Depends which of LA's three rulebooks owns your building — and half the county's owners are wrong about which one that is. The City just rewrote its formula for the first time in forty years. The state cap resets August 1. Your "exempt" rental might not be.
Which cap applies is decided by where the parcel sits and when it was built — not by what your lease says or what a neighbor pays. Guess wrong in either direction and you're leaving permanent money on the table or signing up for a rollback.
And that's before your city's own overlay: Santa Monica 2.3% (max $60/mo), West Hollywood 2.25%, Culver City 3.25%, Inglewood 3.7% (5+ units) or 8.7% (1–4), Pasadena 2.25%, Beverly Hills 3–3.6% — plus Baldwin Park, Bell Gardens, Commerce, Cudahy, Maywood, and Pomona, each with their own caps, registries, and deadlines.
Every one of these was announced in a bulletin, a council file, or an executive order — not a letter to you.
The City's COVID rent freeze ends after nearly four years. Increases resume on RSO units.
Wildfire emergencies trigger the Penal Code 396 price-gouging cap countywide — 10% over pre-fire advertised rent, extended again and again into 2026.
City Council adopts Ordinance 188795 — the first rewrite of the RSO increase formula in ~40 years: 90% of CPI, floor 1%, ceiling 4%.
The ordinance takes effect. The +1% gas / +1% electric surcharges are eliminated; any increase noticed from this date through June is capped at a flat 3%.
The wildfire price-gouging cap expires after the Board of Supervisors declines another extension. Normal caps govern again.
First annual number under the new City formula: 3%.
The state cap resets: 8.0% → 8.7% for LA County (5% + April's 3.7% CPI).
Collect over the cap and the tenant can sue for 3× the overcharge plus attorney's fees (LAMC 151.10(a)). Skip registration and rent isn't lawfully demandable at all (LAMC 151.05(a)) — it's also an eviction defense.
Since April 2024, tenants can sue for the overcharge plus attorney's fees — and treble damages if the violation was willful. The Attorney General and city attorneys can enforce directly (Civ. Code 1947.12(k)).
Under the RSO there's no banking. Every year you skip an increase because you weren't sure of the number, that money is gone permanently. On a fourplex at $1,900/unit, this year's 3% is ≈ $2,700/yr — forever.
Four questions. Verified against LAHD, the County, and the Civil Code as of July 16, 2026.
Edge cases exist — replacement units, ADUs on rent-stabilized lots, Ellis re-rentals, luxury-tier county units. That's what the full desk resolves per parcel.
Annual RSO/SCEP bill lands: registration $38.75/unit (RSO) or $31.05 (JCO), SCEP $67.94/unit. Delinquent after the last day of February. Unregistered RSO units can't lawfully collect rent.
SCEP inspection cycle. You don't pick the year — LAHD does.
New RSO percentage takes effect (now 90% of CPI, 1–4% band). This is also when formula changes tend to bite.
AB 1482 cap resets on April CPI. This year: 8.0% → 8.7%. Time an increase wrong by a day and you've mispriced it for a year.
One increase per 12 months (RSO), 30/90-day notice windows (+5 by mail), and each newer building "ages into" the state cap on its 15th birthday.
Address in → which rulebook owns each unit: City RSO, county RSTPO, city overlay, or state cap. Parcel-level, vintage-aware.
We read the LAHD bulletins, council files, county actions, and CPI releases so a February surprise can't reach you first.
Registration, SCEP, notice windows, increase anniversaries, the August 1 reset — per unit, ahead of time.
The correct increase notice, drafted on attorney-reviewed templates, checked against the current rules before it goes out.
We prepare documents and track deadlines on attorney-reviewed templates. We're not a law firm and this is never legal advice — when something needs a lawyer, the desk says so.
No. LA Rent Desk is document preparation and deadline tracking built on attorney-reviewed templates — the TurboTax model, not a law firm. For a live dispute, an eviction, or anything contested, you want an attorney, and the desk will tell you exactly that.
At launch: City of Los Angeles (RSO + JCO), unincorporated LA County (RSTPO), the state cap everywhere, and the own-ordinance cities — Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Culver City, Inglewood, Pasadena, Beverly Hills. Resolution is per parcel, not per ZIP.
Then you have someone to hold accountable — with an audit trail. Owners are the ones who eat rollbacks, refunds, and treble-damages exposure, not managers. Plenty of our early users run it alongside a PM as a second set of eyes; several PMs are joining as design partners themselves.
Because maybes are worthless — to you and to us. A saved card with $0 charged tells us the demand is real before we build. You're charged nothing until launch and can cancel anytime with one click.
The founding cohort onboards first, targeted this fall. Until then, founding members get the verified numbers by email whenever anything changes — starting with the August 1 state reset.
Only if the owner is an individual (not a corporation, REIT, or LLC with a corporate member) and the lease contains the exact statutory exemption paragraph. No paragraph, no exemption — the state cap applies. The calculator above walks you through it.