Free Oakland Residential Lease Agreement

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A configurable Oakland residential lease agreement that generates a signable multi-page PDF. Built to the ordinances themselves — the two coverage tests that separate rent control from eviction control, the RAP Notice and the four consequences of leaving it out, the eleven grounds for eviction, and the 3% late-fee cap California does not have.

Oakland O.M.C. 8.22 Just Cause Free PDF 2026 Edition

An Oakland residential lease agreement is a California lease with a second body of law sitting on top of it — and in Oakland that second body is not one ordinance but four, each with its own scope. Chapter 8.22 of the Oakland Municipal Code contains the Rent Adjustment Ordinance (Article I), the Just Cause for Eviction Ordinance passed by the voters as Measure EE in 2002 (Article II), the Tenant Protection Ordinance (Article V) and the Tenant Move Out Agreement Ordinance (Article VI), together with the relocation and rent-registry articles; chapter 8.25 adds the Fair Chance Access to Housing Ordinance and chapter 8.66 the Communications Service Provider Choice Ordinance. The single most important thing to understand, and the thing every template in the search results gets wrong, is that these ordinances do not share a coverage test. O.M.C. 8.22.030 A says so in its own opening words: its exemptions apply “for purposes of this Chapter, Article I only”, because the Just Cause for Eviction Ordinance “ha[s] different exemptions”. That is how the commonest Oakland unit of all — a house, a condominium, or an apartment built in the 1990s — ends up exempt from rent control and fully covered by eviction control at the same time. This page states each test explicitly, builds them into the form as field-driven branches, and then covers what Oakland 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.

Rent control in Oakland stops at a fixed date: a certificate of occupancy issued on or after 1 January 1983. That single sentence answers most of the question, and the rest of O.M.C. 8.22.030 A fills in six narrower categories. The ordinance calls a unit it reaches a covered unit, defined at O.M.C. 8.22.020 as any dwelling unit, including joint living and work quarters, and all housing services located in Oakland used or occupied in consideration of payment of rent — a definition that expressly includes a vehicular residential facility rented for living purposes, whether the rent is paid for the vehicle and its lot together or for the lot alone.

The seven exemptions, in the ordinance’s own order:

• 8.22.030 A.1 — dwelling units whose rents are controlled, regulated (other than by chapter 8.22) or subsidized by any governmental unit, agency or authority. This one has a trap on the other side: 8.22.030 C requires the owner to file a notice with the Rent Adjustment Program, on the Program’s prescribed form, within thirty days after the unit stops being so controlled, regulated or subsidized, at which point it ceases to be exempt and becomes a covered unit.
• 8.22.030 A.2 — accommodations in motels, hotels, inns, tourist houses, rooming houses and boarding houses, provided such accommodations are not occupied by the same tenant for thirty or more continuous days. The exemption is a function of duration, not of the sign over the door.
• 8.22.030 A.3 — a hospital, convent, monastery, extended care facility, convalescent home, nonprofit home for the aged, or a dormitory owned and operated by an educational institution.
• 8.22.030 A.4 — a dwelling unit in a nonprofit cooperative owned, occupied and controlled by a majority of the residents. All three verbs are required.
• 8.22.030 A.5 — new construction. A unit newly constructed that received a certificate of occupancy on or after 1 January 1983. To qualify the unit must be entirely newly constructed or created from space that was formerly entirely nonresidential. The exemption does not reach a vehicular residential facility, and it does not reach a newly constructed unit that replaces a unit withdrawn from the market under the Ellis Act Ordinance.
• 8.22.030 A.6 — substantial rehabilitation, and this one is closed. The exemption applies only where the owner submitted an application for a certificate of exemption before 20 October 2017 and a certificate was issued. No new substantial-rehabilitation exemption can be obtained in Oakland.
• 8.22.030 A.7 — dwelling units exempt under Costa-Hawkins, California Civil Code 1954.52. In practice this is the separately alienable house-or-condominium category, and it is the largest exemption in the city by number of dwellings.

The burden is the landlord’s. O.M.C. 8.22.030 B.1.b provides that for the purposes of obtaining a certificate of exemption, or of responding to a tenant petition by claiming an exemption, “the burden of proving and producing evidence for the exemption is on the owner”. A certificate of exemption, once granted, is a final determination absent fraud, mistake, or a change in law or circumstances — and where an owner produces one in time, the tenant’s petition is dismissed unless the tenant proves the fraud or mistake.

