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.