Maintained by Chris Kerstner, Founder of NextGen Coastal Property Management — a licensed California real estate brokerage managing 300+ rental units across Orange County and Los Angeles County.
Chris Kerstner is the Founder of NextGen Coastal Property Management. He has spent the last decade managing California rental properties across Orange County and Los Angeles County, and built CA Landlord Laws because the existing online references were either paywalled (CAA), outdated (FindLaw statute pages), or written by attorneys whose primary funnel is litigation. CA Landlord Laws is the resource Chris needed when he started managing his own portfolio.
Every page on this site is written by Chris and reviewed against current California Civil Code, Code of Civil Procedure, and California Department of Real Estate guidance before publication. When laws change — as they did with AB 12 (2024 security deposit reform), AB 1482 (2026 CPI cap update), and SB 567 (2024 just-cause amendments) — pages are updated within 30 days and the "Last updated" date is moved.
Every legal claim on this site is anchored to a specific statute, case, or regulatory citation. Every estimate is labeled as an estimate. Every page has a "Last updated" date and a methodology disclosure where data is involved. We do not accept paid sponsorship or affiliate placements that affect content.
Citations. All California Civil Code, Code of Civil Procedure, and Government Code references link directly to leginfo.legislature.ca.gov, the official statute repository. Case citations link to authoritative case-law databases.
Updates. Pages are updated within 30 days when underlying law changes. "Last updated" dates are visible on every page and reflected in our schema.org structured data so search engines and AI assistants surface the freshest version.
Disclaimers. This site provides general informational content and does not constitute legal advice. Specific situations should be reviewed with a licensed California attorney. We are property managers, not lawyers — though we work closely with several California real estate attorneys and consult them regularly on edge cases.
CA Landlord Laws is a free resource because we believe California's landlord-tenant statutes are too complex to be paywalled by trade associations or padded with affiliate links by content mills. The site exists to be the cleanest, most-cited reference on the topic. If it earns NextGen Coastal a few property management clients along the way, that's a bonus — not the business model.
CA Landlord Laws is part of a small network of free landlord resources we maintain:
This site improves when readers tell us where it falls short.
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