Since January 1, 2026, California law treats a working stove and refrigerator as basic habitability, the same category as heat and running water. The requirement attaches to any lease signed, renewed, amended, or extended after that date. A tenant can elect in writing to bring their own refrigerator. A stove, never.

The fridge was there by custom, not by law

I have walked a lot of San Diego rentals over the years, and most houses came with a refrigerator. Call it eight or nine out of ten. But it was there by custom, not by obligation. Every so often an owner chose not to provide one, and just as often it was the tenant who preferred to bring their own, a fridge they trusted that had already made a move or two with them. Nobody thought much about any of it because the law had nothing to say about it. The stove was always there. The refrigerator was a handshake.

Assembly Bill 628 put the handshake into the Civil Code. The Governor signed it in October, it took effect January 1, and it amends section 1941.1, the state’s list of what makes a rental habitable in the first place. Running water is on that list. Heat is on that list. As of this year, so are a working stove and refrigerator, and every one of the informal arrangements I just described now needs paperwork behind it.

What the law actually requires

The mechanics matter, so here they are plainly. Any lease entered into, amended, renewed, or extended on or after January 1, 2026 must include a stove capable of safely generating heat for cooking and a refrigerator capable of safely storing food, both maintained in good working order by the landlord. That word renewed is the one to notice. This is not just a new-tenancy rule. The day you renew an existing lease, the requirement attaches to that tenancy too, which means most owners will be pulled into this law within the year whether they place a new tenant or not.

There is one exit, and it is narrow. At lease signing, you and the tenant can agree in writing that the tenant provides their own refrigerator. The lease has to carry specific statutory language acknowledging that choice, you cannot make it a condition of the tenancy, and the tenant can change their mind later with 30 days written notice, at which point you owe them a refrigerator in good working order. There is no version of this for stoves. The stove is yours, full stop.

Two smaller pieces owners miss. An appliance under a manufacturer recall is legally noncompliant even if it still runs, and you have 30 days from notice of the recall to repair or replace it. And the law’s exemptions cover single room occupancy units, residential hotels, and housing with shared kitchens, not the single family homes and condos most San Diego owners hold.

What habitability status means for your rental

Habitability is not a courtesy category. When a refrigerator is a habitability item, a dead compressor sits on the same legal shelf as a dead furnace, and the tenant remedies that attach are the serious ones: repair and deduct, rent withholding, a habitability defense if a dispute ever reaches court. A slow response to a $150 repair can now do damage far beyond the repair.

The money side is smaller than most owners fear. A serviceable new refrigerator runs roughly $800 to $1,200 delivered, which is about a week of rent on a typical San Diego house, and spread over a ten year service life it is one of the cheapest systems in the building. The real cost shows up when owners treat the requirement casually. The twenty year old garage fridge pressed into service and now carrying a legal duty to run. The tenant-owned refrigerator with no written election behind it. The renewal signed on a 2024 lease form that never mentions appliances at all.

Read the lease before it renews

If you are renewing a lease this year, this is now the second reason to read the document before it rolls over. The first is the rent cap exemption language I wrote about in July, which most single family homes need in the lease, word for word, to stay outside the cap. Lease paperwork is doing more legal work in 2026 than it has in years.

The owners who get caught by AB 628 will not be the ones who refused to buy a refrigerator. They will be the ones whose lease never mentioned one.

Joe Wiseman is a licensed California broker (DRE #02043323) and owns Best Nest Property Management in San Diego.

California’s AB 1482 rent cap resets to 8.2 percent for San Diego County on August 1, 2026. Most individually owned single family homes and condos are exempt from that cap, but only when the lease contains the specific exemption notice the statute requires. Without that language in writing, an otherwise exempt home is treated as covered.

The new number, and who it actually binds

Every year in late July the same question starts showing up in my inbox, and it always has the same shape: the lease is renewing, the owner has heard there is a new legal limit, and they want to know what the ceiling is. The ceiling resets every August 1. This year it comes down, from 8.8 percent to 8.2, which is 5 percent plus San Diego’s 3.2 percent CPI reading under the formula in state law. The California Apartment Association publishes the figures for every county.

The part that surprises the single family owners I talk to is that the cap was never written for them. AB 1482 binds most multifamily buildings that received their certificate of occupancy more than 15 years ago. A house or condo that stands on its own title, owned by an individual person or a family trust rather than a corporation or a REIT, sits outside the cap entirely. That describes most of the rental houses in San Diego.