The Rent Adjustment Program’s own regulations add detail the ordinance does not carry. Regulation 8.22.030 A.1 provides that rent need not be cash: a person who lives in a unit and paints the premises, repairs damage or upgrades the unit is paying rent, as is a person paying property taxes, insurance or utility costs not directly associated with their own unit. Regulation 8.22.030 A.2 takes the other direction: where California law determines that an employee of the owner, including a resident manager, is not a tenant, that dwelling unit is outside chapter 8.22 entirely for as long as the person remains an employee in occupation.

This is a different question with a different answer, and the ordinance’s new-construction exemption is a rolling ten-year window rather than a fixed date. The Just Cause for Eviction Ordinance was adopted by the Oakland electorate on 5 November 2002 as Measure EE and is codified at O.M.C. 8.22.300 to 8.22.390. Its definition of a rental unit at O.M.C. 8.22.340 is deliberately broad: any unit in any real property, regardless of condition or zoning status, including the land appurtenant to it, that is rented or available for rent for residential use or occupancy, whether or not the unit is also used for other purposes, together with all housing services connected with its use. Vehicular residential facilities are inside it too.

O.M.C. 8.22.350 then removes eight categories from the good-cause requirement at 8.22.360 and the remedies at 8.22.370:

• 8.22.350 A — rental units exempted from Part 4, Title 4, Chapter 2 of the California Civil Code by Civil Code 1940(b), the transient-occupancy exclusion.
• 8.22.350 B — rental units in any hospital, skilled nursing facility or health facility, each of which O.M.C. 8.22.340 defines.
• 8.22.350 C — a nonprofit facility whose primary purpose is short-term treatment, assistance or therapy for alcohol, drug or other substance abuse, where the housing is provided incident to the recovery programme and the client has been informed in writing of the temporary or transitional nature of the housing at its inception.
• 8.22.350 D — a nonprofit facility providing a structured living environment whose primary purpose is helping homeless persons obtain the skills for independent living, occupancy restricted to not more than twenty-four months, again with the written notice at inception.
• 8.22.350 E — a residential property where the owner of record occupies a unit in the same property as their principal residence and regularly shares in the use of kitchen or bath facilities with the tenants. Living in the building is not enough; the shared facilities are the operative element. And a person claiming a homeowner’s property tax exemption on any other real property in California is not an owner of record for this purpose.
• 8.22.350 F — “Reserved.” This is where the owner-occupied duplex and triplex exemption used to live. It is gone.
• 8.22.350 G — a unit held in trust on behalf of a developmentally disabled individual who permanently occupies it, or permanently occupied by a developmentally disabled parent, sibling, child or grandparent of the owner.
• 8.22.350 H — new construction, on a rolling ten-year test. A rental unit in a building that was newly constructed and “received a certificate of occupancy within the past ten (10) years”. The exemption applies only to permitted units newly constructed from the ground up and does not apply to units created by rehabilitation, improvement or conversion of existing residential or commercial space.

Read 8.22.350 H slowly, because it behaves unlike any other exemption on this page. It is measured from today, not from a date the Council picked. A building given its certificate of occupancy in 2015 is exempt in 2024 and covered in 2026, without any act by the City, any notice to the landlord, or any change in the ordinance. A landlord relying on it is relying on a clock, and the tenth anniversary of the certificate of occupancy belongs in the diary alongside the lease’s own dates. The City’s own coverage flyer, dated 6 January 2026, describes this as the effect of Measure V: eviction protections were extended to most units built after 1995, with the exception of ground-up new construction inside the ten-year window.

And the Council cannot narrow this list. O.M.C. 8.22.360 F authorises the City Council to modify Measure EE “for the purpose of adding limitations on a landlord’s right to evict”, but provides that “the City Council may not modify any exemption from the ordinance from which this Section is derived contained in Section 8.22.350”. The exemptions came from the voters and only the voters can widen them — which is why the list has changed by ballot measure rather than by ordinance.

