San Francisco’s Rent Ordinance layers its own just-cause eviction grounds, relocation payments, and Rent Board filing rules on top of California’s statewide Tenant Protection Act, and the local rules are frequently the ones that actually control a transaction.

A seller who assumes the state’s one-month relocation figure, or who has not checked whether a tenant qualifies for the city’s senior or disability protections, can find a sale delayed by months over a notice that was defective from the day it was served.

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San Francisco’s Rent Ordinance Sits on Top of State Law

San Francisco Administrative Code Chapter 37, the Residential Rent Stabilization and Arbitration Ordinance, has applied to just-cause evictions since August 24, 1980.

Section 37.9 sets out the only grounds a landlord may rely on to recover possession of a covered rental unit, and Sections 37.9A through 37.9F layer additional notice, relocation, and filing requirements on top of those grounds.

Covered units are, broadly, most residential rentals in buildings constructed before June 1979, which is a different and generally older cutoff than the 15-year rolling exemption under the state’s Civil Code 1946.2.

A building’s covered status under the local ordinance does not automatically track its status under state law, so a seller needs to check both before relying on either one.

The Just Causes, and Which Ones Actually Fit a Sale

Section 37.9(a) lists the grounds that justify ending a covered tenancy: nonpayment of rent, habitual late payment, a substantial lease violation the tenant fails to cure, nuisance, illegal use of the unit, refusal to execute a similar renewal lease, refusal to allow lawful access, an unapproved subtenant holding over, owner or relative move-in, demolition or permanent removal from rental use, temporary eviction for capital improvement work, substantial rehabilitation, a government order to vacate, and withdrawal of the unit from the rental market under the Ellis Act.

As in most California just-cause systems, simply wanting to sell the property with vacant possession is not on that list.

The three grounds a seller is actually likely to encounter are owner or relative move-in, Ellis Act withdrawal, and, less often, a government order to vacate tied to a code violation.

Picking the wrong ground, or assuming a pending sale by itself satisfies any of them, is the single most common way an eviction tied to a San Francisco sale ends up contested rather than closed.

Owner Move-In: The 36-Month Requirement and Ownership Threshold

Section 37.9(a)(8) lets a landlord recover possession in good faith for use as their own principal residence, or for a qualifying relative — a grandparent, grandchild, parent, child, sibling, spouse, or domestic partner of any of those — for at least 36 continuous months.

The person moving in must actually occupy the unit as a principal residence for the full three years, not a shorter stretch that happens to satisfy a buyer’s closing timeline.

Ownership matters too: a landlord who took title on or before February 21, 1991 must hold at least a 10 percent recorded interest in the property to use this ground, while anyone who became an owner of record after that date must hold at least 25 percent.

A landlord may not use this ground at all if a comparable unit they own in the building is already vacant and available, or becomes available before possession is recovered — the law requires offering that unit to the tenant instead, and treats a landlord’s bad timing around a vacancy as evidence of a lack of good faith.

The Senior, Disabled, and Catastrophically Ill Tenant Bar

San Francisco adds a protection that has no equivalent under the statewide statute: Section 37.9(i) bars an owner-move-in eviction outright against certain long-term tenants.

A landlord may not recover possession under Section 37.9(a)(8) if any tenant in the unit is 60 or older and has lived there 10 years or more, is disabled within the meaning the Rent Board uses (tied to the SSI/SSP disability standard) and has lived there 10 years or more, or is catastrophically ill — disabled and also facing a life-threatening illness certified by a treating physician — and has lived there five years or more.

This bar does not apply if the building has only one rental unit, or if every other unit the landlord owns in that building is already occupied by another protected tenant and the relative moving in is 60 or older.

A tenant who believes they qualify for this protection must submit a statement with supporting evidence within 30 days of the landlord’s written request or notice of termination, and the notice itself must warn the tenant of that deadline.

A landlord who skips this check, or who serves an owner-move-in notice on a qualifying long-term tenant without first confirming none of these three categories applies, is serving a notice the Rent Board and the courts will very likely treat as invalid regardless of the owner’s actual intent.

