What's New for California Landlords in 2026

California's legislative calendar produces a steady drumbeat of landlord-tenant changes, and most of them take effect on January 1 of the year following enactment. This post is a starting checklist for what California landlords should review at the start of 2026 — not a comprehensive treatment of every recent bill, but a list of areas where leases, notices, and intake practices most often need a refresh.

A note on scope: this post is written at the start of 2026 based on legislation and rules as the firm understands them at the time of writing. Several pending bills, regulatory packages, and local ordinances affect the same subject matter and may have been adopted, modified, or deferred since this post was published. Confirm the current state of the law before relying on anything below.

New bills effective January 1, 2026

The 2025 California legislative session produced several bills that take effect on January 1, 2026 and that California landlords should review against existing leases, intake forms, and operational practices. The most consequential ones, in the firm's view:

• AB 628 — Mandatory appliances. For leases entered into, amended, or extended on or after January 1, 2026, units must include a working stove and refrigerator unless a specific exemption applies. The landlord is responsible for maintaining these appliances in safe working order, and a recalled appliance must be repaired or replaced within 30 days of notice. The lease should reflect the obligation; the maintenance side belongs in the repair-request workflow.
• AB 414 — Security-deposit return mechanics. Provides additional flexibility for how landlords and tenants handle security-deposit refunds and itemized statements, including by mutual written agreement on electronic delivery. The tenant's substantive right to a timely, itemized accounting under Civil Code § 1950.5(g) is unchanged; AB 414 expands the channel, not the substance.
• AB 1414 — Bundled-services opt-out. For tenancies starting or renewing on or after January 1, 2026, landlords offering internet, cellular, or satellite service through a bulk-billing arrangement must allow the tenant to opt out of the subscription. Leases that bundle these services as a non-negotiable line item need to add an opt-out path.
• AB 747 — Mandatory fee disclosure. Requires advertised rent and other mandatory fees to be clearly disclosed up front, not introduced later in the leasing process. Listing language and application materials should be reviewed to ensure that the rent figure shown to prospective tenants reflects all required charges.
• AB 246 — Social Security hardship as eviction defense. Tenants facing nonpayment-based eviction may raise a "Social Security hardship" defense where their federal benefits have been interrupted by federal-government action. The defense is fact-driven and may extend the time available to the tenant in particular circumstances; landlords prosecuting nonpayment cases on tenants who rely on Social Security should consult counsel before serving notices.
• SB 610 — Natural-disaster protections. Following a natural or manmade disaster, landlords have specific obligations to remove debris, mitigate hazards (mold, smoke damage), and follow government cleanup protocols. A unit is generally not considered habitable until cleared by the appropriate public-health authority, and tenants have the right to return at the same rental rate once conditions are deemed safe.

This is a high-level summary, not a substitute for reading the bills. Several of them have implementing details, exemptions, and effective-date qualifiers that matter case-by-case.

Re-run the AB 1482 cap with the current CPI inputs

For covered units, AB 1482 caps annual rent increases at the lesser of (i) 5% plus the regional CPI change for the prior April-to-April period or (ii) 10%. The CPI inputs are republished each spring and the resulting cap moves with them. The first practical step at the start of any year is simply to re-run the calculation with the current inputs before issuing any rent-increase notice.

For an overview of how the calculation works, see the AB 1482 mid-year post.

Confirm AB 12 deposit-cap compliance on all units

AB 12 capped most California security deposits at one month's rent effective July 1, 2024. By the start of 2026, every renewing or new lease in the firm's portfolio should reflect the cap. If you still have leases with two-month deposits in place from before the change, those are worth a review — particularly heading into renewal season — to confirm whether the small-landlord exception still applies and whether any excess should be refunded.

The mechanics are covered in the AB 12 post.

Review unlawful-detainer response timelines

AB 2347 (signed in 2024) extended the tenant's response time in California unlawful-detainer cases from five court days to ten court days, effective January 1, 2025. By 2026 this change has been law for a year, but it continues to surprise landlords who handle UDs infrequently. The practical consequence: a UD that previously could move to default in roughly two weeks now generally cannot, and prosecuting timelines should be planned with the longer window in mind.

Local just-cause and rent-control ordinances

Several California cities — Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, San Jose, Santa Monica, San Diego, and others — have their own rent-control and just-cause regimes that often update at the start of the year. The standard items to confirm:

• The local rent-cap or rent-board-set figure for the year (where applicable, often distinct from the AB 1482 cap)
• Local relocation-assistance schedules for no-fault terminations (frequently higher than the AB 1482 floor)
• Local registration, filing, or notice obligations triggered by a rent increase or termination
• Any new local categories of just cause or new local procedural requirements

For properties in any of these jurisdictions, the local rules generally control. Step one of any 2026 review is to confirm what jurisdiction the property is in and to read the current ordinance — not to rely on a 2023 summary.

Notice-form refresh

Stock unlawful-detainer and termination forms drift out of date faster than landlords expect. A 2026 review should confirm that:

• Three-day notices to pay or quit recite the correct statutory amount (excluding any non-rent charges that cannot be included)
• Just-cause termination notices state the ground in the form the statute requires and include the relocation-assistance election where required
• AB 1482 exemption notices, where applicable, are in the lease in the form Civil Code § 1947.12 specifies

A defective notice resets the timeline; running through the form library annually saves a lot of expensive mistakes.

Application-screening practices

California's application-screening rules continue to evolve, and several recent bills have addressed credit checks, fee caps, source-of-income protections, and the use of housing-history information. Two practical questions for the start of any year:

• Are we charging a screening fee that complies with current Civil Code § 1950.6 limits and refund obligations?
• Are we applying screening criteria consistently and documenting the basis for any adverse decision in case of a fair-housing complaint?

The application-screening side of the practice tends to attract less attention than evictions but generates a comparable share of fair-housing exposure.

Insurance and habitability

A few less-glamorous items worth checking annually:

• Property insurance with adequate liability limits and coverage for the kind of incidents that produce premises claims
• Smoke and carbon-monoxide detector compliance, which has been the subject of recent legislative attention
• Bedbug, mold, and pest disclosure requirements where applicable
• Lead-paint disclosure for pre-1978 housing (federal, but enforced in California cases)

Each of these is mechanical and inexpensive to address; each is also the kind of item that gets noticed only when something goes wrong.

Practical takeaway

A 2026 landlord review is mostly a refresh, not a rewrite — but the cumulative effect of two or three years of small statutory changes is large enough that a 2023 lease is meaningfully out of date in 2026. If you would like the firm to review your current lease and notice forms against current California law, please reach out.

This article is general information and not legal advice. California landlord-tenant law changes frequently — by statute, by regulation, and by local ordinance — and the firm does not generally update older posts to reflect later changes. Confirm the current state of the law before acting.