What Is Hayward’s Rent Review Fee and Who Has to Pay It?

Hayward requires landlords to pay an annual Rent Review fee on every rental unit and to send the city a copy of any rent increase notice — and increases above 5% in a 12-month period can be challenged through a city-run review process.

The ordinance behind all of this is Chapter 12, Article 1 of the Hayward Municipal Code, the Residential Rent Stabilization and Tenant Protection Ordinance (RRSO), and it affects anyone who owns a rental in Hayward, including an owner who is getting ready to sell.

If you own a rental property in Hayward and you’re weighing a sale, the ordinance isn’t just background noise.

Unpaid fees can turn into a lien-like assessment on the parcel, missing paperwork can slow down escrow, and a buyer’s lender or title company will often ask questions the seller didn’t expect.

Below is what the ordinance actually requires, what it costs, and where it intersects with a property sale.

What the Hayward Rent Stabilization Ordinance Actually Covers

Hayward’s City Council adopted the Residential Rent Stabilization and Tenant Protection Ordinance on July 25, 2019. It’s codified in Chapter 12, Article 1 of the Hayward Municipal Code and is administered day-to-day by the city’s Rent Review Office, part of the Housing Division. The ordinance splits rental units into two categories, and which one your property falls into changes what applies to it:

• Covered Rental Units (CRUs): generally older multifamily properties that fall under the full ordinance, including the rent-increase threshold, just-cause eviction protections, and the rent review fee.
• Rental Units (RUs): properties subject to some tenant-protection provisions of the ordinance (notice and harassment protections, for example) but not the rent-increase threshold itself.

The city maintains a public Rent Review Database where an owner or prospective buyer can look up a specific parcel by address or APN and see whether it’s classified as a CRU or an RU, and which tenant protections apply.

Because classification depends on things like the age of the structure and the number of units, it’s worth checking the database for your specific address rather than assuming based on a neighboring property or on what a prior owner told you.

It’s a separate question from, say, when a tenant can lawfully refuse a landlord’s request to enter a unit — that’s a statewide Civil Code issue, while the rent review ordinance is specific to Hayward and layered on top of state law.

The Annual Rent Review Fee: Current Amount and Who Pays

Every owner of a residential rental unit in Hayward owes an annual fee that funds the Rent Review Office, sometimes called the Rent Stabilization Administration fee on the city’s master fee schedule. The amount depends on whether the unit is a Covered Rental Unit or a non-covered Rental Unit:

• Covered Rental Unit: $66 per unit, per year
• Non-covered Rental Unit: $32 per unit, per year

Those figures appear both in the city’s FY25 Rent Review Fee FAQ and, unchanged, in the Adopted FY2027 Master Fee Schedule effective July 1, 2026 — so as of this writing they’ve held steady across several fiscal years.

That said, this is a fee the City Council resets in the master fee schedule each fiscal year, so always confirm the current amount with the Rent Review Office (510-583-4454) or the city’s published fee schedule before budgeting around it, rather than relying on last year’s invoice.

For a Covered Rental Unit, the landlord is allowed to pass through up to half of the fee to the tenant using the city’s notification form; for non-covered units, the ordinance doesn’t block including the fee in rent, though state rent-cap rules can still apply.

The city bills annually — for fiscal year 2025, invoices went out the week of September 16, 2024, with payment due about one month later.

The Hayward Municipal Code (Section 8-1.25) doesn’t allow the city to prorate this fee, so an owner who held the property for only part of the year still owes the full annual amount, not a partial-year amount.

The 5% Threshold That Triggers a Rent Review

For Covered Rental Units, the ordinance sets a 5% Rent Increase Threshold (RIT): a landlord can raise rent up to 5% in a rolling 12-month period without city approval. Go above that in a single increase, and the tenant has the right to petition the Rent Review Office, which can trigger a review or mediation process before the full increase takes effect.

A few carve-outs widen or narrow that 5% ceiling:

• A unit that becomes vacant and is re-rented voluntarily isn’t subject to the same increase cap for the new tenancy.
• Leases that began before July 25, 2019, carry some different rules under the ordinance’s transition provisions.
• Utility pass-throughs and documented capital-improvement costs can be added on top of the base increase.
• “Banked” increases — amounts a landlord didn’t take in prior years — plus capital-improvement increases can push a single year’s increase up to 10%.