The exemption most single family leases miss

Here is the catch, and it is the reason I read every lease that comes into my office before I talk numbers. The exemption is not automatic. The statute requires the lease itself to carry a written notice, in language the Civil Code spells out word for word, stating that the property is exempt from the rent limits of Section 1947.12 and the just cause requirements of Section 1946.2. For any tenancy started or renewed since July 2020, that notice has to appear in the rental agreement, not in a text message or a conversation.

Miss the language and the practical result is that your exempt house is capped anyway. I see this constantly in self managed leases built from downloaded templates: the owner qualifies for the exemption on every substantive test and loses it on paperwork. The fix is not complicated, the notice goes into the lease at the next renewal, but the timing matters, because until it is there you are working under the 8.2 percent cap and the notice rules that come with it.

Two more edges worth knowing. Newer construction is exempt for its first 15 years regardless of property type, and that line rolls forward every year. And the exemption I am describing covers the state rent cap; the just cause rules for ending a tenancy run on their own track, with their own city layer, which I walked through in an earlier piece on AB 1482 and San Diego’s Tenant Protection Ordinance.

What I would do before August 1

Pull your lease and look for the exemption language. If it is there, the state cap does not bind your renewal, and your pricing question is a market question. If it is not there, you have two clean options: serve an increase under the cap rules, which means 30 days of written notice for anything at 10 percent or less plus five days if you mail it, or wait for the renewal and add the notice so the exemption holds going forward.

Either way, do not let the legal ceiling write the number. County vacancy is the highest it has been this century, which I covered last week, and the renewals I am writing this summer mostly land in the low single digits because a good resident staying put is worth more than the spread. On a $3,000 house, the difference between a market renewal and a max renewal is around $150 a month, and one turnover in a soft market erases two years of it.

The cap tells covered owners the most they can ask. The lease decides whether you are covered at all. Five minutes with your own paperwork answers a question most owners are guessing at.

Joe Wiseman is a licensed California broker (DRE #02043323) and owns Best Nest Property Management in San Diego.

Since January 1, 2020, refusing an applicant because they hold a Section 8 voucher has been illegal everywhere in California. The voucher counts as income, the ad cannot say no, and the income screen has to run on the tenant’s share of the rent. Screening on everything else still works exactly as before.

The question I still hear every month

When I talk with San Diego owners about filling a vacancy, one question comes up more than almost any other, usually asked quietly: we do not have to take Section 8, right? I understand where it comes from. For decades, participation really was optional, and most owners formed their view of the program in that era. But the answer changed in 2020, and the owners who have not updated it are carrying risk they do not know they have.

Two state laws, SB 329 and SB 222, redefined source of income under California’s fair housing law to include Section 8 and VASH vouchers and other rental assistance. Refusing to consider an applicant because part of their rent arrives as a subsidy is now source-of-income discrimination, the same legal category as refusing someone over race or religion. The City of San Diego had its own ordinance saying this even earlier, so local owners have been under some version of this rule for years. And it reaches further than the application decision. Writing “No Section 8” in a listing is itself unlawful, which matters because fair housing groups run testers who call about ads exactly like that. This sits on top of the layered rent and termination rules I covered in AB 1482 versus San Diego’s ordinance: one more place where the stricter rule is the one that governs.

What you still control

Here is what the law did not do. It did not require you to accept any particular applicant, and it did not lower your standards. A voucher holder goes through the same screening as everyone else: rental history, references, identity, employment verification, prior evictions. The requirement is that the criteria be the same criteria, applied the same way.

Two adjustments are spelled out in the law. First, the income screen runs on the tenant’s portion of the rent, not the full contract rent. On a $3,200 home where the housing authority pays $2,400, an applicant paying $800 out of pocket needs income measured against $800. A three-times-rent standard means $2,400 a month of income, not $9,600. Run the math on the wrong number and a denial that feels routine becomes evidence. Second, since 2024, SB 267 says you cannot lean on credit history alone for a subsidized applicant without offering them the option to show alternative verifiable evidence of ability to pay, things like pay records, benefit statements, or bank statements, and then reasonably considering what they provide. Screening still does its job. It just has to be built to these specifications, and the job it does is the one that matters most, because a failed placement costs the same no matter how the rent is paid.

