Taking Your Building Off the Rental Market: What the Ellis Act Starts, and the Ten Years After

For Owners · Los Angeles County · October 2026 · 13 min read

Sooner or later an owner asks a version of this question. The building is old, the rents are well behind the market, the retrofit bid came in high, and there is no rent increase large enough to fix any of it. Can you simply stop being a landlord?

Yes. That is what the state Ellis Act is for. No city in California can force an owner to stay in the rental business, and Los Angeles, Culver City, Inglewood and Beverly Hills all have a procedure for getting out. What none of them will do is let you leave quietly. A withdrawal is a filing, not a notice, and the filing starts a set of clocks that outlast the tenants, the demolition and in some cases your ownership of the property. It is not a faster eviction, and using it as one is where the risk lives.

This is the mechanical version: what you file, what you pay, when the tenancies actually end, and what the building can and cannot do for the decade that follows.

What a withdrawal is, and what it is not

A withdrawal removes the units from residential rental use. It is not a ground for getting rid of one difficult tenant, and it is not a way to reset rents. Everything in the second half of this article exists to make sure of that: the rent you can charge if the units come back is the rent you were charging when you filed, not the market rent on the day they come back.

It is also not the same thing as a demolition, though the two often travel together. In the City of Los Angeles, a withdrawal tied to a demolition with new construction behind it carries a longer notice period and can pull in a second relocation schedule. A withdrawal with no construction plan behind it is the shorter version. Decide which one you are doing before anything is filed, because the paperwork and the notice period follow from that answer.

And it is not a quiet administrative step. The city records a memorandum of the withdrawal with the Los Angeles County Recorder. Your tenants’ names stay confidential, but the constraint on the property does not. Any buyer, lender or title company looking at the parcel will see it.

In the City of Los Angeles, the filing starts the clock

The sequence under the RSO is set out in the Los Angeles Municipal Code at sections 151.22 through 151.28, and the order matters more than any single step.

You file a Notice of Intent to Withdraw with the Los Angeles Housing Department. It has to carry the tenants’ names, the unit addresses, the intended date of withdrawal and the rent in effect for each unit. That last item is not administrative trivia. The rent you report is the rent that governs the units if they ever come back on the market, so a careless figure here is a figure you live with.

The city then records the memorandum with the County Recorder. Within five days of your filing, the affected tenants have to be given notice that it happened, what their rights are, and what rent you reported for their unit. LAHD prescribes the form for this, currently Form E3, the Notice to Tenant of Pending Withdrawal, which carries the filing date and the construction timeline where one applies.

The withdrawal date itself has to be at least 120 days from the date the notice is delivered to the Department. Not 120 days from when you told the tenant, and not 120 days from when you decided. From the filing. Where the withdrawal is for a demolition project with new construction, LAHD applies a six-month notice period instead.

Senior and disabled tenants can add a year to that

A tenant who is 62 or older, or who is disabled, and who has lived in the unit for at least a year, can extend the tenancy by one year. The tenant has to give you written notice to claim it, and the window is 60 days after you filed with the Department. Nothing is required of you except to honor it, but it changes the schedule: a building with one qualifying tenant on the ground floor is a building whose last unit empties roughly fifteen months after filing, not four.

A construction timeline built without that year is a timeline that can slip by a year. If you have tenants who may qualify, build it into the financing assumption rather than hoping nobody claims it.

Relocation is due 15 days after the termination notice

Relocation assistance on a withdrawal is not negotiable and it is not due at move-out. It is due within 15 days of serving the termination notice, so the money leaves well before any unit is empty.

LAHD publishes the amounts as a schedule rather than a formula, and the figure turns on the tenant’s category, not on the size of the unit. A studio and a three-bedroom in the same building generate the same payment to a tenant in the same category. The schedule separates two tenant categories, with the higher amounts going to the category LAHD calls Qualified. A second schedule, the one that applies to demolition projects, sets higher amounts for lower-income tenants displaced by the demolition. Which category each tenant falls into is worth confirming with LAHD rather than assumed, because it changes the payment. Where more than one law would give a tenant a relocation payment, the tenant gets the greatest applicable amount, not the sum.

Pull the current schedule from LAHD before you underwrite anything. The amounts are revised, and the gap between the two tiers is wide enough that guessing the mix in a ten-unit building can put your number well off in either direction. If LAHD’s determination of what you owe looks wrong, there is an appeal, and the window is 15 days from the determination.

The seven years of reporting nobody budgets for

This is the part that outlasts the hard work. For seven years after the withdrawal, you file an Annual Property Status Report with the Department. It documents what happened to the property: whether the demolition went ahead, where the development stands, and whether rent stabilization requirements are being met on anything newly built.