None of this overrides state law. California’s statewide rent cap under AB 1482 still applies where it isn’t preempted by a stricter local ordinance, and just-cause eviction protections run on a parallel track.

If you’re also dealing with a tenant you’re trying to remove without a written lease, that’s a different legal process than a rent review petition — see how eviction works in California when there’s no lease in place for how that plays out separately from rent increase disputes.

What a Rent Increase Notice to a Tenant Must Include

Under Section 12-1.15 of the ordinance, a rent increase notice to a Covered Rental Unit tenant isn’t just a number on a letter. The city requires specific content:

1. The increase amount stated in both dollars and as a percentage.
2. Any banked increase being applied, also in both dollars and percentage.
3. A statement that the landlord believes the increase complies with the ordinance.
4. Contact information so the tenant can request a “meet and confer” conversation with the landlord about the increase.
5. Contact information for the Rent Review Office.
6. A blank copy of the tenant petition form, so the tenant doesn’t have to track one down separately.

On top of serving that notice to the tenant, the landlord has a separate obligation to the city: a copy of every rent increase notice (and every termination-of-tenancy notice) has to be sent to the Rent Review Office within 30 days of giving it to the tenant.

That filing requirement is easy to miss, and it’s exactly the kind of detail that surfaces late — during due diligence on a sale, for instance — when nobody kept a copy on file.

What Happens If the Fee Goes Unpaid

The consequences for skipping the Rent Review fee aren’t just a late notice.

According to the city’s own FAQ, a landlord of a Covered Rental Unit who hasn’t paid the fee is not entitled to implement a rent increase at all, and a tenant facing eviction can raise the landlord’s nonpayment of the fee as a defense.

In practice, that means an owner who let the fee lapse for a year or two may find they can’t enforce a rent increase they already gave notice of, until the account is brought current.

If you think a bill is wrong — the unit shouldn’t be classified as covered, or you already sold the property, for example — the city allows you to submit a declaration of exemption or error along with supporting documentation rather than just not paying. Ignoring an invoice you disagree with is the one move that tends to make things worse later.

The Related Rental Housing Inspection Program Fee

Separate from the Rent Review fee, Hayward also runs a Rental Housing Inspection Program (sometimes listed as the Rental Housing & Hotel Inspection Program) that charges its own annual fee and inspects units for safety and habitability issues on a citywide cycle. Per the city’s Adopted FY2027 Master Fee Schedule, effective July 1, 2026, the current fee is:

• Single-family home, duplex, triplex, or fourplex: $125 per year, flat
• Parcel with five or more units: $35 per unit, per year

This figure has moved over time — an older city FAQ listed $88 and $22 for the single-family and per-unit tiers, respectively, for an earlier program year — so, like the Rent Review fee, treat the dollar amount as something to reconfirm with Code Enforcement rather than a fixed number.

Receiving an invoice doesn’t guarantee an inspection will happen that same year; inspections are scheduled based on city staffing and a rolling cycle, plus complaint-driven inspections that can happen anytime.

Unpaid Rental Housing Inspection Program fees don’t just sit on an invoice — the city can convert them into a special assessment against the property under Government Code Section 38773.5, adding a city assessment fee (in the thousand-dollar range) plus a percentage-based county processing fee, and can also refer the balance to a collection agency.