What accepting a voucher actually involves

Operationally, a voucher tenancy adds a third party with paperwork. The housing authority inspects the property before its share starts flowing, signs its own contract alongside your lease, and then pays its portion by direct deposit every month, which is the part owners tend to warm to once they see it: a large share of the rent arriving from a government payer that does not lose its job. The friction is real but front-loaded. The inspection has standards, the paperwork takes time, and the first subsidy payment can lag move-in while it all clears, so the timeline needs managing like anything else.

The risk, meanwhile, lives almost entirely in one place: the casual sentence. Not a policy document, not a lease clause, but the owner or manager who answers the phone and says we do not take Section 8. That sentence, said to a tester, is a complaint that writes itself. The law turned the answer to a common question from a preference into a compliance matter, and the owners who get this right are simply the ones who know which question they are being asked.

Joe Wiseman is a licensed California broker (DRE #02043323) and owns Best Nest Property Management in San Diego.

The balcony law spent years as a future problem, and then it stopped being one. California’s SB 721 requires inspection of elevated exterior elements, balconies, decks, stairways, walkways, anything wood-framed and more than six feet off the ground, on multifamily buildings with three or more units. The statutory deadline for the first inspection has now arrived, after having been extended once, which means an uninspected covered building is no longer ahead of a deadline; it is behind one. Whether your building is covered, and where it stands, is worth confirming specifically.

Why the law exists

The law exists because of the 2015 Berkeley balcony collapse, which killed six people and traced to dry rot that inspection would have caught. That origin explains the law’s focus: it targets wood-framed elements and water intrusion, the slow rot that happens inside structures that look fine from a lawn chair.

What an inspection actually involves

What an inspection involves: a qualified inspector, licensed categories are specified in the statute, examines a statistically significant sample of the building’s elevated elements, sometimes with moisture probes or borescopes, and classifies findings. Elements needing repair get timelines; immediate hazards trigger immediate obligations, including restricting access. The report goes in the building’s records, and the cycle repeats every six years. Condo associations run under a sibling law, SB 326, with its own requirements; the three-plus-unit rental buildings we manage answer to SB 721.

The owner math

The owner math is the usual preventative-law math, and it points one direction. Inspection on a small building runs hundreds to low thousands. Dry rot caught early is carpentry; caught late it is structural reconstruction, and caught by a failure it is the kind of liability event that ends ownership. Add the compliance layer: an uninspected building is now a documented statutory violation sitting in the file before any incident, which is precisely the fact pattern that turns an accident into a negligence case.

Where San Diego owners stand right now

If you own a covered San Diego building and have not scheduled the inspection: that is the entire to-do list this week, and the follow-through matters as much as the report. Findings with timelines are commitments, not suggestions. For the small multifamily owners we work with, this folds into the same system as everything else, scheduled, documented, and handled before it chooses its own schedule, because the whole lesson of this law is what deferred maintenance does when nobody is looking at it.

Joe Wiseman is a licensed California broker (DRE #02043323) and owns Best Nest Property Management in San Diego.

Photograph everything. That was good advice for twenty years, and as of 2025 it stopped being advice.

What the law now requires

California wrote photo documentation into the security deposit law, phased in beginning in 2025: photographs of the unit around move-in for newer tenancies, photographs at move-out before any repairs or cleaning behind a deduction, photographs after the work is done, shared alongside the itemized statement. The exact requirements depend on when the tenancy started, which is worth confirming for your situation.

Why the state did it

The legislative theory is simple: deposit disputes were being decided on memory against memory, and memory loses to photographs every time. The practical effect for owners is that a deduction without the required photo trail is not a weaker claim. It is increasingly no claim at all.

What it means for San Diego owners

Here is the part I want San Diego owners to sit with: this law formalizes what disciplined operators already did, which means it punishes only casual documentation. If your move-in process was a signed checklist and a walkthrough, and your move-out process was a look around and a judgment call, the law just raised your standard of proof and you have no file to meet it with.

What compliance looks like in practice

What compliance actually looks like in practice. Move-in: a dated photo set covering every room, every appliance, every floor surface, every wall with anything on it, shot the day before keys or the day of. Move-out: the same set, same angles, before anyone touches the unit. After repairs: the work, documented. The photo sets attach to the itemization, and the whole file lives somewhere retrievable, because the dispute that needs it may arrive months later.

