Free Los Angeles Residential Lease Agreement
A configurable Los Angeles residential lease agreement that generates a signable multi-page PDF. The form asks the question that actually decides everything — whether the unit is under the Rent Stabilization Ordinance, the Just Cause Ordinance, the state Tenant Protection Act, or none of them — and the lease branches on your answer.
A Los Angeles residential lease agreement is a California lease with a second body of law sitting on top of it. The California layer is the Civil Code, and it is the same in Bakersfield as it is in Boyle Heights. The Los Angeles layer is the Los Angeles Municipal Code — principally the Rent Stabilization Ordinance at chapter XV article 1, the Just Cause for Eviction Ordinance at chapter XVI article 5, the Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance at chapter IV article 5.3, and the Right to Counsel Program Ordinance at chapter XVI article 6. Almost everything that makes a Los Angeles lease different from a California lease turns on a single question that most templates never ask: which of those ordinances reaches this particular unit? The answer decides the rent ceiling, the grounds on which the tenancy can be ended, whether the landlord may lawfully collect rent at all, and how much the landlord owes if the tenancy ends through no fault of the tenant. This page builds the lease around that question, and states every annually republished figure as a mechanism — who publishes it, on what date, under what authority — so that a signed lease cannot quietly go stale.
Los Angeles Lease Rules at a Glance
RSO Coverage Test
First Certificate of Occupancy
JCO Protection Starts
6 Months or Lease End
Termination Notice Filing
3 Business Days
Deposit Interest
Annual, City Duty
Four Los Angeles Rules That Catch Landlords Out
First, exemption is a filing, not a fact. Under LAMC 151.05 G a landlord claiming the unit is outside the Rent Stabilization Ordinance must file a written declaration with supporting documents by the last day of January each year — and if the landlord does not, the unit is deemed to be subject to the chapter. Second, registration is a precondition to collecting rent: LAMC 151.05 A says no landlord shall demand or accept rent without first serving a valid registration statement on the tenant, and the Just Cause Ordinance has its own version at LAMC 165.10 B. Third, unpaid rent is not automatically a ground to evict — the amount owed must exceed one month of HUD fair market rent for a unit of that bedroom count, and the notice must state the bedroom count. Fourth, every written termination notice must be filed with the Housing Department within three business days of service, and it is the duty landlords miss most, because nothing in the eviction process prompts it.
How to Fill Out This Los Angeles Lease Agreement
The order below is deliberate. In most states you can fill a lease from the top down. In Los Angeles you have to settle the coverage question before anything else means anything, because the same blank — the rent figure, the termination clause, the deposit line — is governed by different rules depending on the answer.
1. Settle the coverage question before you touch anything else
Look the parcel up on the Housing Department’s own lookup at zimas.lacity.org, open the Housing tab, and read the Rent Stabilization Ordinance and Just Cause Ordinance status. The Renter Protections Notice sends both landlords and tenants to exactly that tool. If you cannot resolve it, generate the conservative version — the form offers it — because assuming you are exempt when you are not is the mistake that costs a landlord the right to collect rent.
2. Record the first Certificate of Occupancy date, not the year built
This is the actual statutory test in LAMC 151.02, and it is not the same thing as the construction date. A temporary certificate counts. A building permit issued on or before October 1, 1978 with no certificate ever issued counts too, and brings the unit in.
3. Name the parties, the manager and the owner
Civ. Code 1962 requires the lease to name the person authorized to manage the premises and the owner or the owner’s agent for service of process and receipt of notices, each with a telephone number and a usual street address at which personal service may be made, and to state to whom and in what form rent is to be paid.
4. Record the tenant’s primary language
Two Los Angeles duties turn on it. LAMC 166.03 B requires the Notice of Right to Counsel in the tenant’s primary language where the Department has published a translation, and LAMC 151.31 D requires any buyout agreement to be written in the tenant’s primary language.
5. Record the bedroom count, because it is a legal fact here
Under LAMC 151.09 A.1 and 165.03 A the right to evict for nonpayment is limited to defaults where the amount due exceeds one month of fair market rent for a unit of equivalent size, and the written notice to the tenant shall state the number of bedrooms. A three-day notice that omits it does not comply with the ordinance.