What a Landlord Selling a Rental in Hayward Needs to Clear First

Neither the Rent Review ordinance nor the inspection program spells out a formal “certificate of compliance” a seller must hand over at closing the way some cities require for other permits. But in practice, a handful of things from these two programs routinely surface during escrow on a Hayward rental, and it’s worth getting ahead of them before you list:

1. Confirm the Rent Review account is paid and current. Because the city doesn’t prorate the fee, a sale mid-year doesn’t erase a balance — the owner of record when the bill was issued remains responsible for it until the Assessor’s records and the Rent Review Office are both updated to reflect the new owner.
2. Check for any unpaid Rental Housing Inspection Program fee. Because nonpayment can convert into a recorded special assessment, an outstanding balance can effectively behave like a lien that a title company will want resolved before closing.
3. Pull your own copies of rent increase notices sent in the last few years. If you can’t produce them, you don’t automatically have a legal problem, but a buyer’s attorney or property manager may ask, and having the file ready shortens due diligence.
4. Look up the unit’s classification in the Rent Review Database. A buyer underwriting the deal will want to know whether they’re inheriting a Covered Rental Unit (with the 5% threshold and just-cause protections) or a less-restricted Rental Unit, and getting ahead of that question avoids a renegotiation after the fact.
5. Notify the Rent Review Office of the ownership change directly rather than assuming the county recorder’s paperwork updates it automatically — the city’s own FAQ says outdated assessor records can leave the prior owner on the hook for fees after the sale closes.

This is the same basic logic as Oakland’s rent registry program just across the county line, where a seller has to settle registry fees and surface registration status before a tenant-occupied sale closes cleanly — Hayward’s version runs through a different office and a different fee schedule, but the underlying risk to a seller (unresolved city fees turning into a closing-day surprise) looks similar in both cities.

When Selling for Cash Makes Sense — and When It Doesn’t

A cash sale can be genuinely useful for an owner who inherited a Hayward rental, doesn’t want to manage the Rent Review and inspection paperwork going forward, or has a tenant situation that’s gotten complicated enough that a quick, as-is close is worth more than squeezing out top dollar on the open market.

Skipping repairs, skipping a drawn-out listing process, and not having to coordinate showings around an existing tenant are real advantages in those situations.

But a cash sale is the wrong move in plenty of other cases, and it’s worth saying so plainly:

• If the property is a Covered Rental Unit with a long-term, rent-stabilized tenant paying well below market, the income stream itself may be worth more to a patient buy-and-hold investor than a quick cash sale would net you — it’s worth getting that valuation before you decide.
• If your only issue is an unpaid Rent Review or inspection fee, that’s usually a phone call and a payment, not a reason to sell the building.
• If you have time, a cooperative tenant, and a property in solid condition, listing traditionally with an agent who understands Hayward’s rent registry rules may net a meaningfully higher price than a fast cash close, even after commissions.
• If you’re weighing a 1031 exchange into another rental property rather than cashing out entirely, that’s a different financial decision with its own timeline — worth reading up on how a 1031 exchange works for California rental property before ruling it out.

The honest version of this is: the Rent Review ordinance and the inspection program add paperwork and a little cost, but neither one is usually, by itself, a reason to sell at a discount.

They become relevant to a sale decision mainly when they’re tangled up with something bigger — a tenant dispute, deferred maintenance that an inspection would flag, or an owner who simply doesn’t want to be a Hayward landlord anymore.

Quick Answers to Common Rent Review Questions

Does every rental in Hayward owe the fee, or just older buildings? Both Covered Rental Units and non-covered Rental Units owe an annual fee — $66 and $32 per unit respectively — though only Covered Rental Units are subject to the 5% increase threshold and the full review process.

Can a tenant block a rent increase under 5%? Generally no — the ordinance’s review and petition process is built around increases above the 5% threshold. A tenant can still raise other issues, like whether the notice met the content requirements in Section 12-1.15.

Who do I call to confirm current figures before relying on this article? The Hayward Rent Review Office at (510) 583-4454, or Code Enforcement for the inspection program fee — both fees are reset in the city’s Master Fee Schedule and can change between fiscal years.

Does the ordinance require a special document before closing a sale? No formal transfer certificate exists for these two programs specifically, but unresolved fees and account updates are the practical items that show up during escrow on a tenant-occupied Hayward rental.

If you’d rather hand off the Hayward paperwork than chase down invoices and classification lookups before a closing date, reaching out for a no-obligation cash offer is one way to find out what your rental is worth without committing to anything — 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 a closer look at the process specific to tenant-occupied properties here, see our guide on how to sell a tenant-occupied house in Hayward, or read what past clients have said on our Google Business Profile.