Free Berkeley Residential Lease Agreement

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A configurable Berkeley residential lease agreement that generates a signable multi-page PDF. Built to the Rent Ordinance itself — the three-way coverage test in Section 13.76.040(J), the ten good causes, what non-registration costs a landlord, and the early-termination fee Section 13.78.017 makes unlawful.

Berkeley BMC 13.76 Good Cause Free PDF 2026 Edition

A Berkeley residential lease agreement is a California lease with a second body of law sitting on top of it: the Rent Stabilization and Eviction for Good Cause Ordinance, Chapter 13.76 of the Berkeley Municipal Code, restated in its entirety by Ordinance 7950-N.S. when the voters passed Measure BB in November 2024, together with Chapter 13.78 on screening and lease fees, Chapter 13.79 on automatic renewals, buyouts and tenant protection, Chapter 13.106 on criminal-history screening, and the Rent Stabilization Board’s own Regulations, where a great deal of the operative detail actually lives. The single most important thing to understand, and the thing every statewide template gets wrong, is that Berkeley sorts dwellings into three classes rather than two. Section 13.76.040(J) defines a Partially-covered unit as one subject to all sections of the Chapter except Sections 13.76.100, 13.76.110 and 13.76.120 — the three rent-ceiling sections. That single sentence is the coverage test: a partially covered Berkeley unit has no rent ceiling and full good-cause eviction protection, and must still be registered and still owes interest on the security deposit. This page states that test explicitly, builds it into the form as a field-driven branch, and then covers what the Ordinance requires of the lease document itself. For the statewide layer, see our California residential lease agreement, which derives every state figure from the statute; this page does not repeat it.

Answer this before anything else, because every other question on the page branches on it. Berkeley does not ask “is this unit rent controlled, yes or no”. It sorts dwellings into three classes, and the middle class is where most modern Berkeley leases sit.

Fully covered. Berkeley Mun. Code 13.76.050(A) applies all sections of the Chapter to all real property being rented or available for rent for residential use, except as that section provides. A fully covered unit has a rent ceiling that moves only by the Annual General Adjustment under Section 13.76.110 or by an individual adjustment granted on a petition under Section 13.76.120, must be registered under Section 13.76.080, earns interest on the security deposit under Section 13.76.070, and can only be recovered on one of the ten good causes in Section 13.76.130.

Partially covered. Section 13.76.050(B) creates exactly three categories, and Section 13.76.040(J) tells you what the label means:

• Newly constructed — a rental unit created after June 30, 1980, the date of creation being fixed by the first certificate of occupancy issued for that unit. The subsection carries a contingency: if California Civil Code Section 1954.52 is repealed or amended so that a certificate of occupancy is no longer the operative standard under state law, the date of creation becomes the City’s final inspection approval and a unit is deemed newly constructed only for fifteen years after that approval. And a unit created by demolition or replacement effected through a “housing development project” as defined in the Housing Crisis Act of 2019 is not exempt at all as newly constructed.
• Separately alienable — a rental unit in a residential property containing only a Single Family Dwelling as defined in Subtitle 23F.04 of the Zoning Ordinance, unless the tenancy commenced before January 1, 1996. The date is on the tenancy, not on the building, so a long-standing tenancy in a Berkeley house is still fully rent-controlled. The subsection also states that the exemption applies only for as long as the pertinent provisions of Costa-Hawkins, California Civil Code Section 1954.50 et seq., remain in effect and require it.
• Government-owned or government-subsidized — units a government agency or authority owns, operates or manages, or in which governmentally subsidized tenants reside, to the extent that federal law, state law or an administrative regulation specifically exempts them from local price control. The subsection then says such units are “subject to all provisions of this Chapter except those from which applicable Federal law, State law, or administrative regulation specifically exempts the rental units.” Since Measure BB these units must be registered with the Rent Board as either fully or partially covered.

Fully exempt. Section 13.76.040(K) defines a Fully-exempt unit as one “not subject to any section of this Chapter”, and Section 13.76.050(C) lists the nine grounds that produce one. They are dealt with in their own section below, because two of them carry conditions almost every summary omits and one of them is not really an exemption at all.

The Rent Board says the same thing in its own words. Its page Is Your Unit Covered by Rent Control? describes full coverage as a controlled rent, good cause and deposit interest; partial coverage as a rent that is not controlled, with good cause and deposit interest intact; and no coverage as none of the three. Its examples of partial coverage are single-family homes with tenancies from January 1, 1996, most condominiums, and units built and issued a certificate of occupancy after June 1980.

Because Costa-Hawkins limits what a city may do about rent, not what a city may do about possession — and Berkeley wrote its exemption to reach only the rent sections. This is the safety property of the whole page, and it is the reason a lease drafted from a statewide California template is dangerous in Berkeley rather than merely incomplete.

Read the two definitions side by side. Section 13.76.040(K): a Fully-exempt unit “means any rental unit that is not subject to any section of this Chapter.” Section 13.76.040(J): a Partially-covered unit “means any rental that is subject to all sections of this Chapter except: Section 13.76.100… Section 13.76.110… and Section 13.76.120”. The drafter knew how to write a total exemption and did not write one here. What survives in a partially covered unit is therefore everything the Ordinance does apart from setting a ceiling:

• Section 13.76.130 — good cause required for eviction, all ten grounds, the notice contents, the compliance allegation and the filing duty.
• Section 13.76.080 — rent registration, including the Notice at Commencement of Tenancy and vacancy re-registration.
• Section 13.76.070 — the fiduciary duty over the deposit and the annual interest.
• Section 13.76.135 — the right to organize, which Section 13.76.040(C) makes a housing service.
• Section 13.76.140 — retaliation, with the six-month presumption.
• Sections 13.76.150, 13.76.170 and 13.76.190 — the remedies, the non-waiver rule and the criminal penalties.

The Costa-Hawkins line is drawn on the face of the ordinance in a way few cities bother with. Section 13.76.050(B)(2) makes the single-family exemption apply “only as long as the pertinent provisions of California Civil Code Section 1954.50 et. seq. (‘Costa-Hawkins’) remain in effect and require such an exemption”, and Section 13.76.050(B)(1) makes the certificate-of-occupancy standard contingent on Civil Code Section 1954.52 as well. Berkeley has, in other words, conceded exactly as much as the state statute compels and not a line more. Because Costa-Hawkins says nothing about the grounds on which possession may be recovered, nothing in it touches Section 13.76.130.

What this means for the lease you are about to sign. A generic California lease for a Berkeley condominium built in 2005 will typically carry a surrender-at-term clause, an early-termination fee, a ratio-utility-billing clause and no mention of the Rent Board at all, on the theory that the unit is “exempt”. Three of those four are void or unlawful in Berkeley and the fourth is irrelevant, because the exemption reached only the rent ceiling. The builder on this page asks the coverage question first and then generates the good-cause, registration and deposit-interest terms for a partially covered unit exactly as it does for a fully covered one.