Seven annual filings is not a burden by itself. It becomes one when the property changes hands, the new owner has never heard of the obligation, and the file sits open at the Department. If you sell inside that window, the reporting duty is something your escrow should address explicitly rather than something you mention in passing.

What the building can and cannot do afterward

Three periods run from the withdrawal, and they do different things. They are easy to conflate, and conflating them is expensive.

Two years: re-renting is actionable

If the units are offered for rent again within two years of the withdrawal, a displaced tenant can sue you for actual and exemplary damages, and the time limit for bringing that action runs three years from the withdrawal. The City of Los Angeles can bring its own civil proceeding on top of that, also seeking exemplary damages for the displacement. The code sets no dollar cap on either, which is the point: the exposure is whatever a court decides it is.

The two-year period is also the window in which displaced tenants hold a right of first refusal. Tenants who gave you written notice of interest within 30 days of being displaced have to be offered the unit, by registered or certified mail, with 30 days to accept.

Five years: the rent is the old rent

If the units are re-offered within five years of the filing, they have to be rented at the lawful rent that was in effect when the Notice of Intent to Withdraw was filed, plus the annual adjustments the RSO would have allowed in the meantime. The code says this prevails over any other provision of law that would otherwise let you set the rent freely on a new tenancy. So the Costa-Hawkins vacancy decontrol that normally lets an owner reset rent on turnover does not help here.

Read that against the usual reason owners consider a withdrawal. If the plan is to empty the building, wait, and re-let at market, the five-year rule is the plan’s problem. Waiting out five years with an empty building has its own cost, and it is rarely the cheaper path.

Ten years: the city gets notified first

For ten years after the withdrawal, you cannot just put the units back on the market. You file a Notice of Intention to Re-Rent Withdrawn Accommodations with the Department, currently Form E7, and you may not offer the unit to anyone for 30 days after that filing. In that window, displaced tenants who ask you in writing within 30 days of your notifying the Department have to be offered the unit first. Failing to comply inside the ten-year period exposes you to punitive damages up to six months of the contract rent.

These constraints can be made to bind whoever owns the property next. The city records a notice with the County Recorder describing the property and the applicable dates, under the authority the state Ellis Act gives it. A buyer who did not read the title report inherits the restriction anyway.

And if you re-offer the units and later want out again, you start over: a new Notice of Intent to Withdraw, a new 120 days, new relocation.

The three cities where we concentrate

The state act is the floor. Each city builds on it, and the differences are not small.

Culver City

Removal from the rental market is one of exactly five no-fault grounds in Culver City’s rent stabilization ordinance, at section 15.09.320. Relocation under section 15.09.325 is three times the greater of the current rent or the HUD small area fair market rent for the ZIP code, plus $1,000. In the Culver City ZIPs that carry a small area fair market rent, 90232, 90230 and 90066, that comparison is worth running rather than assuming the current rent governs.

One trap here. Culver City gives small landlords, defined as owners of three units or fewer counted both inside and outside the city, a 50% reduction in relocation. It applies only to a landlord-occupancy eviction. A market withdrawal does not get it. An owner of a single duplex pays the full relocation on a withdrawal.

If the withdrawal is the first step toward redevelopment, add time for an SB 8 Replacement Unit Determination, which Culver City describes as taking six to eight weeks once the package is complete. The registration also has to be current. Asking the city to process a no-fault on a building with a lapsed certificate is a bad opening move. We walk through the rest of the city’s termination machinery in ending a tenancy in Culver City.

Inglewood

Inglewood lists the Ellis Act as one of its four no-fault bases, and demolition as another. The demolition basis has a hard sequence: all permits in hand and Board approval obtained before the notice is served, not after.

Relocation is three times the monthly rent at the date of the notice, plus $2,000 if a minor occupies the unit, plus one tier based on tenancy length or status. The tiers do not stack, so a tenant who is both long-tenured and a senior generates one payment at the highest applicable tier, not two. It is due within 15 calendar days of service.

Inglewood is specific about the notice document itself. The notice has to state the basis and, on a no-fault, the relocation amount and how you calculated it. Copies go to the Housing Protection Division within three calendar days of service. Failure to strictly comply voids the notice, which means a defective filing does not get corrected later, it gets started over. The ordinance sets no notice period of its own, so state law fills the gap and a tenancy of a year or more takes 60 days. More detail in ending a tenancy in Inglewood.

Beverly Hills

Beverly Hills treats withdrawal from the rental market as one of the grounds that owes relocation, and relocation in Beverly Hills follows the specific ground rather than a general at-fault or no-fault label. The fees are set per unit size and adjusted each July 1, with an additional amount where a tenant is 62 or older, disabled, or a minor. Because they are fixed amounts rather than a multiple of the rent, they are straightforward to budget and do not fall as the rent falls. Under section 4-6-6(L) a withdrawal from the rental market takes not less than 120 days’ written notice, and the withdrawal is recorded with the County and filed with the city’s rent stabilization program. The current schedule and the full list of grounds are on our Beverly Hills page.

