The Breakdown: How CA new rent control law compares to NY

By Dennis Lynch & Georgia Kromrei

From left: California Governor Gavin Newsom, Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo, and California Assembly Member David Chiu (Credit: Getty Images, iStock, and Wikipedia)

With a little more than 48 hours before the clock ran out, three of New York’s most powerful landlords made a desperate, last-ditch phone call to Gov. Andrew Cuomo. By that point, the real estate industry had already spent millions of dollars, hired seasoned lobbyists and launched media campaigns in an effort to eliminate the threat of historic tenant protections on 1 million apartments. Cuomo declined to kill the bill, and landlords across the state say billions of dollars in investment were wiped out overnight.

But across the country in Sacramento, a curious thing happened. The legislature on Wednesday passed AB-1482, a statewide rent control measure that will affect an estimated 8 million people, and top industry trade groups barely made a peep.

The California Apartment Association, which represents the owners of around 65,000 rental units in the Greater L.A. area, dropped opposition to the current form of the bill after negotiating to extend an exemption to units older than 15 years (lawmakers first proposed a 10-year limit), limiting vacancy decontrol, and restricting municipalities from instituting rent caps lower than the cap in AB-1482.

The CAA, which has pushed the state to loosen development restrictions in favor of denser residential development, declined to answer questions about AB-1482, which in most cases will limit rent increases to 5 percent plus inflation.

“CPI plus five percent is causing most people to breathe a sigh of relief, we can live with that,” said Dean Zander, an executive vice president and multifamily specialist at CBRE. “It’s not unfair, it’s not gouging, and I don’t see it affecting sales or values at all.”

Zander believes the measure could spark even more investment in the state because it provides some certainty to investors. “There’s no fear of the unknown,” he said. “We have a super strong market in California and knowing that 1482 passed, we know what to expect and we can underwrite for that.”
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