Pico Rivera is one of the few cities in Los Angeles County with its own mobilehome space rent ordinance, and it caps annual rent increases at whichever is less: 75 percent of the change in the Consumer Price Index, or 3 percent.

That 3 percent hard ceiling matters more than most park owners and space sellers realize, because it means a park owner can never raise space rent faster than 3 percent in a single year even in a high-inflation year when CPI itself runs well above that.

If you own a mobilehome, a space, or an interest in a Pico Rivera mobilehome park and you’re thinking about selling, here is exactly how the ordinance works, what the city actually enforces, and what still needs disclosing regardless of a cash sale.

Table of Contents

The Ordinance in Brief: Ordinance No. 1153 and Its 2025 Amendment

Pico Rivera’s City Council adopted the Mobilehome Rent Stabilization and Mobilehome Owner Protections Ordinance as Ordinance No. 1153 on January 11, 2022, codified as Pico Rivera Municipal Code Chapter 9.48.

The city’s stated purpose is to prevent unreasonable space rent increases and preserve mobilehome space affordability while still allowing park owners to earn a fair return on their investment.

The council amended the ordinance on March 11, 2025 through Ordinance No. 1190, streamlining several of the application and petition procedures without changing the core rent cap. A further round of proposed clarifying amendments went before the council on February 25, 2025.

Anyone relying on an older summary of this ordinance should confirm they’re looking at the current, amended text rather than the original 2022 version, since several procedural details changed in 2025.

How the Rent Cap Actually Works: 75% of CPI or 3%, Whichever Is Less

Under Ordinance No. 1190, a mobilehome park owner may implement one space rent increase every twelve months, calculated as 75 percent of the published increase in the Consumer Price Index, or 3 percent, whichever is less.

In no event may the increase exceed 3 percent within any twelve-month period, regardless of how high CPI runs.

If a park owner skips an allowable increase in a given year, that specific increase is waived outright — Pico Rivera’s ordinance does not let a park owner “bank” a missed year and apply it on top of a later one.

For comparison, this is tighter than the statewide AB 1482 rent cap that applies to ordinary residential rentals (5 percent plus CPI, up to 10 percent total), and tighter than some neighboring cities’ mobilehome ordinances that peg increases closer to full CPI.

A prospective buyer of a space or park interest should run the numbers on the specific CPI index Pico Rivera uses before assuming rent can simply be raised to match market rates after a purchase.

Worked through with numbers: if CPI for the relevant period runs at 6 percent, 75 percent of that is 4.5 percent, but the ordinance’s 3 percent hard ceiling controls, so the lawful increase is 3 percent, not 4.5 percent.

If CPI instead runs at 2 percent, 75 percent of that is 1.5 percent, which is lower than the 3 percent ceiling, so 1.5 percent is the lawful increase.

The park owner never gets to choose the higher of the two figures; the ordinance is written so the lower number always wins, which is what makes this cap meaningfully tighter than ordinances in some other California cities that simply track CPI without a separate ceiling layered on top.

The October 13, 2020 Base Rent Date

The ordinance establishes Base Rent as the space rent that was actually being charged on October 13, 2020. Every allowable increase since then compounds off that specific date, not off whatever rent happened to be in place when a particular owner bought in.

This detail trips up buyers who assume the current rent roll reflects a clean, unbroken chain of lawful 3-percent increases; if a prior increase was taken improperly or exceeded the cap in any year since October 2020, that overage doesn’t just disappear; it can leave the current rent figure out of compliance and exposed to a tenant petition even though the space has since changed hands.

Rent Increases on Vacancy, In-Place Transfers and Expired Leases

Unlike apartment rent control in cities that allow vacancy decontrol, Pico Rivera’s ordinance follows the mobilehome space itself rather than the tenancy.

The ordinance regulates rent increases upon vacancy, upon expiration of previously exempt leases under Civil Code section 798.17, and on in-place transfers of a mobilehome within the same space.

In each of those situations, the rent increase is still limited to the same 3-percent-or-75%-of-CPI ceiling that applies to an ongoing tenancy.

