Loading your model…
Trusted by property owners and tenants across Southern California. We deliver exceptional property management with a personal touch.
Focused Portfolio
Owner-Operated
Managing the South Bay
Loading your model…
Published July 18, 2026
Beverly Hills runs its own rent stabilization, separate from LA. The 2026 caps reset to 3.6 percent for most units and 3.34 percent for older ones, and a skipped year does not bank a bigger future increase.
The short version. Beverly Hills runs its own rent stabilization ordinance, separate from the Los Angeles County and City rent laws that govern the buildings a mile away. For 2026 the caps reset. Chapter 6, which covers roughly 97 percent of stabilized units, allows the greater of 3 percent or CPI, which lands at 3.6 percent. The older, lower rent Chapter 5 tier allows 3.34 percent. A year you skip does not bank into a larger increase later. And because the same city line puts you outside the City of Los Angeles, a sale here does not trigger the LA mansion tax at all.
Your building sits inside a two square mile city that writes its own rules, and in 2026 that independence happens to pay off twice. The rent number you plan renewals around just got published. And the city boundary itself is quietly worth hundreds of thousands of dollars whenever you sell. Both of those land on the same address, so let me walk through them the way a manager actually sees them.
Jurisdiction is the thing people get wrong, and getting it wrong is expensive. Beverly Hills is not under the LA County rent rules, and it is not under the City of Los Angeles RSO. It has its own rent stabilization ordinance, its own two tier structure, its own annual reset. If you have been reading LA County guidance and quietly assuming it covers your Beverly Hills fourplex, you have been planning off the wrong document this whole time.
The two tiers are simpler than they sound. Chapter 6 is where almost everyone lives, about 97 percent of stabilized units in the city, and its allowable increase is the greater of 3 percent or CPI. For 2026 that math comes out to 3.6 percent. Chapter 5 is the older, lower rent tier, and its 2026 figure is 3.34 percent. Two numbers, published by the city, good for the cycle. The Chapter 6 figure was updated in June 2026 and the Chapter 5 figure on July 14, 2026, so both are current as you set renewals for the rest of the year.
Here is the detail that catches owners every single year. A cycle you sit out does not stockpile. Beverly Hills will not let you skip a year and then bank that unused increase into a bigger jump down the road. The cap is the cap for the period you serve it in, full stop. If you held rent flat last year for a good tenant, that was a genuine kindness, and it does not quietly convert into a larger legal increase now. Each cycle stands on its own.
Picture a covered Chapter 6 unit renting at 3,200 a month. The 2026 cap of 3.6 percent gives you room for about 115 a month, taking it to roughly 3,315. On the Chapter 5 tier at 3.34 percent, that same 3,200 unit moves about 107 a month. Nobody is getting rich off those numbers, and that is by design. Rent stabilization is built to be steady and predictable, which for a long hold is the whole point. You are not chasing the market every spring. You are protecting a stable, occupied, well run building and letting it compound.
The dollar figure is honestly the easy part. Which tier a unit sits in, the notice you serve, the timing you serve it on, all of that has to be right, because rent stabilization is exactly the place where a small paperwork slip turns into a real headache. The number takes a minute. The procedure around it is where a manager earns their keep.
Now the second edge, and it has nothing to do with rent. It is about the city line.
The City of Los Angeles charges Measure ULA, the one everyone calls the mansion tax, on high value property sales. Beverly Hills, being its own city, is exempt from Measure ULA entirely. Not a lower rate. Zero. A 7 million dollar sale inside the City of Los Angeles triggers roughly 280,000 dollars in ULA transfer tax. That same 7 million dollar sale a few blocks over in Beverly Hills proper triggers nothing.
The City of Los Angeles adjusted its ULA thresholds for closings after June 30, 2026, to about 5.4 million and 10.9 million dollars across its two brackets. Read that slowly, because it is easy to misapply. Those brackets are City of Los Angeles rules. They do not reach into Beverly Hills, where the answer stays zero no matter the price. The independence is the asset.
Owners feel this on both ends. It shapes what a buyer will pay, since a buyer knows an eventual resale here carries no ULA drag. And it shapes who is even shopping. Brokers report capital migrating into the exempt cities specifically to sidestep the tax, which keeps demand for well positioned Beverly Hills buildings firm even when the market gets choosier. Treat that last part as directional color rather than a hard statistic, but the direction is real, and it points your way.
Hold all of this next to a single data point. In May 2026 a Flats adjacent home at 703 North Arden Drive sold for 24 million dollars in under thirty days at about 2,345 dollars per square foot, against a 90210 median near 6.1 million. That is one surgical, fast trade, not a market wide boom, and I would not stretch it into more than that. But it tells you the buyer for the right Beverly Hills asset is still moving quickly and paying up, which is the same demand that props up a well run rental here.
So the practical picture is two moves on one building. Plan your 2026 renewals off the Beverly Hills figures rather than LA County, with Chapter 6 units getting up to 3.6 percent and Chapter 5 units up to 3.34 percent, and confirm which tier each unit falls in before you serve anything, because that one classification drives everything downstream. Do not treat a year you skipped as money waiting to be collected, since this cycle still caps at this cycle's number. And if a sale is anywhere on your horizon, the ULA exemption is a real part of your value story that you do not have to lift a finger to earn. It comes with the address.
None of it is flashy, and that is sort of the reassuring part. Quiet, predictable, and tilted in your favor is a good place for a building to sit.
This is general information, not legal or tax advice. Confirm with a licensed professional before you act.
Topics: market, beverly-hills, central-la, rent-control
Back to the Schofield Properties blog
Schofield Properties is a family run property management company at 323 Richmond St, El Segundo, CA 90245. We have managed the South Bay since 1972 and personally oversee about 186 doors today. Book a call to talk about your property.