6. List a payment method that is not electronic
LAMC 151.04 C makes it unlawful to demand or require an electronic funds transfer or online internet payment as the exclusive method of paying rent, security deposits, surcharges or other housing service fees. A lease naming only a resident portal is unlawful on its face, and the tenant may withhold rent until the landlord fixes it.
7. Total the security and elect the deposit interest method
The one-month cap is California law under Civ. Code 1950.5(c) and is covered in depth on the California security deposit laws guide. The interest duty is purely municipal: LAMC 151.06.02 requires annual interest on any deposit held for a year or more, and the section requires the landlord to choose between a direct payment and a rent credit and to notify the tenant of the choice in writing.
8. Generate, sign, and attach the current notices
Download the multi-page PDF and sign. Attach the current revision of the Renter Protections Notice and the Notice of Right to Counsel — not a copy saved last year. The Department revises the Protections Notice every July 1, and the July 2026 revision proves why it matters: it dropped a section that earlier revisions carried.
Build Your Los Angeles Residential Lease Agreement
Complete the fields below to generate a Los Angeles residential lease agreement as a signable multi-page PDF. The first block is the coverage block, and the generated lease branches on every answer in it: a Rent Stabilization unit gets the registration and rent-adjustment sections, a Just Cause unit gets the six-month attachment rule and its own relocation architecture, and a unit outside both still gets the three city-wide duties that bind every rental unit in Los Angeles. Before handing over keys, run proper tenant screening — but read the section on what a landlord may not ask an applicant first, because Los Angeles regulates what you may ask an applicant in a place nobody thinks to look. Pair the signed lease with a California move-in / move-out checklist.
Los Angeles Residential Lease Agreement Builder
1. Coverage — Which Los Angeles Ordinance Governs This Unit
Answer this block first. It decides the rent ceiling, the eviction grounds, the registration duty and the relocation exposure, and the generated lease branches on every answer. The Rent Stabilization Ordinance and the Just Cause Ordinance are mutually exclusive — L.A. Mun. Code 165.04 A excludes RSO units from the JCO. Look the parcel up at zimas.lacity.org before you choose.
2. Parties
3. Premises
4. Term
Under L.A. Mun. Code 165.04 the Just Cause Ordinance does not apply until the initial original lease expires or the tenant has six months of continuous lawful occupancy, whichever comes first. The generated lease states the date that protection attaches.
5. Rent
L.A. Mun. Code 151.04 C makes it unlawful to require electronic funds transfer or an online portal as the exclusive method of paying rent, deposits, surcharges or housing service fees. List at least one non-electronic method.
6. Security Deposit — and the Los Angeles interest duty
The one-month cap is California law (Civ. Code 1950.5(c)). The interest duty is a Los Angeles one with no state equivalent — L.A. Mun. Code 151.06.02 requires annual interest on any deposit held for a year or more.
7. Utilities & Services
Every selection is written into the lease. Where the tenant’s gas or electric meter also serves areas outside the unit, Civ. Code 1940.9 requires a written arrangement — check the shared-meter disclosure below.
8. Los Angeles City Disclosures
These are municipal duties. The first two bind every residential unit in the City regardless of RSO or JCO status; the registration blocks are coverage-dependent.
9. California State Disclosures
These come from state law and are covered in depth on the California lease page. All eleven are emitted into the generated lease.
10. Other Provisions
Civ. Code 1717 makes any attorney-fee clause reciprocal by operation of law, so the option below generates a prevailing-party clause running both ways. Note that a mid-tenancy no-pets term cannot be used to remove a pet kept and allowed before the change (L.A. Mun. Code 151.09 D and 165.03 B.4).
Is My Unit Under the RSO, the Just Cause Ordinance, AB 1482, or None of Them?