Nine grounds, listed in Section 13.76.050(C), and each has conditions. A fully exempt unit is outside Chapter 13.76 altogether — no ceiling, no good cause, no registration, no deposit interest — so the conditions are worth stating exactly:

• Short-term transient rentals — units rented primarily to transient guests for use or occupancy of less than fourteen consecutive days in establishments such as hotels, motels, inns, tourist homes and rooming and boarding houses. The subsection adds a trap for the drafter: “the payment of rent every fourteen days or less shall not by itself exempt any unit from coverage by this Chapter.”
• Non-profit cooperatives owned and controlled by a majority of the residents.
• Health facilities — units in any hospital, skilled nursing facility, health facility, asylum or non-profit home for older persons, with “skilled nursing facility” and “health facility” defined in the subsection itself.
• Owner-occupied shared units — where the landlord shares kitchen or bath facilities with the tenant and occupied a unit in the same property as a principal residence at the inception of the tenancy. For this ground “landlord” means only an owner of record holding at least a fifty per cent interest.
• Fraternity and sorority units rented by an active member, where the unit is owned by the organisation or by an entity whose sole purpose is to operate its units for members at cost.
• Accessory dwelling units — on a single-family property with one lawfully established and fully permitted accessory dwelling unit where the landlord occupies a unit as a principal residence. Three limits travel with it: the property must contain a single accessory dwelling unit, the unit must comply with Chapter 23C.24, and the tenancy must have been created after November 7, 2018.
• Shelters and transitional housing run by a 501(c)(3) whose primary purpose is a treatment, recovery, therapy, sanctuary or shelter programme, where the client was told in writing at the outset that the housing is temporary — and this one is not really an exemption. The same subsection says that, except as preempted by the Transitional Housing Participant Misconduct Act or other law, such units “shall not be exempted from the requirements of Section 13.76.130, Good Cause Required for Eviction”, and that continued eligibility for the programme is deemed a material term of the agreement.
• The sabbatical exemption for a single-family home, which requires all four of: the owner owns only one residential unit in the City; the owner occupied it as a principal residence for at least 365 consecutive days immediately before renting; the absence does not exceed twenty-four months; and the period is specified in the lease. That last condition is a drafting duty, and the builder on this page prompts for it.
• The golden duplex — a property divided into two units, one of which was owner-occupied on December 31, 1979 and is currently occupied by the landlord as a principal residence, again with the fifty-per-cent ownership definition. A unit that stops qualifying has Sections 13.76.080(J) and 13.76.100(C) applied to it, which is how it re-enters registration and gets a base rent ceiling.

Two general points. An exemption is a claim, and Section 13.76.080(D) requires the landlord to state in the Notice at Commencement of Tenancy “any provisions of this Chapter which the landlord claims the rental unit to be exempt from” — so the claim is made in writing, at the start, on the Board’s form. And an exemption can end: Section 13.76.080(J) gives a landlord of a formerly exempt unit sixty days to register once it comes under coverage.

Work top to bottom; the coverage answer drives the rest of the document. The builder above generates a multi-page PDF with the Berkeley terms already written into it.

1. Parties. Name the owner and the person authorized to manage the premises, each with a telephone number and a usual street address at which personal service may be made, as Civil Code 1962 requires. The same names go on the Rent Board registration statement under Section 13.76.080(B).
2. Coverage. Choose fully covered, one of the three partially covered categories, or fully exempt with a ground. The generated lease states the class, the authority for it, and what it does and does not exempt.
3. Registration. Record whether the unit is registered. The lease then tells both parties, in terms, what non-registration costs the landlord.
4. Term. Set the term. The builder never writes a surrender-at-term clause. If the lease renews automatically, tick the box and the lease carries the Chapter 13.79 notice terms.
5. Rent. Enter the rent and choose a thirty-day or ninety-day increase notice. The lease states the Annual General Adjustment mechanism and no percentage.
6. Deposit. Enter the deposit and choose whether the annual interest is paid as a rent rebate or in cash.
7. Utilities. Choose one of the three bases Section 13.76.100(E) permits. Where the tenant pays a separately metered service, the lease itself carries the requirement that the account be in the tenant’s own name, which is what makes the arrangement lawful.
8. Disclosures and generate. Leave the thirteen Berkeley blocks and the California set checked, generate, sign, deliver a copy within fifteen days, serve the two start-of-tenancy notices and register the tenancy.

Registration is a property-wide duty with a per-tenancy notice attached, and it is the precondition to almost everything a landlord wants to do. Section 13.76.080(A) requires all landlords to file a rent registration statement for each rental unit covered by the Chapter, the only exclusion being the Fully-exempt units in Section 13.76.050(C).

What gets filed. Section 13.76.080(B) lists the initial statement’s contents — the address of each unit, the names and addresses of the landlord and any managing agent, the date the landlord took title, the housing services provided, several historical rent figures, the base rent ceiling and any deposits held. Section 13.76.080(C) requires an affidavit signed under penalty of perjury that the information is true and correct. Section 13.76.080(E) then requires vacancy re-registration within fifteen days of the commencement of any new tenancy since January 1, 1996, providing all current tenancy information the Board’s Regulations require. Rent Board Regulation 801(D) confirms that “rent registration statement” includes the initial statement, the annual statement, the vacancy registration form and — for partially covered units — the Registration Statement for Partially Covered Units and all required Tenancy Registration Forms for Partially Covered Units.

The Notice at Commencement of Tenancy. This is the Berkeley disclosure most templates have never heard of. Section 13.76.080(D) requires the landlord of any unit subject to the section to give the tenant a written notice on a form prescribed by the Board within fifteen days of the commencement of the tenancy, stating four things: the existence and scope of the Chapter; the tenant’s rights to petition against certain rent increases, if applicable; whether the landlord is permitted to set the initial rent and subsequent rents without limitation, such as under California Civil Code Sections 1947.12 and 1954.52; and any provisions of the Chapter from which the landlord claims the unit is exempt. Where the property has an interior common area all tenants can reach, the notice must also be posted there. Every registration statement carries an affidavit under penalty of perjury that the notice was given, and the subsection closes with the sentence that gives it teeth: “A landlord that has failed to provide a notice pursuant to this subsection shall not be in compliance with this section.” Rent Board Regulation 801(G), added on January 16, 2025 to incorporate the Measure BB amendments effective December 20, 2024, allows a property containing both fully covered and partially covered units to satisfy the posting duty by posting both versions.

What “properly registered” means. Section 13.76.080(K) is the sting: “No landlord shall be deemed to be in compliance with this Section with respect to a given unit until the landlord has completed registration for all covered units in the same property.” Registration is complete only when all required information has been provided, the Section 13.76.080(D) notice has been given to the Board, and all outstanding fees and penalties have been paid. Rent Board Regulation 801(A) says the same in three limbs and adds the affidavit requirement; Regulation 801(H) allows a finding of substantial compliance where the landlord made a good-faith effort and cured any defect promptly after notice of a deficiency from the Board.

The fee, and why this page states it as a mechanism. Rent Board Regulation 880 records that the Board establishes an annual per-unit registration fee to cover its reasonable expenses and that the fee “shall be paid no later than July 1 of each year”, treated as paid on the date received in the Board office or the bona fide postmark date, whichever is earlier. The amount is re-set every fiscal year, so a figure printed into a lease goes stale; the generated PDF carries none. For the record, the Board published fees for fiscal year 2026–2027 of three hundred ninety-seven dollars per fully covered unit and two hundred forty-four dollars per partially covered unit, due on July 2, 2026.

Delinquency. Section 13.76.080(G) declares any fee not paid on or before July 1 delinquent and adds a penalty of one hundred per cent of the delinquent fee, increased by a further hundred per cent of the original fee every six months it remains unpaid. The Board may waive the penalty if payment is made within thirty days of the original due date, or on a showing of good cause; Rent Board Regulation 883 lists the good-cause grounds, and they are almost all City or Board administrative errors — a wrong account number, a mis-billed unit count, an uncorrected billing address, a staff error, an account wrongly closed, or a period while Board legal staff decide whether a property is subject to the Ordinance at all. Section 13.76.080(H) makes the fee, penalty and any fine a debt to the Board.

