Inglewood Property Management

Property Management in Inglewood, CA

Bessa Properties manages rental homes and apartment buildings in Inglewood: rent collection, maintenance, leasing, and the city’s own registry and rent rules, handled by a California DRE-licensed company that works this part of LA County every week.

Inglewood is not the same job as the rest of LA County

Inglewood is its own city with its own housing department, and that changes how a rental has to be run. Owners who treat it like unincorporated county or like the City of Los Angeles tend to miss a filing, and in Inglewood a missed filing can mean you cannot legally collect rent until it is fixed.

The city passed its Housing Protection Ordinance in 2020. Since then, most buildings with two or more units have a local rent cap, just-cause eviction rules, and an annual registration requirement that is enforced through the Inglewood Residential Registry. Single-family homes and condos owned by an individual are generally exempt from the rent cap, but only if the tenant was told so in writing. That one sentence in a lease is the kind of detail we check on day one.

At the same time, demand here is strong. SoFi Stadium, the Intuit Dome, and the Kia Forum bring event traffic, LAX is a few minutes away, and the K Line stops at Fairview Heights, Downtown Inglewood, and Westchester/Veterans. Tenants who work at the airport, in Playa Vista, or in Culver City look at Inglewood first because the rent goes further. A well-run building here stays full.

How Inglewood’s rules affect you as an owner

Rent increases

For covered buildings with five or more units, Inglewood caps annual rent increases at 3% or the change in the Consumer Price Index, whichever is greater. Buildings with two to four units follow the state formula of 5% plus CPI. No increase may exceed 10% in a year under either rule. The city publishes the current percentage each spring, and every increase needs a 30-day notice of change in terms and has to be recorded in the online Residential Registry. We calculate the increase, serve the notice, and file it, so you are not guessing at the number.

Registration

Every property with two or more units, including mixed-use buildings with apartments over a storefront, must register with the city every year during the January through March window. New tenancies have to be registered within 30 days of move-in. Without a valid registration certificate, an owner is not supposed to advertise the unit, accept rent, or evict. The registry asks for unit details, tenant names and rent amounts, and a copy of the management agreement when a manager is involved. We keep that file current so renewal is a formality.

Just cause and relocation

Once a tenant has lived in a covered unit for twelve months, the tenancy can only be ended for a reason listed in the ordinance. Nonpayment and lease violations are at-fault reasons. Owner move-in, a government order to vacate, or taking the building off the rental market are no-fault reasons, and those require relocation assistance, starting at three times the monthly rent plus additional amounts depending on how long the tenant has lived there and who lives in the unit. Any notice to cure or notice terminating a tenancy has to be filed with the city’s Housing Protection Department within three days of serving it. We handle the paperwork and the timeline; for anything contested we work with a landlord-tenant attorney rather than improvising.

What we handle in Inglewood

• Rent collection through an online tenant portal, with monthly owner statements
• Maintenance coordination: tenant requests, vendor dispatch, follow-up, and photos of the finished work
• Annual Residential Registry filing and registration of new tenancies
• Rent increase calculation, 30-day notices, and registry recording
• Leasing: pricing, photos, listing syndication, showings, and screening that follows California fair housing law
• Lease documents with the Inglewood just-cause addendum included
• Move-in and move-out inspections with written condition reports
• Notices, filings, and coordination with counsel when a tenancy has to end

Who it suits

A single house or condo

Most single-family rentals in Inglewood are exempt from the local rent cap, but the exemption has to be stated in writing, and state law still applies. We set the lease up correctly, keep the house maintained, and send you one statement a month.

Duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes

This is the building type where owners get tripped up most often, because a two-unit building still has to register with the city even when the owner lives in one unit and is claiming an exemption from the rent cap. We sort out which rules apply to your building, register it, and run it.

Larger apartment buildings

For buildings with five or more units we handle the city rent cap, unit-by-unit registration, turnover, and vendor contracts. Owners get a clear picture of income, expenses, and what is coming up, without being the one who answers a call at 6 a.m. about a water heater.

One predictable monthly fee

Most managers charge a percentage of collected rent, which means your cost rises every time you raise the rent. We offer flat fee management instead: one fixed monthly amount per property that covers rent collection and maintenance coordination. It does not change when rents go up, and there are no surprise line items at the end of the month. Leasing a vacant unit is a separate, one-time fee, charged only when we actually place a tenant.

The amount depends on the building, so we quote it after a short conversation about your property. Request a quote and we will send you a written number, not a range.

Questions Inglewood owners ask us