The part most owners miss

The angle most owners miss: this law protects good landlords as much as it constrains bad ones. A complete photo file ends most disputes before they start, because a tenant looking at time-stamped photographs of the damage stops arguing about whether it existed. The documentation burden falls hardest on owners running rentals from a phone’s camera roll and a memory. It falls lightest on anyone running a process, which was already the difference between owners who keep deposits defensibly and owners who write checks to close disputes.

One month of deposit, photo-documented on both ends. The state has effectively published the operating manual for the deposit relationship. The owners who win under it are the ones who were already running it.

Joe Wiseman is a licensed California broker (DRE #02043323) and owns Best Nest Property Management in San Diego.

Every week I talk with a San Diego owner who knows one of these laws exists and has not heard of the other. That gap is where the expensive mistakes live.

What AB 1482 sets as the floor

California’s AB 1482 sets the statewide baseline: a cap on annual rent increases and just-cause requirements for ending tenancies past a point. San Diego then layered its own Tenant Protection Ordinance on top, and the city’s version is stricter in several places that matter, tighter termination standards and obligations that attach to no-fault situations among them. The specific numbers move over time, which is exactly why I check them at every renewal instead of memorizing them.

The layering rule

The layering rule is the part to internalize: where the two conflict, the stricter provision governs. You do not get to pick the friendlier law. You comply with both by complying with the tighter one, provision by provision.

Where exemptions trip owners up

Exemptions are where owners most often guess wrong. Some single-family homes and condos can sit outside the state caps, but only when specific ownership conditions and lease language are in place, and I have reviewed leases that looked exempt in every respect except the language that claims it. Exemptions are claimed, not assumed. Newer construction can sit outside the caps for a period as well. Whether any of this covers your property is a specific question about your title, your building, and your lease, and it deserves a specific answer, not a blog post’s.

How it works operationally

What this looks like operationally, at least the way I run it: every renewal gets checked against the current allowable increase before it goes out, not after a tenant’s attorney does the math. Every termination gets classified, at-fault or no-fault, against the stricter city standard, with the relocation obligation priced in before the decision is made, not discovered after. And every lease for a potentially exempt property gets its exemption status confirmed and documented, reviewed annually, because the law changes and old leases do not know that.

The honest summary for a San Diego owner: the days of managing to a lease and a handshake are over in this city. The rules are knowable and entirely manageable, and the owners who get hurt are almost never the ones with difficult properties. They are the ones who did not know which law was in the room.

Joe Wiseman is a licensed California broker (DRE #02043323) and owns Best Nest Property Management in San Diego.

I collected security deposits the old way for a decade: two months on unfurnished homes when the property warranted it. That option is mostly gone now, and I still meet San Diego owners who do not know it.

What the cap actually says

California now caps security deposits at one month’s rent for most landlords, furnished or not. There is a narrow exception for some small landlords, and whether it reaches you depends on how you hold title and how much you own, which is exactly the kind of detail worth confirming for your specific situation rather than assuming. Owners who moved their rental into an LLC for liability reasons are often surprised by where that leaves them.

Why one month changes the math

The practical consequence is simple to state and expensive to ignore: one month of deposit now has to cover what two months used to. That raises the stakes on everything that happens before the lease is signed. Screening carries more weight, because the deposit no longer absorbs a bad placement. Move-in documentation carries more weight, because deposit disputes get decided on evidence and the amount in dispute is now the whole cushion. And the deposit itself stops being the real protection, which is a conversation I have with every owner: the deposit is the first layer, not the plan.

What I do differently under the cap

What I do differently under the cap. Screening runs seven checks before anyone gets keys, because the cheapest deposit claim is the one that never happens. Move-in and move-out get documented to a standard a small-claims judge would respect. And the protection stack around the property, damage coverage, lost-rent coverage, pet coverage where it applies, does the work deposits used to pretend to do.

The number worth knowing

One number worth knowing: on a $3,500 San Diego rental, the difference between the old two-month practice and today’s cap is $3,500 of cushion that no longer exists. The owners who adjust are the ones who treat that as a screening and documentation problem, not a pricing problem. Raising the rent to compensate for a capped deposit just prices you out of the applicant pool that passes screening in the first place.

The rules that did not change

The rules on holding, deducting from, and returning deposits did not get simpler, and the timelines did not get looser. That part of the law has been catching landlords for decades and still does.

The deposit is one month now. The protection has to come from somewhere else.

Joe Wiseman is a licensed California broker (DRE #02043323) and owns Best Nest Property Management in San Diego.