A Los Angeles rental unit sits in one of four positions, and they are not a ladder — they are four separate circles. It can be under the Rent Stabilization Ordinance, which controls both rent and evictions. It can be under the Just Cause for Eviction Ordinance, which controls evictions but expressly does not control rent. It can be outside both City ordinances but inside the California Tenant Protection Act, which supplies a rent cap and a just-cause rule. Or it can be outside all three. What almost every competing page gets wrong is the relationship between the first two: they are mutually exclusive, not cumulative.
Here is the whole test in one table. Everything else on this page is detail underneath it.
| Regime | What it controls | Which units it reaches | Authority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rent Stabilization Ordinance (RSO) | Rent ceiling and eviction grounds and registration | Rental units whose structure’s first Certificate of Occupancy issued on or before October 1, 1978, plus twelve further exclusions and carve-backs. Expressly includes duplexes, condominiums, mobile homes and long-stay hotel rooms. | LAMC 151.02; 151.06; 151.09 |
| Just Cause for Eviction Ordinance (JCO) | Eviction grounds and relocation only — no rent ceiling | Any dwelling or unit intended for human habitation in the City that is not an RSO unit, including single-family homes, condominiums, accessory dwelling units and new construction — but only after the initial lease expires or six months of occupancy, whichever comes first. | LAMC 165.02; 165.03; 165.04 |
| California Tenant Protection Act | Rent cap and just cause, at state level | Residential rental property other than housing built within the previous 15 years, subject to its own exemptions. In practice it is the rent cap for JCO units, because the JCO sets none. | Civ. Code 1946.2; 1947.12 |
| City-wide duties | Harassment, the Right to Counsel notice, the Renter Protections Notice | Every residential rental unit in the City, including single-family residences and condominiums, regardless of all of the above. | LAMC 45.31; 45.32; 165.05 A; 166.02; 166.03 B |
The sentence that decides the architecture
LAMC 165.04 opens: “This Article shall not apply until the expiration of an initial original lease or after six months of continuous and lawful occupancy, whichever comes first, or to the following types of residential real properties or residential circumstances: (A) Rental units subject to the Rent Stabilization Ordinance.” That first lettered exclusion is the whole answer. The Just Cause Ordinance was not built on top of the Rent Stabilization Ordinance; it was built beside it, to reach the units the older ordinance never touched. The Housing Department’s own guidance says the same thing in plainer words: the Just Cause Ordinance “covers most residential properties in the City of Los Angeles that are not regulated by the City’s Rent Stabilization Ordinance.”
What Is the Actual Rent Stabilization Ordinance Coverage Test?
The test is the date of the first Certificate of Occupancy, not the year the building went up. This is the single most consequential correction on this page, because every ranking template — and the Housing Department’s own summary page — states it as “built on or before October 1, 1978,” and that shorthand produces the wrong answer for a real class of buildings.
The operative text is exclusion 6 in the definition of “Rental Units” at LAMC 151.02, as amended by Ordinance No. 184,822. It does three things, and only the first is the one people quote:
- It excludes housing accommodations located in a structure for which the first Certificate of Occupancy was issued after October 1, 1978.
- It includes a structure issued a Certificate of Occupancy on or before that date — and the ordinance says expressly that this covers a Temporary Certificate of Occupancy. A building that received only a temporary certificate in 1978 and its final one in 1980 is inside the Ordinance.
- It also includes a property issued a residential building permit at any time on or before October 1, 1978 for which a Certificate of Occupancy was never issued, or was not issued until after that date. This is the limb nobody carries. A building permitted in 1977 whose certificate issued in 1981 is covered, even though a build-date test and a certificate-date test would both, read carelessly, put it outside.
The exclusion also does not reach individual mobile home coaches, mobile home parks, individual recreational vehicles, recreational vehicle parks, or replacement units built under LAMC 151.28 A — so a newly built replacement unit can be an RSO unit despite a modern certificate.
What is affirmatively covered is broader than most landlords expect. The definition reaches all dwelling units, efficiency dwelling units, guest rooms and suites as defined in LAMC 12.03; all housing accommodations as defined in Government Code 12927; and, named expressly, duplexes and condominiums in the City of Los Angeles. It reaches the land and buildings appurtenant to them and all housing services supplied with occupancy, including garage and parking facilities — which is why taking away a parking space is a rent increase and, separately, a listed form of harassment. It reaches mobile homes whether rent is paid for the coach and the land or the land alone, and recreational vehicles as defined in Civil Code 799.29 when located in a mobile home or recreational vehicle park.