And the fee is the landlord’s. Section 13.76.080(L): registration fees “shall not be passed along to the tenants without the express, prior approval of the Board. Under no circumstances shall penalties be passed along to tenants.” For fiscal year 2025–2026 the Board records that it did not authorise a pass-through, so a Berkeley landlord who raised a rent to recover that year’s fee raised it without authority.

The rent increase, part of the annual adjustment, the rent itself, and the eviction. These consequences sit in four separate provisions, which is why no single summary captures them and why none of the ranking templates mentions any of them.

One: no rent increase, at all, until compliance. Section 13.76.150(A)(1) ends with a sentence that decides most Berkeley rent disputes: “Whether or not the Board allows such withholding, no landlord who has failed to comply with the Chapter shall at any time increase rents for a rental unit until such unit is brought into compliance with this Chapter.” Not “no annual adjustment” — no increase of any kind.

Two: the annual adjustment melts. Section 13.76.110(D) makes an increase under an upward general adjustment ineffective where the landlord has continued to fail to comply after a Board order, has failed to bring the unit into compliance with the implied warranty of habitability, has failed to make repairs ordered by housing inspection services, or has failed to register completely by July 1. Section 13.76.110(E) then meters the loss: “The amount of an upward general adjustment for which a landlord shall be eligible shall decrease by ten percent (10%) per month for each month beyond October 1 for which the landlord fails to register.” A landlord who registers in February has lost roughly half of the following year’s adjustment. Section 13.76.110(F) allows the Board to grant adjustments prospectively to an owner who was out of compliance and has come back into it.

Three: the tenant may stop paying. Section 13.76.150(A)(1) allows the Board, after proper notice and a hearing, and on a determination that the landlord wilfully and knowingly failed to register a covered unit or violated the rent-ceiling sections, to authorise the tenant to withhold all or part of the rent until the unit is brought into compliance, and then to decide afterwards what portion of the withheld rent is owed. Section 13.76.150(A)(2) goes further and lets a tenant withhold up to the full periodic rent, providing that “in any action to recover possession based on nonpayment of rent, possession shall not be granted where the tenant has withheld rent in good faith under this Section.” Section 13.76.150(A)(3) allows injunctive relief restraining the landlord from demanding or receiving any rent until compliance. Section 13.76.150(A)(4) adds a damages claim for rent taken above the maximum allowed, with up to seven hundred fifty dollars on top of actual damages for a bad-faith claim or retention.

Four: no possession. Section 13.76.130(C) requires a landlord, in any action to recover possession except one under grounds (6), (7) or (10), to allege — as to each rental unit on the property — substantial compliance with the implied warranty of habitability and compliance with Sections 13.76.100 and 13.76.080, both as of the date of the notice of termination and as of the date the action is commenced. Rent Board Regulation 1311(B), amended on January 20, 2022, defines that compliance to require every registration statement to have been filed, “including all Vacancy Registration Forms for fully controlled units and Registration Statements and Tenant Registration Forms for Partially Covered Units for all current tenancies”, and Regulation 1311(C) provides that a failure to comply with the regulation “shall be a defense to any action for possession of a rental unit covered by the Ordinance.”

For a fully covered unit, by the Annual General Adjustment, and by nothing else without a Board petition. Section 13.76.110(A) states the mechanism in full, and it is worth reading as a formula rather than as a number:

• Who publishes it: the Rent Stabilization Board, which “shall publish and publicize the annual general adjustment on or about October 31st of each year”.
• When it takes effect: January 1 of each year, for every covered unit for which the landlord did not establish an initial rent during the prior calendar year.
• The formula: sixty-five per cent of the percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers in the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose region reported by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics for the twelve-month period ending the previous June 30.
• Rounding: figures of .04 and below round down to the nearest tenth; .05 and above round up.
• The floor and the ceiling: “In no event, however, shall the allowable annual adjustment be less than zero (0%) or greater than five percent (5%).” The five-per-cent ceiling replaced a seven-per-cent ceiling when the voters passed Measure BB in November 2024.

The current figure, with its year. The Rent Board’s published Annual General Adjustment for 2026 is 1.0 per cent. It will change on or about October 31 for 2027, which is exactly why the generated lease states the mechanism and carries no percentage: a lease signed today may still be running in 2029, and a number frozen into it would be wrong by then.

Banking. An adjustment not taken is not lost. The Rent Board’s published guidance records that a landlord who chooses not to take an Annual General Adjustment in a given year may “bank” it and later raise the rent up to the rent ceiling with proper notice, even where the resulting increase exceeds five per cent, because the five-per-cent cap limits the annual percentage the Board sets rather than the accumulated ceiling.

When no increase is allowed at all. Beyond the registration grounds above, the Board’s published guidance states that a landlord may not take the adjustment where there is a Board order denying adjustments (generally for a decrease in services or substandard conditions), where there are serious repair problems or outstanding housing code violations, or where the landlord has failed to pay interest on the security deposit for the unit. It also records the timing rule for a new tenancy: no increase for the remainder of the year in which the tenancy started, and none in the following calendar year either, so a tenancy beginning in March 2026 sees its first adjustment in 2028.

Anything more requires a petition. Section 13.76.120 is the individual-adjustment route, upward or downward. It is also the route a tenant uses to convert a decrease in housing services or a habitability failure into a rent reduction, and the route Section 13.76.100(E) directs a landlord to when a utility charge has to be folded into the ceiling instead.

And for a partially covered unit? There is no Berkeley ceiling — but that is not the same as no limit. The California Tenant Protection Act at Civil Code 1947.12 has to be tested on its own terms and its own exemptions, and a separately alienable single-family home or condominium escapes it only where the owner qualifies and the statutory exemption statement appears in the lease verbatim. The builder offers that statement as a conditional block and says on its face that it does nothing to Berkeley good cause.

An upward adjustment of the ceiling is not a rent increase. Section 13.76.110(B) is explicit: “An upward general adjustment in rent ceilings does not automatically provide for a rent increase. Allowable rent increases pursuant to a general upward adjustment shall become effective only after the landlord gives the tenant at least a 30 days written notice of such rent increase and the notice period expires.” The Rent Board’s guidance adds the California rule that an increase of more than ten per cent needs ninety days’ notice, and the builder asks which period the landlord will use.

The fixed-term trap runs both ways. Section 13.76.110(C): where the maximum allowable rent under the Chapter is greater than the rent specified in the rental agreement, the lower agreed rent is the maximum allowable rent until the agreement expires; where the maximum allowable rent under the Chapter is less than the rent in the agreement, the lower Chapter figure governs. A fixed-term Berkeley lease therefore caps the landlord at the agreed rent for the term, and caps the tenant’s exposure at the ceiling if the ceiling is lower.

No fee pass-through in the increase. Section 13.76.080(L) forbids passing the registration fee to tenants without the Board’s express prior approval and forbids passing on penalties in any circumstances, so an increase that quietly recovers the annual fee is unlawful unless the Board authorised a pass-through for that year.

Yes — and the deposit is held in trust, not merely held. Section 13.76.070 is one long sentence-stack and every clause of it does work:

• What it covers: “any payment or deposit of monies by the tenant, the primary function of which is to secure the performance of a rental agreement or any part of such agreement, including an advance payment of rent“. Last month’s rent taken up front is inside the section.
• How it is held: “in a fiduciary capacity for the benefit of the tenant” until it is returned or the landlord becomes entitled to use it as California Civil Code 1950.5 provides.
• What it earns: simple interest at the rate equal to the average rates of interest paid on six-month certificates of deposit by banks doing business in the City.
• When it is paid: the interest accrued through October 31 of each year is returned to the tenant annually in December, either as a rent rebate or a cash payment.
• Who sets the rate, and when: the rate is the twelve-month average of those monthly figures for the twelve months ending November 1, rounded to the nearest tenth, and “on or before November 15th of each year, the Board shall give public notice of the rate to be effective for the following December.”
• On move-out: the balance of interest accrued since the last October 31 is paid at the average monthly rate from the last November 1 to the date of departure, with the principal and any prior unpaid interest.

