in court or local hearings, and violations can void the increase entirely. Legal aid organizations and the Department of Real Estate publish the covered-increase figures annually, and landlord associations run compliance guides each time the regional CPI numbers update.
What this changes for a California reader
For a tenant, the first questions are the building's age, the owner's type and the city — three facts that decide whether the 5-plus-CPI cap, a stricter local ordinance, or no cap at all applies, and whether a proposed termination notice names a lawful just-cause reason with the required fee where it applies.
For the market, watch the statute's sunset on January 1, 2030: whether the Legislature extends, tightens or restructures AB 1482 will decide the floor under the state's rental market for the next decade. Between now and then, the annual publication of regional CPI add-ons each spring is the date that quietly resets every covered lease negotiation in the state.