Current Relocation Payments Under Section 37.9C

Section 37.9C requires relocation payments for no-fault evictions based on owner or relative move-in, demolition or permanent removal from housing use, temporary eviction for capital improvement work, or substantial rehabilitation.

The ordinance set a base figure of $4,500 per eligible tenant when it was adopted by Proposition H in 2006, with a $13,500 cap per unit, and required the Rent Board to increase those figures every March 1 by the change in the regional CPI’s rent-of-primary-residence category.

For the period running March 1, 2026 through February 28, 2027, the Rent Board’s published schedule sets relocation pay at $8,245 per eligible tenant, capped at $24,733 per unit, with an additional $5,497 for each tenant who is 60 or older, disabled, or part of a household with a minor child.

Half of the base payment is due when the notice is served and half when the tenant vacates; the additional senior, disability, or child payment is split the same way once the tenant documents their eligibility.

A landlord relying on the statewide one-month-rent figure instead of these local amounts is very likely underpaying, sometimes by tens of thousands of dollars across a multi-unit building.

Filing Requirements: What a Landlord Must Send the Rent Board

On or before serving a covered no-fault eviction notice, the landlord must give every occupant written notice of their right to a relocation payment and the exact amount, along with a copy of Section 37.9C itself, and must file a copy of that notification with the Rent Board within 10 days, together with the notice to vacate and proof of service.

Separately, within 30 days after a Section 37.9(a)(8) notice to vacate becomes effective, the Rent Board must record a notice of constraints against the property with the County Recorder — a public record identifying the unit and the restrictions that follow it.

For notices served on or after January 1, 2018, the Rent Board also sends the unit a statement of its maximum allowable rent and refreshes that notice at 12, 24, 36, 48, and 60 months afterward.

A title search on a San Francisco rental that was recently cleared of a tenant under this ground is likely to turn up that recorded notice, and a buyer’s title company will usually flag it before closing.

Foreclosure Does Not Clear a Tenant Automatically

Section 37.9D protects any tenant who was in possession of a unit at the time of a foreclosure sale: the person or entity that takes title through foreclosure may not evict that tenant except for one of the just causes already listed in Section 37.9, or at the end of the tenant’s existing lease, whichever is later.

Within 15 days of taking title, the new owner must give the tenant written notice of these rights, in at least 14-point bold type, in the exact form the ordinance specifies, including the Rent Board’s address and phone number.

A new owner who tries to recover possession before giving that notice loses the just-cause defense in any eviction case that follows.

For a seller who acquired a San Francisco rental through foreclosure and is now trying to sell it with the tenant still in place, this section is usually the first thing a buyer’s attorney checks.

The Notice Itself Has Its Own Rules

Section 37.9(c) requires that one of the enumerated grounds be the landlord’s dominant motive for recovering possession, not simply a plausible reason listed alongside a sale that is the real driver.

The landlord must inform the tenant in writing, on or before the date the notice to vacate is given, exactly which ground is being used. For an owner-move-in, demolition, or substantial-rehabilitation notice, the landlord must also state the unit’s lawful rent as of the date the notice is issued.

The Rent Board publishes a required warning form, in English, Chinese, Spanish, Vietnamese, Tagalog, and Russian, that must be attached to the notice in the tenant’s primary language when the landlord knows what that language is; the form explains that ignoring the notice can lead to an eviction lawsuit and that free advice is available from the Board.

A notice that names the wrong ground, omits the stated rent, or skips the required language form is vulnerable to the same unlawful-detainer defense as a notice served on a protected tenant in the first place — the paperwork is not a formality a seller can skip to save a week.

A Worked Example

Consider a two-unit building where the owner wants to move an adult daughter into the lower unit, currently occupied by a single tenant who has lived there for 11 years and is 63 years old.

Because the tenant is over 60 and has lived in the unit more than 10 years, Section 37.9(i) bars the owner-move-in ground entirely unless the building’s other unit is vacant, available, and the owner is willing to offer it instead — and even then, the daughter would need to be 60 or older for the exception to apply, which she is not.

The owner cannot use Section 37.9(a)(8) on this tenant at all.