The duty reaches fully covered and partially covered units alike — the Rent Board’s own security-deposit page says the interest is owed “for tenancies in units fully or partially covered by Berkeley’s Rent Ordinance”, which is exactly what Section 13.76.040(J) predicts. The Board published 0.9 per cent for the December 2025 annual return and publishes a separate rate for each month’s move-outs. Both figures change, so the generated lease states the mechanism and no rate.

The tenant deducts it from the rent, at ten per cent, without asking. This is Rent Board Regulation 704, and it is the sharpest tenant remedy on this page:

“Where a tenant has not received refund of security deposit interest by January 31 of any year for any preceding calendar years, the tenant may recover the interest by deducting the interest amount from rent… For purposes of this regulation, the interest rate for the immediately preceding calendar year is 10%.” The regulation was amended on September 19, 2019 “to make clear that 10% interest rate automatically attaches to unpaid security deposit interest for the immediately preceding year after January 31 of any year, and tenant does not have to give landlord notice of intention to deduct interest from rent.”

Two more Board regulations do work no template carries:

• Regulation 705 — the deposit may not be increased during the tenancy. “Any amount demanded, accepted or retained by a landlord as a security deposit within the meaning of Section 1950.5 of the California Civil Code shall not be increased for any tenant during the term of the tenancy.” The only exception is additional security for a pet, with the tenant’s written consent and only to the extent state law allows, where pet ownership was not previously permitted.
• Regulation 706 — a wrongful retention is a rent overcharge. Any portion of a deposit retained in violation of Civil Code 1950.5 “is deemed to be a rent overcharge subject to recovery by the tenant” through the Rent Board’s own petition process, which gives a Berkeley tenant an administrative route where a California tenant has only a court. Regulation 706(B) also fixes when the twenty-one-day clock starts: the landlord does not recover possession until the premises are free of all occupants, including subtenants, guests, licensees and squatters who entered with the knowledge and consent of a tenant.

The state layer still applies in full: the cap of one month’s rent in addition to the first month’s rent since July 1, 2024 under Civil Code 1950.5(c), the twenty-one-day itemized statement under Civil Code 1950.5(h), the photograph duties under Civil Code 1950.5(g), and the rule in Civil Code 1950.5(n) that no part of a deposit may be called nonrefundable. Our California security deposit laws guide covers those; Berkeley layers custody, interest and a Rent Board remedy on top.

Ten, at Section 13.76.130(A), and the notice must state the cause and every element of it. The chapter is titled the Rent Stabilization and Eviction for Good Cause Ordinance; the section itself is headed “Just cause required for eviction”, and Rent Board Regulation 1312 was amended on September 18, 2025 partly “reflecting the shift of the Ordinance language from ‘good cause’ to ‘just cause’”. The two names describe one requirement.

1. Non-payment of rent to which the landlord is legally entitled, unless the tenant withheld under applicable law, after a written notice stating the amount then due and requiring payment within a period of not less than three days. It carries a floor found in no other jurisdiction we have built: the ground is not available “where the amount of rent demanded is less than one month of fair market rent for a unit of equivalent size in the metro area Oakland-Fremont, CA HUD Metro FMR as determined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for the fiscal year in which the rent is demanded.”
2. Substantial violation of a material lease term causing actual injury, continuing after written notice to cease, and excluding the obligation to surrender possession. The landlord must demonstrate both that the violation caused substantial actual damage and that the tenant’s behaviour was unreasonable. Material terms include only what both parties expressly agreed, and exclude unilateral changes of terms imposed under Civil Code 827.
3. Wilful substantial damage beyond normal wear and tear, where the tenant has refused after written notice to pay the reasonable cost of repair and to stop.
4. Destruction of the peace continuing after written notice to cease, or a ground under subdivision 4 of Code of Civil Procedure Section 1161.
5. Refusal of lawful access after written notice to cease.
6. Substantial and necessary repairs with all City permits obtained, needed to bring the property into compliance with health and safety codes and impossible to complete with the tenant in residence. Three conditions travel with it: where the work takes sixty days or fewer and the tenant agrees in writing within thirty days to vacate for the period at no charge beyond rent abatement, the landlord may not recover possession unless the tenant then fails to go; where the landlord owns other vacant units in the City, the tenant must be offered a temporary rental agreement or a new agreement at the lawful rent; and the tenant has a right of first refusal to re-occupy on completion.
7. Demolition under a permit issued by the City, sought in good faith to remove the unit from the market.
8. Owner move-in for the landlord, or the landlord’s spouse, child or parent, as a principal residence for at least thirty-six consecutive months. This is the most heavily conditioned ground in the Ordinance and has its own sections below.
9. Recovery of an owner’s own principal residence temporarily let, where the landlord previously occupied it as a principal residence and has the right to recover it under the existing rental agreement.
10. Failure to vacate at the end of a temporary rental agreement entered into during substantial repairs, after written notice that the tenant’s own unit is ready or that the ninety-day term has expired.

A numbering warning worth heeding. Ordinance 7950-N.S. restated Chapter 13.76 in 2024 and the just causes are now numbered (1) to (10) with owner move-in at (A)(8). The Board’s own regulations still cite owner move-in as Section 13(a)(9) or 13.76.130.A.9 — Regulations 1380, 1381, 1382 and the title of Regulation 1383 all do — and the ordinance’s internal cross-references were not fully conformed either: inside the owner move-in subsection, paragraph (d) speaks of notices “pursuant to subsection 13.76.130(A)(7)” and paragraph (g) sends the reader to “the rules set forth in Subsection 13.76.130(A)(7) below” for indexing rules that in fact sit at (A)(8)(h). We therefore cite the substance throughout and treat a source citing 13.76.130.A.9 for an owner move-in as using the pre-2024 numbering rather than as wrong about the law. Because the 2024 measure restates the chapter with no strike-through, it proves what the chapter now says and is silent about what it used to say; the renumbering is attributed to the Board’s unconformed regulations and the ordinance’s own unconformed cross-references, not asserted from a deletion nobody can read.

Four things, and a failure on any of them is a defence. This is where most Berkeley possession actions are actually decided.

• State the cause and every element of it. Section 13.76.130(B): a landlord’s failure to specify the good cause in the notice of termination or the notice to quit and in the complaint for possession “shall be a defense to any action for possession”. Rent Board Regulation 1310(A) requires “the specific good cause and every element of that good cause” to be stated in writing in the notice, Regulation 1310(B) requires the notice to be attached as an exhibit to the complaint, and Regulation 1310(C) repeats that a failure is a defence.
• Carry the Rent Board statement. Section 13.76.130(B) also requires every notice terminating tenancy to include a statement that advice regarding the notice is available from the Rent Board, the current telephone number for the Board’s housing counselling service, and the current address of the Board’s website.
• Allege compliance. Section 13.76.130(C) requires the landlord, in any action except one under grounds (6), (7) or (10), to allege as to each rental unit on the property substantial compliance with the implied warranty of habitability and compliance with Sections 13.76.100 and 13.76.080, as of the notice date and as of the filing date.
• File it with the Board. Section 13.76.130(D) requires the landlord to file with the Board a copy of any notice of termination, notice to quit, and summons and complaint “no later than three business days after the tenant has been served”. Rent Board Regulation 1312(A) states the same duty as three days and Regulation 1312(B) makes a failure to file a defence to any action for possession. Where the two differ on how the days are counted, the shorter reading is the safe one.