This is a meaningful difference from how many California cities treat vacant mobilehome spaces, and it means a park owner can’t reset rent to market rate simply because a home changed hands or a long-term resident moved out.

When a Park Owner Can Ask for More: Fair Return and Capital Improvement Applications

The ordinance gives park owners two paths to a rent increase beyond the standard cap. A Fair Return Application lets an owner show that operating costs have risen by a proportion greater than the approved annual increase, under Municipal Code section 9.48.050(A).

A Capital Improvement Application, governed by sections 9.48.100 through 9.48.110, lets an owner pass through the cost of capital improvements that primarily benefit mobilehome owners, provided the application is filed within one year of completing the work and the improvement is amortized over a useful life of at least five years.

Critically, a capital improvement pass-through cannot increase monthly rent by more than 10 percent unless the Rental Review Board approves a larger amount due to extenuating circumstances, and only 50 percent of the capital improvement cost can ever be recovered through the pass-through.

Both applications carry a city-determined fee, and both require Board review rather than taking effect automatically once filed.

The Mobilehome Park Rental Review Board

Pico Rivera enforces this ordinance through a five-member Mobilehome Park Rental Review Board, which hears and rules on Fair Return and Capital Improvement applications from park owners and petitions from mobilehome owners under the Tenant Petition for Adjustment process.

The city opened applications for new Board members in late 2025, with a submission deadline of November 26, 2025. Board decisions are final administrative decisions, reviewable only through a writ petition under Code of Civil Procedure section 1094.6, which carries its own short filing deadline once a decision is issued.

Anyone buying into a park with a pending Board application — on either side — should get the application’s current status in writing before closing, since a Board ruling after the sale can change the rent roll the buyer actually ends up collecting.

How This Compares to the Statewide Mobilehome Residency Law

Pico Rivera’s rent cap sits on top of, not instead of, the statewide Mobilehome Residency Law (Civil Code sections 798 et seq.), which governs the tenancy itself regardless of what any local rent ordinance says.

The state law requires a park owner to give a mobilehome owner at least 60 days’ written notice of a rent increase, separate from whatever percentage cap Pico Rivera applies to the amount itself.

It also gives a resident the right to sell their mobilehome in place without the park owner’s approval of the price, subject only to the park owner’s right to approve the incoming buyer as a tenant, and it requires specific termination-of-tenancy procedures — nonpayment, a rule violation, condemnation, a change of use, or failure to comply with local ordinances among them — before a park owner can terminate a space tenancy at all.

If the park itself is ever being closed or converted to another use rather than sold space by space, state law layers on additional relocation and notice requirements that are separate from anything Chapter 9.48 covers; many California cities have their own closure ordinances on top of the state minimums, though Pico Rivera’s own ordinance is focused on rent stabilization rather than closure procedure specifically.

Anyone buying a park with an eye toward eventually converting the land to another use should treat the rent ordinance and the closure rules as two separate compliance tracks, not one.

What an Escrow or Title Review Typically Asks For

Because the rent cap follows the space rather than resetting at sale, a title or escrow company handling a Pico Rivera mobilehome transaction will typically want to see the specific space’s rent history going back to the October 13, 2020 base date, a copy of the most recent annual registration filed with the city for that space, and written confirmation of whether any Fair Return, Capital Improvement, or Tenant Petition for Adjustment is pending before the Rental Review Board.

None of this is unique to a cash transaction, but a buyer relying on conventional financing will often have their lender ask for the same documentation before underwriting the purchase, which is one more reason these sales can take longer to close than a comparable sale of an ordinary single-family home nearby.

Exemptions: Which Spaces the Ordinance Doesn’t Reach

Several categories of mobilehome spaces fall outside the ordinance entirely. Spaces that qualify for an exemption under California’s Mobilehome Residency Law, or that are otherwise exempt under state or federal law, aren’t covered.

Newly constructed spaces are exempt for 15 years from the date 50 percent of the park was first held out for rent, measured from the permit or certificate-of-occupancy date for that space, under Civil Code section 798.45 — the ordinance’s own text also references a January 1, 1990 cutoff for newly constructed spaces, so the exact exemption window depends on when the park itself was built.

