About RentGuard CA

Why this exists

California has quietly made self-managing a rental into a compliance job. AB 1482 caps rent increases at a percentage that changes every August and differs by metro region. AB 2801 requires photographs at move-in and move-out or your deposit deductions are unenforceable. Civil Code § 1950.5 gives you 21 days to deliver an itemized statement, with penalties up to twice the deposit for bad-faith violations.

None of that is hard to comply with. It is hard to know about, and the people most exposed are the ones with one or two units — the accidental landlord renting out a former home, the person who inherited a duplex. They have the same legal obligations as a management company and none of the infrastructure.

The calculator is the free, useful piece of that. It answers the rent-increase question completely, for free, without an account, forever. The paid product being built around it handles the deposit and photo workflows, which is where the four-figure mistakes actually happen.

Where the numbers come from

AB 1482 (Civ. Code § 1947.12) caps annual increases at 5% plus the regional Consumer Price Index, never exceeding 10%. The specific mechanics we implement:

• Which CPI. The April 12-month percentage change in CPI-U for the metro area containing the unit. California has four relevant metro series — Los Angeles–Long Beach–Anaheim, Riverside–San Bernardino–Ontario, San Diego–Carlsbad, and San Francisco–Oakland–Hayward — plus a statewide figure used for every county outside those metros.
• When it applies. April figures publish in May and govern increases taking effect from August 1 through July 31 of the following year. An increase served in July and one served in August can fall under different caps, which is why the calculator warns you when your effective date is near that boundary.
• The sources. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics regional CPI-U releases, and the California Department of Industrial Relations CCPI figures. Every new annual figure is cross-checked against at least two independent sources before it ships.

The current data vintage is shown in the footer of the calculator itself, so you can always see how fresh the figure you are looking at is.

How often it is updated

The CPI tables are updated every year in May, when the April figures publish, and the update is checked against multiple sources before going live. The site is built so that correcting a number takes minutes and requires no deployment gymnastics — there is no cache to wait out, so a correction is live for every visitor immediately.

The rent-controlled city list is reviewed alongside it. That list is deliberately not exhaustive and is a warning flag, not a calculation: California cities adopt and amend ordinances on their own schedules, and unincorporated county areas can have their own rules. If your city appears, treat the state figure as an upper bound that your local ordinance probably reduces. If it does not appear, that is not a guarantee.

What we deliberately do not do

• We do not give legal advice. The calculator produces a figure from a public formula. Whether your unit is covered, whether your exemption notice was valid, and whether a local ordinance controls are fact-specific questions for an attorney.
• We do not track you. No analytics, no cookies, no third-party scripts. The rent figures and tenant names you type never leave your browser — see the privacy policy.
• We do not compute local ordinance caps. Not yet. We flag that one applies. Claiming a local number we have not verified city by city would be worse than saying nothing.
• We are not property management software. No rent collection, no tenant screening, no listings. Only the compliance work that carries statutory penalties.

Found an error?

Please tell us — corrections to legal or CPI data are the highest-priority thing we handle. Email [email protected] with the page, the figure you think is wrong, and a source if you have one. If you are right, it gets fixed the same day and the fix is live immediately.

This especially applies to the rent-controlled city list. If your California city has an ordinance we are not flagging, that is a gap worth closing for every landlord in your city, not just you.