And a specificity duty inside the notice to cease. For the ground at Section 13.76.130(A)(2), any notice to cease “must state allegations in sufficient detail so that a reasonable person would understand the alleged violation and resulting injury, including the specific term of the lease allegedly violated, the date of the alleged violation, and the injury that occurred as a result”.

The California periods still have to be met on top: three days to pay rent or quit under Code of Civil Procedure 1161(2), excluding Saturdays, Sundays and other judicial holidays; three days to perform or quit under Section 1161(3); and at least sixty days to end a periodic tenancy under Civil Code 1946.1, reduced to thirty days where a tenant has resided in the dwelling less than one year. A Berkeley notice must satisfy the state period and state a Berkeley good cause and carry the Board statement and be filed. Our California notice to vacate and three-day pay rent or quit forms handle the state layer.

It is republished every January 1, so the figures printed in the ordinance are base amounts rather than current ones. Section 13.76.130(A)(8)(g) requires standard relocation assistance for a tenant household where at least one occupant has resided in the unit for a year or more, and an additional payment for households that qualify as low-income, or include a disabled or elderly tenant or a minor child, or whose tenancy began before January 1, 1999. Section 13.76.130(A)(8)(h) then indexes both: “Effective January 1 of each year beginning in 2018, the fees set forth above… shall be increased in an amount based on the Consumer Price Index — All Urban Consumers in the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose Region averaged for the 12-month period ending June 30, of each year… Any increase shall be published by the Board on or before October 31st of each year.”

The definitions travel with the payment and are worth stating because they are narrower than they look: “low-income” is the lower-income limit under Section 8 of the United States Housing Act of 1937 or Health and Safety Code Section 50079.5; “disabled” takes the Fair Employment and Housing Act meaning in Government Code Section 12926; “elderly” means sixty years of age or older; a “minor child” is under eighteen; and a tenancy that “began prior to January 1, 1999” means one where an original occupant, as the Board’s regulations define that term, still permanently resides in the unit.

The current figures, with their year. Effective January 1, 2026 the Rent Board published a standard payment of nineteen thousand four hundred thirteen dollars and an additional payment of six thousand four hundred seventy-one dollars, an adjustment of 1.5 per cent approved at the Board’s special meeting on October 16, 2025, applying to owner move-in and to Ellis Act withdrawals alike. The codified base amounts are fifteen thousand dollars and five thousand dollars. A page that prints the codified figures as current is roughly a third low.

The money moves through escrow. Within ten days of serving a notice under the owner move-in ground the landlord must deposit the standard assistance with the City or its designated agent, and within ten days of the deposit the City releases it to the household unless the landlord notifies the Rent Stabilization Program in writing that it disputes eligibility. A tenant claiming the additional payment must notify the landlord and the Program in writing within thirty days of the filing of the termination notice, and the landlord must deposit the additional payment within ten days of that claim. Disputes go to a Board petition or to court; Rent Board Regulation 1383 provides that the sole ground for disputing the standard payment is the duration of the tenancy, sets out the five grounds for the additional payment, requires the petition to be heard within thirty days of filing and decided within thirty days of the hearing, and lists the evidence the Board will look at.

What happens if the landlord does not pay. “Failure of the landlord to make any payment specified herein shall be a defense to any action to recover possession”, and where the tenants have already vacated the landlord “shall be liable to the tenants for three times the amount of the payment as well as reasonable attorney fees”. A tenant who prevails in an action under the owner move-in subsection recovers all reasonable attorney fees. A landlord may rescind the notice before release of the funds and get the money back; after release, rescission requires the tenants’ written agreement to stay, and the tenants then account for what was spent on moving costs.

Several classes, and the conditions on the landlord are as tight as the protections on the tenant. This is the ground on which Berkeley evictions most often fail, and almost none of it appears in a general template.

• Who counts as the landlord. The owner of record holding at least a fifty per cent interest as of the notice and continuously until surrender or judgment, and not a lessor, sublessor or agent. Rent Board Regulation 1382 allows a married couple, or registered domestic partners, holding fifty per cent together to satisfy that test, and provides that ownership interests may not otherwise be combined.
• Comparable vacancies bar the eviction. Possession may not be recovered if a comparable unit owned by the landlord in the City was vacant and available at the time of the decision, or becomes vacant at any time before possession is recovered. Evidence that a comparable unit was vacant and available within ninety days before the notice creates a presumption that one was available at the time of the decision, and the court “must find the existence of the presumed fact unless and until the contrary is proven by a preponderance of the evidence”.
• A non-comparable vacancy must be offered. The landlord must offer any non-comparable unit that becomes available before possession is recovered, at a rent based on the tenant’s current rent with an adjustment for condition, size and amenities; Rent Board Regulation 1301 gives the Board a petition procedure, a Unit Comparison form, a hearing within fifteen days and a decision within ten days, to fix that rent when the parties cannot agree. Regulation 1380(D) makes the offer an essential element of the ground, so failing to make it — or deliberately making a unit unfit — is a defence.
• One unit per property, ever. Once possession of a unit has been recovered for a landlord’s own occupancy, no current or future landlord may use the ground on any other unit on that property; all future owner occupancies must be of that same unit.
• Good faith is policed after the fact. It is evidence of bad faith if the landlord or the qualified relative does not move in within three months of surrender, or does not occupy as a principal residence for thirty-six consecutive months, and Rent Board Regulation 1380(C) makes occupancy of less than thirty-six months a rebuttable presumption that the eviction was not in good faith. Regulation 1380(A) requires the notice and the complaint to name the individuals and their relationship to the landlord, and provides that failure “shall constitute a defense to the eviction action and shall render the notice of termination legally invalid”.
• The school-year protection. Possession may not be recovered where any tenant has a custodial or family relationship with a minor child residing in the unit, that tenant has resided there twelve months or more, and the effective date of the notice falls during the school year — defined as the first day of instruction for the Fall Semester through the first day of the month following the last day of instruction for the Spring Semester, as posted on the Berkeley Unified School District website. “Custodial relationship” and “family relationship” are both defined in the subsection.
• Long-term, elderly, disabled and small-landlord protections. Possession may not be recovered where any tenant is sixty or older and has resided on the property five years or more; is disabled and has resided there five years or more; or has resided there five years or more where the landlord holds a ten per cent or greater interest in five or more residential rental units in the City. Three narrow exceptions apply, including where the owner holds three or fewer units in the City with no more than a nine per cent interest in any other.
• The tenant has to claim it. A tenant claiming a protected class must submit a statement with supporting evidence to the landlord, and a failure to do so at any point before the trial date “shall be deemed an admission that the tenant is not protected”.
• Right of first refusal. Where possession is recovered under the ground, the tenant must be given the right of first refusal to re-occupy on the unit’s next vacancy, and Board staff report to the Board at least twice a year on the occupancy status of units recovered in the previous thirty-six months.

No, and this is the clause most likely to be sitting in a Berkeley landlord’s current template. Berkeley Mun. Code 13.78.017: “It is unlawful for an owner of residential property, or the owner’s agent, to charge any fee for the termination of their tenancy prior to the expiration of a lease.” The section preserves what California law already gives — “nothing in this section shall prohibit a landlord from recovering any charges, fees or damages associated with termination of tenancies that are authorized under California Civil Code Section 1951.2” — and expressly leaves room for negotiation once the tenant has said they intend to leave. What it kills is the flat fee: the “lease break fee”, the “two months’ rent to terminate” clause, the fixed liquidated buy-out.