The Housing Department adds two property types to its published list that the ordinance text does not name but which follow from the definition: accessory dwelling units and junior accessory dwelling units, on the same certificate test, and residential units attached to a commercial building.
Which Units Does the Rent Stabilization Ordinance Exclude?
There are thirteen numbered exclusions, and several of them are conditional rather than automatic. A landlord who reads only the headline of an exclusion and stops is the landlord who ends up deemed subject to the Ordinance in January. Here they are as the code has them.
| # | Exclusion | The condition or trap inside it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | One-family dwellings | Does not apply where two or more dwelling units are on the same parcel, and the exception is stated not to reach duplexes or condominiums at all. |
| 2 | Hotels, motels, inns, tourist homes, boarding and rooming houses | The accommodation becomes a covered rental unit once occupied as the primary residence of one or more of the same tenants for more than 30 days. Days count even where the tenant was made to change rooms or check out and re-register — and a required check-out and re-registration creates a rebuttable presumption of coverage. |
| 3 | Nonprofit stock cooperative units | Only while occupied by a shareholder tenant. |
| 4 | Hospitals, community care facilities, convents, monasteries, extended medical care, asylums, fraternity and sorority houses, school-owned student housing | Institutional character is the test, not ownership alone. |
| 5 | Housing Authority and other government housing exempted by state or federal law | The big carve-back. The exclusion does not apply to units receiving Housing Choice Voucher assistance under 24 C.F.R. Part 982, which are subject to the Article to the fullest extent allowed by law. It also ends once the government ownership, management, regulation or rental assistance stops. |
| 6 | Structures whose first Certificate of Occupancy issued after October 1, 1978 | Temporary certificates count as certificates; a pre-1978 building permit with a later or absent certificate brings the unit in. Does not reach mobile home coaches or parks, recreational vehicles or parks, or replacement units under 151.28 A. |
| 7 | Luxury Housing Accommodations | Defined by the rent charged as of May 31, 1978, and available only where the Department has issued a certificate proving those rent levels. |
| 8 | Substantial Renovation | Effectively closed. It applies only to units that filed an application for a certificate of exemption before October 4, 1989 and hold a Department certificate. |
| 9 | Affordable Housing Accommodations | Needs a recorded regulatory agreement guaranteeing affordability for at least 55 years at 60 percent of Area Median Income or less, and a Department exemption carrying five conditions — including that evictions stay limited to the LAMC 151.09 A grounds and that relocation is the greater of the applicable schemes. Revocable. |
| 10 | Recreational vehicles | Only where not occupied by a tenant continuously resident in the park for nine or more months. |
| 11 | Limited equity housing cooperatives | Only when occupied by a member tenant, with a further rule where the cooperative acquired the property under Government Code 54237(d). |
| 12 | Certain mobilehome parks | Turns on when the permit to operate was first issued relative to the 1986 amendment, with added acreage treated separately. |
| 13 | Interim Motel Housing Projects | Requires a Department exemption with conditions, and it is automatically revoked on termination of the Supportive Housing or Transitional Housing contract. |
Notice the pattern: exclusions 7, 8, 9 and 13 are not facts about the building at all. They are Department-issued certificates. Without the certificate, the exclusion does not exist. That is a preview of the next section, which is the same point generalised.
Why Is “Exempt” a Filing and Not a Fact in Los Angeles?
Because LAMC 151.05 G says a unit that is not registered and not declared is deemed to be subject to the Ordinance. This is the provision that no competing page carries, and it inverts the burden landlords assume they have.
The subsection reads that the landlord of a rental unit which is not registered with the Department shall provide the Department, on the form approved by the Department and accompanied by supporting documentation, a written declaration stating the facts upon which the landlord bases a claim of exclusion. Then the sentence that matters: if a landlord fails to submit a written declaration and supporting documents by the last day of the month of January of each year,