New Pet Rules for California Rentals: It's a Disclosure Law, Not a Law

Oct 21

A new California law on pets in rental housing was signed this week, and I can already see the misreading coming, because I have watched it happen with every tenant-adjacent bill for eight years.

So let me get ahead of it. SB 1296, from Senator María Elena Durazo of Los Angeles, does not require you to accept pets. It requires you to say so before you take someone's money.

What it requires

Before collecting an application or screening fee, you have to give the prospective tenant your written pet policy. If pets are allowed, that policy needs to cover the material terms, including:

• Breed or weight restrictions

• Upfront pet fees, pet deposits, and monthly pet rent

• Limits on the number of pets

• Vaccination requirements

• Liability insurance requirements

• Any other material rules or restrictions that apply to tenants with pets

If your property does not allow pets, you have to disclose the no-pet policy in your advertising, your rental application, and your lease — along with a statement that service animals and support animals remain exempt under fair housing law.

On delivery, the law is reasonably practical about it. A written copy or summary with the application works. So does posting it on the property website, or a link in digital advertising you control. It does not require you to build a website if you do not have one, and it does not require you to advertise digitally.

If you do collect a screening fee without having disclosed the policy first, the applicant can seek a refund of that fee. That is the enforcement mechanism.

Two details I am not going to state as fact

I take accuracy on this stuff seriously, so here is where my confidence runs out.

First, the refund window. Sources describing different versions of the bill as it moved gave different numbers of business days. I am not going to publish one and be wrong, so: there is a defined, short window, and you should get the exact figure from the final chaptered text or your attorney before you write it into your procedures.

Second, an earlier version of the bill barred characterizing an upfront pet fee as nonrefundable. I could not confirm whether that language survived into the final version. If you currently use a nonrefundable pet fee, that is worth a specific question to counsel rather than a guess from me.

The date I have for when this becomes operative is April 1, 2027, which is later than the January 1 date that applies to most of this session's bills. That gives you a real runway, and it is reported rather than confirmed at the source, so treat it as a planning assumption and verify it.

Why I think this one is mostly fine

I represent owners. My instinct on new rental regulation is skepticism. This one I am not worked up about, for a simple reason: the behavior it targets is behavior that was never in your interest anyway.

Collecting a screening fee from an applicant whose 70-pound dog was never getting approved does not make you money. It generates a bad review, a phone call, and a refund request you were probably going to honor out of decency. The law is codifying a thing that good operators already do.

And the flip side is real: clear pet terms up front filter your applicant pool before it reaches you. Fewer applications, better-matched applications, less of your leasing agent's time spent on people who were never going to work out.

The multifamily angle

If you own one duplex, this is a piece of paper. If you own several hundred units, this is an operations project, and the difference is worth thinking about now rather than in March 2027.

At portfolio scale the compliance risk is not the policy — it is the gap between the policy and what your leasing staff actually does on a Tuesday afternoon. The disclosure has to go out before the fee comes in, at every property, every time, including by whoever is covering the desk that day. One written policy per property, attached to the application, linked in the ads you control, and one clear instruction to whoever handles applications. That is the whole build.

There is also an upside here that I think gets missed. In the softer LA submarkets, pet-friendly units lease faster and hold tenants longer, and tenants with pets tend to move less because moving with a large dog in this city is genuinely difficult. Clear, well-priced pet terms are a retention tool. If this law pushes you to actually write your pet policy down and look at it, some of you are going to realize you have been turning away qualified applicants for no particular reason. On a 40-unit building, a point or two of occupancy is real money, and it is worth more than the pet fees you are protecting.

What to actually do before spring 2027

This is a one-afternoon compliance project if you start now and a scramble if you wait.

Write the policy down, once, properly. Most owners I know have a pet policy that lives partly in the lease, partly in an email their manager sends, and partly in their head. Get it on one page.

Then put that page three places: attached to your application, on the property page if you have one, and linked in whatever digital ads you control. If you are a no-pet property, add the required language — including the service and support animal exemption — to your ads, your application, and your lease.

Then tell whoever actually collects your application fees that the policy goes out before the fee comes in. That is the whole law, operationally. One sentence to your leasing staff.

If you own rentals in LA and want a second set of eyes on your paperwork before this and the rest of the January changes land, reach out. I would rather you be ready early than fix it later.

General information for rental property owners, not legal advice. Pet, fair housing, and screening rules interact in ways that genuinely need an attorney — get your specific policy reviewed.