Two neighbouring sections finish the job:

• Section 13.78.016 makes it unlawful to charge an existing tenant a non-refundable fee “for the purpose of renewing a tenancy, in whole or in part, including any fee associated with the departure of a roommate or to request to add or replace a roommate in a pre-existing household”. A lawful screening fee under California Civil Code 1950.6 for the incoming roommate is expressly preserved.
• Section 13.78.018 applies the whole chapter “to all residential rental agreements regardless of any contractual language in any rental agreement or lease to the contrary” and provides that “any provision of an existing rental agreement or lease that violates the provisions of this chapter shall be null, void, and unenforceable”.

The price of getting it wrong. Section 13.78.020 makes the owner liable to any applicant or tenant harmed for a civil penalty of two hundred fifty dollars for a failure to comply with any part of the chapter, allows a civil action for all appropriate relief including damages and costs, and entitles a prevailing plaintiff to reasonable attorney fees.

The screening-fee statement in the same chapter. Section 13.78.010 requires a landlord who charges an applicant a fee to purchase a consumer credit report and process an application to provide, in the rental application or in a separate disclosure before the fee is received, a clear and conspicuous Tenant Screening Fee Rights Statement together with the maximum fee cap under California Civil Code 1950.6(b). The prescribed wording tells the applicant they have “the right to a copy of your consumer credit report if one is obtained with your screening fee, a refund of any unused portion of the fee and a receipt of the costs of the screening”. Section 13.78.015 requires the Rent Stabilization Board to calculate and publish the maximum allowable screening fee annually, which is why the ceiling is a published figure rather than a fixed statutory one.

Not on a fully covered unit, for any tenancy beginning on or after February 6, 2024. Section 13.76.100(E) allows a tenant to be responsible for utilities only where one of three things is true:

1. the utility charge is included in the base rent and does not increase during the tenancy;
2. the utility service is separately or individually metered and the lease agreement requires that the tenant registers the utility account in their own name; or
3. the utility service complies with Board regulations specifying other technologies, mechanisms or policies the Rent Board deems functionally similar to separate and individual metering.

The second basis is a drafting requirement: the lease itself has to carry the obligation to put the account in the tenant’s name, which is why the builder writes that sentence into the generated document when the separately metered option is chosen.

The scope limiter is precise. “This prohibition shall not apply to leases entered into before February 6, 2024 to the extent that the lease provides that the tenant shall pay for one or more utility. For all other tenancies, this prohibition shall apply regardless of whether the written lease allows for split utility charges or ration utility billing services.” Where a lease entered into after that date charges in violation, the landlord’s remedy is not a charge to the tenant but a petition under Section 13.76.120 to adjust the rent ceiling to include the average cost of utilities for the unit.

One coverage nuance a careful drafter will notice: because the rule lives in Section 13.76.100, it is one of the three sections a Partially-covered unit escapes under Section 13.76.040(J). The builder therefore records the basis for a partially covered unit as the parties’ agreement rather than as a statutory requirement — and notes that a change in coverage would bring the rule into play.

Yes, but only with a form notice handed to the tenant at the moment of signing, and a filing with the Rent Board. Chapter 13.79 puts three duties on an auto-renewing Berkeley lease:

• Section 13.79.010 — a landlord who has leased a unit under a written lease providing for automatic renewal or extension “shall provide the lessee(s) a form notice of the lessees’ intent not to renew or extend the lease at the time the lease is executed“. Not on request, not at the end of the term: at execution.
• Section 13.79.020 — a tenant who gives that notice, or any other writing, “at any time prior to 30 days before the expiration of the lease” is not subject to the automatic renewal clause.
• Section 13.79.030 — the landlord must tell the Rent Board that the lease contains an automatic renewal provision: where the landlord is subject to Section 13.76.080 registration, at the time the Vacancy Registration Form is filed; where the landlord is not, within twenty days of lease execution.

Section 13.79.040 gives any person aggrieved by a failure a civil action for damages and costs, with reasonable attorney fees to a prevailing plaintiff. Tick the automatic-renewal box in the builder and the generated lease carries all three duties on its face.

Disclosure first, thirty-day rescission, and a filing window that starts on day thirty-one. Section 13.79.050 applies “to every controlled rental unit and all rental units subject to the ‘good cause’ eviction protections codified in Berkeley Municipal Code Section 13.76.130” — which, given the coverage test above, means partially covered units too.

• A buyout agreement is one in which the landlord pays the tenant money or other consideration to vacate. An agreement settling a pending unlawful detainer action is not one, and neither is an offer to settle one.
• Before making a buyout offer for a controlled unit the landlord must give each tenant a written disclosure on a City or Board form stating that the tenant has a right not to enter into a buyout agreement, may consult an attorney first, may rescind for up to thirty days after full execution, and may consult the Rent Stabilization Board — with a space for each tenant to sign and date the receipt.
• Every buyout agreement must carry, in bold letters of at least fourteen-point type in close proximity to the tenant’s signature space, the prescribed paragraph: the agreement may be cancelled in writing at any time before the thirtieth day after all parties have signed; the tenant has a right not to enter into it; the tenant may consult an attorney or the Board; and the Board may have information about other buyout agreements in the neighbourhood.
• An agreement that misses any requirement “shall not be effective and shall be void at the option of the affected tenant(s)”, though a remedy may not displace a later tenant of the unit.
• The landlord keeps each signed disclosure for five years with a record of the date it was given, gives each tenant a copy of the agreement at execution, and files a copy with the Board no sooner than the thirty-first day and no later than sixty days after execution. The Board keeps the agreements in a separate confidential file and publishes only aggregate data from which no individual can be identified.

Rescission is exercised by hand delivery, email or United States mail of a statement to the landlord no later than the thirtieth day after execution.

A notice due at the beginning of every tenancy whose omission is a defence to an eviction. Section 13.79.060(E)(1): “Landlords are required to provide a notice regarding the provisions of Section 13.79.060 to all Tenants using the required form prescribed by the City staff, at the beginning of a tenancy and with any notice of termination of tenancy. Failure to provide said notice shall be a defense in any unlawful detainer action.” The Rent Board lists it first in its own summary of current Berkeley-specific lease requirements, for any tenancy beginning after April 2017.

The section it describes forbids a landlord — including an agent, contractor or subcontractor — to do eleven things in bad faith. Among them: influencing or attempting to influence a tenant to vacate through fraud, intimidation or unauthorised physical acts; threatening to terminate a tenancy or evict by fraud, intimidation or coercion, expressly including threatening to report any tenant, occupant or guest to United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement; reducing, interrupting or withholding services or amenities, including the quiet use and enjoyment of the unit; interfering with privacy, including by requesting citizenship or residency status or a social security number other than to qualify an applicant before the tenancy begins, or by releasing confidential information; abusing the limited right of access under Civil Code 1954; abusing or exploiting an actual or perceived disability or characteristic, including participation in a housing choice voucher programme; failing to perform repairs in a timely and professional manner, or to follow industry protocols minimising exposure to noise, dust, lead paint or asbestos; threatening not to perform required repairs; failing to accept, acknowledge, promptly deposit or receipt rent; offering payments to a tenant to vacate without first giving the prescribed written notice of rights; and engaging a tenant in human trafficking as a condition of continued occupancy.

Before suing over the repair limbs the tenant must first notify the landlord and allow fifteen days, extended where the landlord says the work will take longer and gives a reasonable completion period. Remedies are injunctive relief, actual damages including mental and emotional distress — trebled where the defendant acted in knowing violation or reckless disregard — and a civil penalty of between one thousand and ten thousand dollars for each violation, with an additional penalty of up to five thousand dollars for each violation against a person who is disabled within Government Code Section 12926 or aged sixty-five or over. A prevailing defendant recovers fees only where the court determines the action was wholly without merit or frivolous. Retaliation for exercising rights under the section is prohibited and may be raised as an affirmative defence.