If the owner instead has a vacant second unit across town in a four-unit building with a 30-year-old tenant and no qualifying protections, moving the daughter into that unit works: a 36-month occupancy commitment, service of the notice naming the relative and the relationship, and a relocation payment of $8,245 (no senior, disability, or child add-on applies here) due half at service and half at move-out.

Confirming which unit, and which tenant, actually permits this ground before serving any notice is the step sellers skip most often.

Civil Penalties and Why a Defective Notice Costs More Than It Saves

Chapter 37 gives tenants a civil remedy against a landlord who recovers or endeavors to recover possession in violation of Section 37.9: actual damages, and treble damages for mental or emotional distress where the landlord acted in knowing violation or reckless disregard of the ordinance, plus the prevailing party’s reasonable attorney’s fees.

Beyond the financial exposure, a defective notice — wrong ground, missing relocation disclosure, or an owner-move-in notice served on a protected senior or disabled tenant — is typically unenforceable in an unlawful detainer action, which means the tenant stays in place well past whatever date a purchase agreement assumed for vacant possession.

For a seller working against a closing deadline, the time lost re-serving a corrected notice and waiting out a new notice period is almost always more expensive than getting the relocation payment and the eligibility check right the first time.

How This Interacts With a Sale

A buyer who takes title to a San Francisco rental subject to an existing tenancy inherits the same Chapter 37 obligations the seller had — the ordinance runs with the unit, not with a particular owner.

That matters for disclosure: a seller who has already served a Section 37.9(a)(8) notice, filed a relocation notification with the Rent Board, or triggered a recorded notice of constraints should disclose that history to a buyer, since the buyer’s own plans for the unit (re-renting it, moving in a relative of their own, or selling it again) run into the same five- and ten-year protections and recorded restrictions.

A seller who would rather not manage an eviction, a relocation payment calculation, or a Rent Board filing before closing can also sell with the tenancy in place; California’s statewide protections and San Francisco’s local ones both survive a change in ownership, and a buyer experienced with rent-controlled San Francisco property can factor an existing tenancy into price rather than requiring it to be cleared first.

A Short Checklist Before Serving a Notice on a Covered San Francisco Rental

Confirm the unit is covered under Chapter 37 and identify which of the limited just-cause grounds actually applies — a sale alone is not one of them.
For an owner or relative move-in, check every tenant in the unit against the age-60/10-year, disability/10-year, and catastrophic-illness/5-year protections in Section 37.9(i) before serving notice.
Confirm the current relocation payment schedule directly with the Rent Board rather than relying on a prior year’s figures, since the amounts rise every March 1.
File the required relocation notification and proof of service with the Rent Board within 10 days of serving the notice.
Check whether the property was acquired through foreclosure, which triggers its own 15-day tenant-notice requirement under Section 37.9D.
Disclose any recorded notice of constraints, or any relocation or eviction history, to a prospective buyer before escrow.

San Francisco’s local relocation schedule is considerably richer than the statewide floor set by Civil Code 1946.2’s just-cause framework; see our guide to California’s statewide just-cause eviction notice under Civil Code 1946.2 for how the state baseline compares.

A related situation worth checking before serving any notice is whether a termination is actually an owner move-in rather than some other no-fault ground — see our guide to California’s owner move-in eviction rules for what qualifies statewide.

If the rental sits in a multi-unit building and a buyer is a tenant group or nonprofit, San Francisco’s Community Opportunity to Purchase Act can also come into play before a sale closes; see our breakdown of what San Francisco’s COPA ordinance requires before you can sell a rental building.

Getting a Cash Offer on a San Francisco Rental

Cash Home Buyers CA buys tenant-occupied, mid-eviction, and vacant rental property across San Francisco directly or through a vetted cash buyer, and can work around a pending relocation payment, a Rent Board filing already underway, or a notice period still running.

When you sell to us, we pay the standard closing costs, including the county and city transfer taxes, escrow and title. Read more in our guide to selling a tenant-occupied house in San Francisco, request a no-obligation offer at Cash Home Buyers CA, or find us on Google Business Profile. You can also call us directly at (424) 435-2326.

San Francisco’s Rent Ordinance: Eviction Rules and Relocation Pay