Beverly Hills does not have a rent stabilization ordinance. It has two of them, and which one governs a given unit changes that unit's income trajectory — and therefore your building's value. Most owners here know they are "rent controlled." Far fewer can tell you, unit by unit, whether they are under Chapter 5 or Chapter 6. A buyer's analyst will work it out during diligence. You want to have worked it out first.
The City of Beverly Hills regulates rents under two separate chapters of its Municipal Code, and the dividing line is unusual enough that it catches people out.
Chapter 5 covers units in buildings constructed before September 20, 1978 whose original monthly rent was $600 or less. Note that it is a two-part test — vintage and the original rent figure — not vintage alone, which is how most California ordinances work. The maximum allowable annual increase under Chapter 5 currently sits at 3.34%, most recently updated July 14, 2026. Unusually, that figure is revised monthly, so the applicable percentage is a moving target that has to be checked against the date of your notice rather than assumed from last year.
Chapter 6 covers essentially everything else that is rent-stabilized in the city. Its maximum allowable annual increase is currently 3.6%, set in June 2026 and revised annually each June.
In both cases the city requires the owner to register the new rent in its online registry within 30 days of executing a lease, a 30-day notice precedes any increase, and unused increases cannot be banked — skipping a year does not let you take a larger increase the next one.
Because a buyer is not purchasing your current rent roll. They are purchasing the lawful trajectory of that rent roll, and the two chapters produce different trajectories from identical starting rents. A building where most units fall under Chapter 5 carries a different growth model than one under Chapter 6, and the monthly-revision mechanic on Chapter 5 introduces a diligence question that a careless seller answers wrong in writing.
This is where Beverly Hills deals go sideways late. The rent roll is delivered, the buyer's analyst tests the unit-level chapter assignments and the registry filings, and something does not reconcile — a unit assumed to be Chapter 6 that meets the Chapter 5 test, or a registration that was not filed inside 30 days. Then the price moves in escrow, which is the worst possible time for it to move. Getting the chapter assignments and the registry record clean before we go to market is not administrative housekeeping; it is price protection.
The Metro D Line subway extension opened May 8, 2026, running from Wilshire/Western in Koreatown to Wilshire/La Cienega, with new stations at Wilshire/La Brea, Wilshire/Fairfax and Wilshire/La Cienega. Beverly Hills now has heavy rail for the first time.
I am deliberately not going to tell you that produced a specific percentage of rent or value uplift. It opened three months before this page was written, and anyone quoting you a number for its effect on Beverly Hills multifamily is guessing. What it does change is a real, structural thing: a segment of tenants who previously required a car now have a rail commute to Koreatown, Mid-Wilshire and Downtown. That is a durable amenity, it is funded and built rather than proposed, and it is a legitimate part of the story we tell a buyer — framed as what it is, not as a number I cannot source.
Beverly Hills was incorporated in September 1914, by investors who went looking for oil and found water instead. Its population at the 2020 census was 32,701 — a small city with an outsized commercial identity anchored by the Rodeo Drive retail district. Beverly Hills Unified School District, unified in 1936, is one of the most cited reasons tenants stay in place here, and tenant stability is a value input rather than a lifestyle detail.
The city's multifamily history runs deeper than the single-family image suggests. The Beverly Wilshire opened as an apartment hotel on January 1, 1928, built by Walter G. McCarty on the site of the former Beverly Hills Speedway — the corridor was substantially rental long before it was anything else.
One thing to be clear about: Measure ULA does not apply here. It is a City of Los Angeles transfer tax, and Beverly Hills is its own city. On a sale above $5.4 million that distinction is worth real money, and it is a genuine advantage of selling a Beverly Hills asset over an otherwise comparable LA City one.
Nothing in Beverly Hills proper. I am not going to manufacture a closing history in a city where I do not have one.
What I do have is the ring around it, closed repeatedly: West Hollywood, Beverlywood, Century City, Westwood, Fairfax, Hancock Park and the wider Westside, inside a book of $1.46 billion across 259 Los Angeles transactions in 14 years. For a Beverly Hills building, the comparable set that actually matters is that surrounding inventory plus the city's own recent trades, and pricing gets built from both. If you want a broker who can show you closings on your exact block, I am not that broker here — and I would rather say so than pretend otherwise.
Because the two-chapter question is the one that decides your price, and it is the one most likely to be answered sloppily. I will go through your rent roll unit by unit against the Chapter 5 test, check the registry record, tell you what the lawful increase path actually is under each chapter, and price the building on income a buyer's lender will accept rather than a pro forma they will reject.
Request a free evaluation of your Beverly Hills building and we will start with the chapter assignments.
Michael Sterman will walk through comparables, buyer pool, and timing specific to your building — no obligation, no pitch.
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