No — and since 2024 the right is written into the Rent Ordinance itself. Section 13.76.135, added by Ordinance 7950-N.S., applies to parcels containing ten or more rental units, and to parcels of one to nine units managed by a property management company as defined by Board regulation.

Tenants representing at least fifty per cent of the occupied rental units may establish a Tenant Association by petition, which may be made up of individual or collective written statements. Landlord and Association must then “confer with each other in good faith regarding housing services and conditions, community life, landlord-tenant relations, rent increases, and other issues of common interest or concern”. The section defines conferring in good faith with examples: maintaining a designated point of contact, engaging in regular communications, responding to reasonable requests for information, allowing participation by non-resident advocates, providing adequate time for limited-English speakers to obtain translation services, providing and adhering to timelines for addressing habitability concerns, and negotiating and putting agreements into writing. A landlord may not prohibit a tenant from allowing an Association representative to attend a meeting between the landlord and one or more tenants.

On fourteen days’ written request — or on a single standing request where the Association meets at a regular time and place — the landlord or a representative must attend at least one meeting per calendar quarter, and remain until the agenda is complete unless the meeting runs beyond two hours. “Organizing Activities” are defined to include initiating contact with tenants including door-to-door surveys, joining or supporting an Association, distributing literature, requesting or providing information, offering assistance, convening meetings which may occur without the landlord present, and otherwise acting on behalf of tenants on issues of common concern.

Two provisions make the right unwaivable in a lease. Section 13.76.040(C) folds “the right for tenants to organize as set forth in Section 13.76.135” into the definition of housing services, so interference is also a decrease in services a tenant can take to the Board. And Section 13.76.170 voids any provision in a rental agreement that waives or modifies any provision of the Chapter. Section 13.76.135(E) gives a Tenant Association or an individual tenant a civil proceeding for injunctive relief and actual damages, with reasonable attorney fees to a prevailing plaintiff.

Almost never, and the exceptions are sequenced rather than open. Chapter 13.106, the Ronald V. Dellums Fair Chance Access to Housing Ordinance, was added by Ordinance 7692-N.S. in 2020 and it governs how a Berkeley tenancy may be selected in the first place.

Section 13.106.040(A) is the rule: except as paragraphs B and C provide, a housing provider “shall not, at any time or by any means, whether direct or indirect, inquire about an Applicant’s Criminal History, require an Applicant to disclose their Criminal History, require an Applicant to authorize the release of their Criminal History or, if such information is received, base an Adverse Action in whole or in part on an Applicant’s Criminal History.”

The two carve-outs come with a procedure attached. Where federal or state law requires automatic exclusion for certain convictions, the provider must first tell the applicant in advance that it will check for those types of criminal history, request and obtain written consent or let the applicant withdraw, and comply with the notice duties below; any adverse action is then limited to what the law requires. Where the provider consults the California lifetime sex offender registry under Penal Code Section 290.46(j)(1), it must first have stated that requirement in writing in the rental application, then determine that the applicant qualifies under every criterion except criminal history, then give the applicant a conditional rental agreement committing the housing subject only to the criminal-history criteria, then inform the applicant and obtain written consent. Either way the consent request must tell the applicant the information may have to be shared with the City for enforcement.

Section 13.106.040(E) governs the adverse action itself. The provider must give a written notice stating the reasons, instructions for filing a complaint with the City, a list of local legal service providers with contact information, and a copy of any background check report or other criminal-history information relied on — and must give the applicant an opportunity to respond with rebutting or mitigating information before the application is denied, at no cost to the applicant. Section 13.106.050(A) separately makes it unlawful to produce or disseminate any housing advertisement expressing, directly or indirectly, that a person with criminal history will not be considered or may not apply, and Section 13.106.050(C) requires the City’s rights notice to be displayed prominently in application materials, on the provider’s website, and at any rental or leasing office — a duty the Rent Board also lists in its summary of Berkeley lease requirements.

It can ask to be consulted; it cannot make an unreasonable refusal into an eviction. Section 13.76.130(A)(2) contains a sublet protection that expressly overrides the lease: “Notwithstanding any contrary provision in this Chapter or in the rental agreement, a landlord is not entitled to recover possession of a rental unit under this Subsection where a tenant permits his or her rental unit to be occupied by a subtenant”, provided the landlord unreasonably withheld consent, the tenant remains an actual occupant, and the number of tenants and subtenants does not exceed the number originally allowed by the agreement or by the Board’s regulations, whichever is greater.

Withholding consent is deemed unreasonable where all four of the following are true: the tenant’s written request was given at least two weeks before the subtenancy began; the proposed subtenant has, on the landlord’s written request, completed the landlord’s standard form application or provided enough information for a standard background check including references and credit, income and other reasonable background information; the proposed subtenant meets the landlord’s customary occupancy qualifications and has not refused to be bound by the terms of the current agreement; and the landlord has not articulated in writing a well-founded reason for refusing consent.

Read that list from the landlord’s side and it is a workable process: ask for the application, run the screening you would run for any applicant, apply your normal qualification standards, and if you refuse, put the reason in writing. What the Ordinance forbids is silence followed by an eviction.

One related rule sits in the Board’s regulations rather than the ordinance. Regulation 1313 records the Board’s long-standing policy that a landlord “may not unilaterally change the terms of tenancy under Civil Code Section 827 and then evict the tenant for violation of the changed term unless the tenant has expressly agreed to it”, in a writing signed by both parties with the tenant’s knowing consent — and applies that expressly to a new smoking prohibition imposed under California Civil Code 1947.5 on a tenancy that began before January 1, 2012. That is why the Rent Board advises Berkeley landlords to put a smoking clause in the lease at the start of every new tenancy: it cannot reliably be added later.

Two questions, two different answers, and collapsing them is the commonest error on the Berkeley SERP.

Eviction. California Civil Code 1946.2 requires just cause after twelve months of occupancy by all tenants, or twenty-four months by one, and Civil Code 1946.2(g)(1) preserves a local ordinance that is more protective. Berkeley’s Chapter 13.76 is more protective in the way that matters most to a new tenancy: it has no qualifying period at all, so a Berkeley tenant is protected from the first day; its ten grounds are narrower than the state list; its notices carry duties the state does not impose; and it puts registration and habitability compliance in the way of the complaint. For a covered or partially covered Berkeley unit, the Berkeley grounds are the operative eviction law.

Rent. Here the analysis really is separate. Where Berkeley’s ceiling does not reach a unit — because the unit is partially covered or fully exempt — the state cap in Civil Code 1947.12 has to be tested on its own terms and its own exemptions, including the fifteen-year new-construction exemption and the separately-alienable exemption. That second exemption is conditional in a way many templates ignore: it is available only where the owner is not a real estate investment trust, a corporation, or a limited liability company with a corporate member, and the lease carries the statutory exemption statement verbatim under Civil Code 1947.12(d)(5)(B)(i). No statement, no exemption.

Costa-Hawkins. The Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, Civil Code 1954.50 et seq., is what creates Berkeley’s middle class of unit at all, and Berkeley wrote its exemptions to track it exactly — the single-family exemption applies “only as long as” Costa-Hawkins requires it, and the certificate-of-occupancy standard is expressed as contingent on Civil Code 1954.52. Costa-Hawkins limits what a local rent ordinance may do about the rent. It says nothing about the grounds for recovering possession, which is why a Berkeley house or condominium can have an uncapped rent and a good-cause requirement simultaneously.

