Important note
This article is general information current as of August 2026, not legal advice. Rent control cutoffs and cap figures vary by city and change over time. Confirm current status directly with the relevant city or consult a qualified attorney before relying on this for an active transaction.
A building built in 1985 is too new for the City of LA’s RSO, West Hollywood’s RSO, or Santa Monica’s rent control, all of which only cover buildings from the late 1970s. That same building falls under California’s statewide AB 1482 instead, currently capped at 8.7%. But cross into Glendale, Pasadena, or Huntington Park, and a 1985 building is covered by their own local ordinances, since those cutoffs run through 1995.
Two owners, two 1985-built fourplexes, one in the City of LA and one three miles away in Glendale. They assume the same rules apply because the buildings are the same age. They don’t, and the gap changes what each building is actually worth.
Why 1985 Is the Dividing Line
Every local rent ordinance in LA County sets its own cutoff year for which buildings it covers, and those cutoffs cluster around two different eras.
Cutoffs before 1985 (a 1985 building is exempt from these; AB 1482 applies instead):
- City of LA’s RSO: pre-October 1978
- West Hollywood’s RSO: pre-July 1979
- Santa Monica’s rent control: pre-April 1979
Cutoffs after 1985 (a 1985 building is covered by these):
- Glendale’s Rental Rights Program: pre-1995
- Pasadena’s Measure H: pre-February 1995
- Huntington Park’s Rent Stabilization Ordinance: pre-February 1995
A 1985 building sits in the gap. In LA, West Hollywood, or Santa Monica, it’s exempt from the local ordinance entirely and falls back to AB 1482. In Glendale, Pasadena, or Huntington Park, it’s squarely covered by a local mechanism instead.
Why 1995, Specifically
The 1995 cutoff isn’t a coincidence, and it isn’t a policy choice those cities made independently. It’s the legal ceiling. California’s Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act prohibits any city or county from applying local rent control to buildings with a certificate of occupancy issued after February 1, 1995, regardless of what that city might otherwise want to regulate. Glendale, Pasadena, and Huntington Park all set their cutoffs at exactly this date because it’s the newest construction date state law allows them to touch.
No LA County city can write a local ordinance that reaches a 1996 or later building, no matter how it’s structured. That’s also why a 1985 building can fall on either side of the divide depending on the city: the older LA-area ordinances (RSO, West Hollywood, Santa Monica) chose to stop at the late 1970s, well before they had to, while the newer ordinances pushed all the way to the state’s actual limit.
What This Means for a Buyer’s Underwriting
A 1985 building in the City of LA is one of the more flexible assets an owner can hold: AB 1482’s 8.7% ceiling is meaningfully looser than any local RSO cap, and there’s no local registration requirement.
The identical building in Glendale carries the 7% relocation trigger, and in Pasadena, a hard 2.25% annual cap. Run that difference over a real hold period and it compounds: a $2,000 unit in an AB 1482 building can legally reach roughly $3,050 after ten years of maximum annual increases, while the same unit under Pasadena’s 2.25% cap tops out closer to $2,500.
Same building, same vintage, a genuinely different ceiling on the income a buyer is underwriting.
When the Vintage Doesn’t Matter At All
It’s worth knowing where this entire question disappears. Cities with no local rent ordinance at all, Whittier, Downey, Compton, and most of the South Bay among them, don’t have a cutoff year to worry about, because there’s nothing local to be covered by. A 1985 building in Whittier and a 1965 building in Whittier answer to the identical rule: AB 1482, currently 8.7%, with no local registration and no city rent board.
Vintage only becomes a decisive question in cities that actually enacted their own ordinance, so the first thing worth confirming isn’t your building’s age; it’s whether the city has a local rule at all.
Confirming Your Building’s Actual Status
The certificate of occupancy date, not the year a building is commonly said to have been “built,” is the figure that actually controls coverage, and the two aren’t always the same when a property has been substantially rebuilt or converted. Before assuming AB 1482 applies just because a building feels newer, confirm the certificate of occupancy date against the specific city’s cutoff, since a building marketed as “1985 construction” that received its certificate of occupancy after a partial rebuild could carry a different date than the one on file with the county assessor.
This is exactly the kind of detail a buyer’s team verifies during diligence, and it’s one we confirm before a listing goes to market.
We Underwrite the Jurisdiction Before We Underwrite the Building
Hi, I am Max Berger, a multifamily broker at Compass in Los Angeles. The construction year on a title report only tells you half the story; the city line tells you the rest. Browse our current listings or see how past sales came together on our success stories page. Contact me or call (818) 321-4972 for your free written valuation.
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