Because Costa-Hawkins pre-empts local control of the rent and not local control of the grounds for eviction, and because Oakland’s two ordinances were written with different exemption lists on purpose. The Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, California Civil Code 1954.50 et seq., tells a California city what it may not do about rental rates. It says nothing about the grounds on which a landlord may recover possession. Oakland’s Rent Adjustment Ordinance therefore has to carry a Costa-Hawkins exemption at O.M.C. 8.22.030 A.7, and its Just Cause for Eviction Ordinance does not — and, reading O.M.C. 8.22.350 from top to bottom, does not.

Set the two tests side by side on the same buildings and the split becomes obvious.

The middle rows are the point. An Oakland apartment given its certificate of occupancy in 1990 is outside the Rent Adjustment Ordinance and squarely inside the Just Cause for Eviction Ordinance, and it has been for the whole of the last decade. That is not an unusual building. It is a very large slice of Oakland’s housing stock, and it is the case that every generic “Oakland rent control” explainer collapses into a single yes-or-no answer.

From rent control, yes. From eviction control, no. This is the most consequential single misunderstanding in Oakland residential letting, and it is worth stating with the sections attached.

The rent side is straightforward. O.M.C. 8.22.030 A.7 exempts dwelling units exempt under Costa-Hawkins, and California Civil Code 1954.52 exempts, among other things, a dwelling that is alienable separate from the title to any other dwelling unit. A detached house is separately alienable. So is a condominium unit. The Oakland CPI Rent Adjustment, the once-a-year rule, the 10% ceiling and the 30% five-year ceiling therefore do not bind the rent on either.

The eviction side is equally straightforward once you read the right section. O.M.C. 8.22.350 lists eight exemptions from just cause. Houses are not on the list. Condominiums are not on the list. Costa-Hawkins does not put them on the list, because Costa-Hawkins is about rental rates. Neither the age of the building nor its form of title takes an Oakland house or condominium outside O.M.C. 8.22.360, and the landlord of one may not issue a notice terminating the tenancy without a ground from the enumerated list, may not make it anything other than the dominant motive, and must file a copy of the notice with the Rent Board within ten days.

The City publishes the same answer in its own words. Its Just Cause and Rent Control flyer, revised 6 January 2026, is a two-column grid: for the row “single-family home”, the eviction-protections column and the rent-control column give different answers. The flyer also records the ordinary case for condominiums and for most apartments built after 1995.

Answer the coverage questions first, because almost every other clause in the generated lease is conditioned on them. The builder is arranged so the two Oakland tests and the California test come before anything else.

1. Certificate of occupancy date. One field drives three different tests with three different periods: a fixed 1983 date for rent control, a rolling ten years for just cause, and a rolling fifteen years for the state cap. If the exact date is unavailable, the building’s assessor record or the City’s permit history will usually establish it, and the answer belongs in the file.
2. Test one, rent control. Pick the status under O.M.C. 8.22.030 A. If the answer is any exemption other than new construction, note that the burden of proving it is the owner’s.
3. Test two, just cause. Pick the status under O.M.C. 8.22.350 separately. Resist the instinct to make it match test one.
4. Test three, the state layer. If the Oakland rent limits do not reach the unit, California Civil Code 1947.12 has to be tested on its own terms — and if the exemption relied on is the separately alienable house or condominium, the statutory statement must appear in the lease verbatim, which the builder generates for you.
5. Parties, manager and owner. California Civil Code 1962 requires a manager and an owner or agent for service, each with a telephone number and a usual street address, and a copy of the executed lease to the tenant within fifteen days.
6. Rent, and how it may rise. Enter the rent and record whether the initial rent could be set without limitation. The builder deliberately does not ask for the annual percentage and the generated lease states none, because it changes every August.
7. The late charge. Tick it only if you intend one, and keep the amount at or under 3% of the monthly rent. Leave it unticked and the lease says plainly that no late charge may be imposed at all.
8. The RAP Notice, the registry and the fee. Record whether the notice was given, in how many languages, and on what date; record the registry status; and decide the fee pass-through.
9. Housing services and utilities. Anything ticked here is a housing service that cannot be severed later without good cause and, for a covered unit, without a rent reduction.
10. Notices and disclosures, then generate. Ticking a box records that a notice was given. It does not give the notice.