Our California rent increase laws guide and California lease termination laws guide cover the state layer in depth. This page does not repeat them.

All of them. A Berkeley lease is a California lease plus the local layer, so the statewide set is generated in full: the Megan’s Law database notice prescribed verbatim by Civil Code 2079.10a; owner and manager identification under Civil Code 1962; the bed bug information notice under Civil Code 1954.603, for which the Rent Board publishes its own Berkeley form; the mold disclosure and booklet under Health and Safety Code 26147 and 26148; military ordnance proximity under Civil Code 1940.7; the flood hazard notice under Government Code 8589.45; the federal lead-based paint disclosure for pre-1978 housing; and, where smoking is limited, the areas provision under Civil Code 1947.5. Conditional blocks cover the shared gas or electric meter under Civil Code 1940.9, the demolition permit notice under Civil Code 1940.6, a pending methamphetamine remediation order under Health and Safety Code 25400.28, and the state rent-cap exemption statement.

What Berkeley adds is the local set — coverage and the Notice at Commencement of Tenancy, registration status and its consequences, the increase mechanism, deposit interest, good cause, relocation, the Tenant Protection Ordinance notice, the right to organize, the screening-fee statement, the forbidden fees, automatic renewal, buyout rights and the utility rule. Thirteen blocks in all, and the builder emits them for a partially covered unit as readily as for a fully covered one.

What neither requires: a radon disclosure, an asbestos disclosure to tenants, a carbon monoxide disclosure or the Real Estate Transfer Disclosure Statement. Health and Safety Code 25915 directs its asbestos notice to the owner’s own employees in a pre-1979 building, not to tenants, and Civil Code 1102.6 prescribes the transfer statement for sales of residential real property. Template pages that fold either into a lease checklist are pointing landlords at the wrong body of law. The builder offers an asbestos block only as an expressly voluntary one, labelled as not required.

Berkeley’s non-waiver rule is one sentence long and reaches further than most. Section 13.76.170: “Any provision in a rental agreement which waives or modifies any provision of this Chapter is contrary to public policy and void.” The word modifies is doing real work — a clause that merely narrows an ordinance right is void as surely as one that surrenders it, and there is no carve-out for a negotiated term or for consideration paid.

• A surrender-at-term clause. Possession may be recovered only on a ground in Section 13.76.130(A), and ground (2) expressly excludes “the obligation to surrender possession on proper notice as required by law” from the lease terms whose violation can support an eviction.
• A lease-termination fee (Section 13.78.017) and a renewal or roommate fee (Section 13.78.016), both void and unenforceable under Section 13.78.018 whatever the lease says.
• A utility charge outside the three permitted bases on a fully covered unit for a tenancy beginning on or after February 6, 2024 (Section 13.76.100(E)).
• A registration-fee pass-through without the Board’s express prior approval, and a penalty pass-through in any circumstances (Section 13.76.080(L)).
• A waiver of the right to organize, which Section 13.76.040(C) makes a housing service and Section 13.76.170 protects.
• A waiver of deposit interest or of the fiduciary duty under Section 13.76.070, and any increase of the deposit during the tenancy contrary to Rent Board Regulation 705.
• A nonrefundable deposit, forbidden by California Civil Code 1950.5(n), together with everything California Civil Code 1953 voids — waivers of rights under Civil Code 1950.5 or 1954, of the right to assert a future cause of action, of a notice or hearing required by law, of procedural rights in litigation about the tenancy, and of the landlord’s duty of care.

Attorney fees: reciprocity plus six one-way municipal entitlements. Berkeley does not ban a lease fee clause, so California Civil Code 1717 governs the clause itself — a one-sided clause is construed as running to whichever party prevails, and a waiver of that reciprocity is void. Sitting on top of it are fee awards that do not come from the lease and run one way: Section 13.76.130(A)(8) gives a tenant who prevails in an owner move-in action all reasonable attorney fees, and treble the relocation payment plus fees where the payment was not made; Section 13.76.135 gives fees to a prevailing plaintiff in a right-to-organize action; Section 13.78.020 does the same under the screening and lease-fee chapter; Section 13.79.040 under the automatic-renewal chapter; and Section 13.79.060 under the Tenant Protection Ordinance, where a prevailing defendant recovers only if the action was wholly without merit or frivolous. Because Section 13.76.170 voids a provision that modifies a Chapter 13.76 right, a clause attempting to cap or condition those entitlements is void rather than merely ineffective. The builder therefore offers the reciprocal wording only.

And the sanctions are not only civil. Section 13.76.150(B) gives a tenant the right to regain possession plus actual damages where a no-fault ground was false, in bad faith, or not acted on within two months of the tenant leaving, with seven hundred fifty dollars or three times actual damages for wilful conduct. Section 13.76.150(C) lets the City Attorney and the Board seek injunctive relief independently. And Section 13.76.190 makes a wilful violation of Section 13.76.130 punishable by a fine of up to five hundred dollars and ninety days in jail for a first offence, and up to a thousand dollars and six months for any subsequent one.

Printed and enforceable are two different questions, so it is worth asking directly. A line of recent California appellate authority has held that a local ordinance requiring a landlord to pay relocation assistance when a tenant moves out following a lawful rent increase on a unit exempt from local rent control conflicts with the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, because conditioning the rent increase on a payment interferes with the landlord’s statutory right to set the rent on an exempt unit. That reasoning is about economic-displacement payments — payments triggered by a rent increase.

Berkeley’s relocation payment is not one of those. The payment on this page arises under Berkeley Mun. Code 13.76.130(A)(8), and its trigger is an owner move-in eviction — a ground for recovering possession, not a rent increase. The Rent Board describes the same amounts as applying to an Ellis Act withdrawal under the City’s Ellis implementation ordinance, which is likewise an eviction-side obligation. Costa-Hawkins pre-empts local control of the rent that may be charged; it does not pre-empt local control of the grounds on which possession may be recovered, and Berkeley’s own ordinance says as much by making both of its rent-side exemptions expressly contingent on Costa-Hawkins while leaving Section 13.76.130 untouched. On its face, therefore, the economic-displacement line of authority does not reach the payment described above.

What we are not saying. We have not read those opinions in full for this build, so this page does not cite them as authority for anything it asserts and does not extend their reasoning beyond the economic-displacement provisions they addressed. And Berkeley Municipal Code Chapter 13.84, Relocation Services and Payments for Residential Tenant Households, could not be obtained from a primary source for this build — the municipal-code host refused every request with an identical short page — so we state nothing about what that chapter contains, including whether any payment in it is triggered by a rent increase. A landlord contemplating a payment obligation outside Section 13.76.130 should read Chapter 13.84 and take advice before relying on it. That is an open question on this page, not a resolved one.

Four, and every one of them is deliberately absent from the generated lease. A lease may be signed for years; a figure baked into it is a figure that will be wrong. The generated PDF states who publishes each number, when, and under what authority, and sends the parties to the current sheet.

One figure that is not indexed, and should not be treated as though it were: the civil penalties. The two-hundred-fifty-dollar penalty in Section 13.78.020, the seven-hundred-fifty-dollar figure in Section 13.76.150, and the one-thousand-to-ten-thousand-dollar range in Section 13.79.060 are fixed ordinance text with no publication duty attached. Applying the indexing logic to them would invent a duty the Ordinance does not create.

The template SERP for a Berkeley lease is owned entirely by statewide California pages — the deepest ranker for this query is a California lease template at just over four thousand words, and the Berkeley-specific pages that exist are either the Rent Board’s own short administrative pages or a third-party rent-control explainer with no lease document attached. That is the gap this page exists to fill, and it is why the errors below are errors of omission as much as of statement.

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