Spaces used or rented for non-residential purposes, and spaces owned, managed or operated by a government agency, are exempt as well. A title search or a conversation with the park owner should confirm which category a specific space falls into before anyone assumes the rent cap applies.

Selling the Mobilehome Itself, Not Just the Space

Most Pico Rivera mobilehome transactions involve selling the home while the space underneath it continues to be rented from the park owner, rather than selling land and structure together the way a conventional house sale works.

Under the Mobilehome Residency Law, an owner can sell their home in place and the buyer simply becomes the new space tenant, subject to the park owner’s reasonable right to approve that incoming tenant’s rental application — the park owner cannot, however, require the seller to sell through the park owner or take a right of first refusal at a below-market price as a condition of allowing the sale to proceed, except in narrow circumstances specifically authorized by state law.

Because the rent cap travels with the space rather than the home, a buyer purchasing a mobilehome in Pico Rivera is effectively purchasing into whatever lawful rent is already on that space, which is one more reason the rent history matters more here than it would in a sale where land and structure transfer together.

Annual Registration and What a Seller Should Confirm Before Listing

Park owners are required to file annual Mobilehome Park Registration forms with the city, documenting current rents and space information.

A seller of a park, or of an individual mobilehome within one, should confirm the park’s registration is current and that the specific space’s rent history matches what the city has on file.

A gap here doesn’t necessarily block a sale, but it’s exactly the kind of detail that surfaces during a title or escrow review and can slow things down if it’s not sorted out ahead of time.

Likewise, a seller offering a mobilehome park owner’s interest for sale should expect a buyer’s attorney to ask for the park’s current Rent Increase Application history and any pending Fair Return or Capital Improvement filings before closing.

Penalties for Violating the Ordinance

A party who violates the ordinance is subject to an administrative fee of up to $1,000, and any mobilehome owner may also bring a civil action over a violation.

For a seller, the practical risk isn’t usually a penalty against them personally; it’s that an improperly taken rent increase sitting on the books can become a mobilehome owner’s leverage point in negotiating with whoever buys the park or the space next, since the overcharge issue follows the property rather than disappearing with a change of ownership.

When Selling Still Makes Sense Here

None of this ordinance stops a mobilehome owner, or a park owner, from selling.

It does mean the rent roll a buyer is actually paying for is capped going forward in a way that ordinary rental housing in Pico Rivera isn’t, which affects how a park or a space should be valued and how quickly a sale can realistically close if it depends on resolving a pending Board matter first.

A straightforward cash sale of a mobilehome, free of financing contingencies, often moves faster than a sale that depends on a buyer’s lender underwriting a capped, regulated income stream, particularly if a Fair Return or Capital Improvement application is still working its way through the Board.

Before You Sell: A Quick Checklist

Confirm the space’s current rent against the October 13, 2020 base rent plus every lawful annual increase since, rather than assuming the rent roll is automatically compliant.
Check whether the space qualifies for any exemption — new construction, non-residential use, or government ownership — before assuming Chapter 9.48 applies.
Ask whether a Fair Return, Capital Improvement, or Tenant Petition for Adjustment is currently pending before the Rental Review Board.
Verify the park’s annual registration filings are current with the city.
If selling a mobilehome rather than the park itself, confirm how a sale of the home interacts with the in-place transfer rent rules under section 798.17.

If you own a mobilehome, a space interest, or a park in Pico Rivera and the rent cap, a pending Board matter, or simply the time it takes to sort all this out has made holding onto the property more trouble than it’s worth, Cash Home Buyers CA can make a straightforward, no-obligation cash offer.

We buy directly or bring a vetted cash buyer, and when you sell to us, we pay the standard closing costs, including the county and city transfer taxes, escrow and title.

For the transactional side of selling a tenant-occupied property in this city, see our page on selling a tenant-occupied house in Pico Rivera.

You can also find Cash Home Buyers CA on our Google Business Profile at this Google listing.

Pico Rivera Mobilehome Rent Cap: What the Ordinance Limits