San Francisco rental compliance guides

San Francisco's Rent Ordinance covers residential rental units in buildings with two or more units where the building received its first certificate of occupancy on or before June 13, 1979. Single-family homes and most condominiums are generally exempt under the statewide Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, but being exempt from the local ordinance does not mean no obligations at all, since California's AB 1482 can still apply to units the local ordinance doesn't cover, with its own rent cap and just-cause eviction rules. Owners of covered units have two separate annual obligations to the Rent Board. The first is the annual Rent Board fee, due March 1 each year, billed automatically unless the owner submitted a valid exemption request the prior year, with that exemption deadline typically falling in mid-December, months before the fee itself would be due. The second is the Housing Inventory report, submitted through the Rent Board's online portal under penalty of perjury, also due March 1. The two do not satisfy each other: a fee exemption request does not complete the Housing Inventory, and reporting does not complete a fee exemption. An unpaid fee or an incomplete Housing Inventory report can affect a landlord's ability to collect that year's allowable rent increase, which resets annually. The report can require owner or business contact information, approximate square footage, bedrooms, bathrooms, and recent vacancy or occupancy history, and business contact information changes must be updated within 30 days. Below are Tusk's plain-language guides to what's currently required.

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