Where this goes wrong

Four failure patterns are worth naming, because each one is avoidable at the planning stage and expensive afterward.

Serving notices before filing. The clock runs from the filing with the city, so a notice served first buys nothing and can invalidate the attempt. File, then serve.

Underwriting without the senior and disabled extension. One qualifying tenant adds a year. If the construction loan assumes vacancy at four months, one letter from a tenant in month two breaks the model.

Treating relocation as a move-out cost. It is due 15 days after the termination notice. On a building of any size that is a large cash outlay well before the property produces anything.

Planning to re-let at market inside five years. The rent reverts to what you reported on the filing, plus the adjustments you would have been allowed. Owners who intend to re-rent at some point should look hard at the alternatives first: a negotiated buyout with its own disclosure and rescission rules, a 1031 exchange, or simply selling the building with the tenancies in place. A withdrawal is the right tool when you intend to stop renting the property. It is a poor substitute for any of the others.

Questions owners ask

Can I withdraw just one unit in a four-unit building?

Ask your attorney before you plan around it. The filing is made for specified units, and the practical question of whether a partial withdrawal survives a challenge is exactly the kind of thing worth paying for an hour of advice on. Do not assume either answer from how the form is laid out.

How long until the building is actually empty?

In the City of Los Angeles, at least 120 days from the filing, longer where a demolition brings the six-month notice period, and a further year for any tenant who claims the senior or disabled extension. In Inglewood, a tenancy of a year or more takes 60 days under state law once the ground is properly established. Plan on the long version.

Do I still pay relocation if the tenant leaves on their own before the date?

This is a question for your attorney on your specific facts, and the answer can turn on when the notice was served and what the tenant was told. Do not treat an early move-out as a saving until you have confirmed it.

Can I use a withdrawal to convert to condominiums?

A withdrawal removes units from rental use. It does not grant any entitlement, and a conversion has its own approvals in every one of these cities. The withdrawal is one step in a longer process, and the later steps can fail on their own terms after the units are already empty.

What happens if I sell the building after withdrawing?

The restrictions can follow the property. The city records a notice against the parcel describing the applicable dates, so the five-year rent limit and the ten-year first-refusal rules can bind the buyer. The seven years of annual status reporting is an obligation your escrow should address rather than leave ambiguous.

My building is in unincorporated county territory. Same rules?

No. The county has its own ordinance and its own registration cycle, and the city rules above do not apply. We cover the county registration side in the county rent registration deadline. Send us the address and we will tell you which rulebook governs.

I only want out because of a repair order. Is there a middle path?

There may be, and it is worth pricing first. A code enforcement order has its own compliance clock and its own extensions, which we set out in what happens after an inspector leaves an order, and a soft-story retrofit has a cost recovery mechanism that lets part of the work be passed through. Run those numbers before you price an exit.

Sources and disclaimer. Los Angeles Housing Department, Removal From Rental Market (the Notice of Intent to Withdraw filed with LAHD under LAMC §§ 151.09.A.10 and 151.22–151.28, the 120-day notice period and the six-month period for demolition projects with new construction, Form E3 and Form E4, the one-year extension for tenants 62 or older or disabled with at least one year of occupancy on written notice within 60 days of the filing, relocation due within 15 days of the termination notice, the Bulletin A and Bulletin B schedules and the greatest-applicable-amount rule, the 30-day right-to-return notice, and the 15-day appeal of a relocation determination); Los Angeles Municipal Code § 151.23 (contents of the notice, recording of the memorandum with the County Recorder, tenant notice within five days, the withdrawal date at least 120 days from delivery to the Department, the senior and disabled extension, and the Annual Property Status Report for seven years following withdrawal), § 151.24 (Notice of Intention to Re-Rent Withdrawn Accommodations and the 30-day bar on offering the unit after filing), § 151.25 (actual and exemplary damages for offering units for rent within two years of withdrawal, the three-year limit on a displaced tenant’s action, and the City’s own civil proceeding), § 151.26 (re-offer within five years at the lawful rent in effect when the notice was filed plus adjustments available under § 151.06, prevailing over conflicting initial-hiring provisions, the new filing required to re-withdraw, and recording against successors in interest) and § 151.27 (the two-year right of first refusal on 30 days’ written notice of interest, the ten-year obligation to offer to displaced tenants who request in writing within 30 days of the owner notifying the Department, service by registered or certified mail with 30 days to accept, punitive damages not exceeding six months’ contract rent, and recording against successors under Government Code § 7060.3). Culver City Municipal Code §§ 15.09.320 and 15.09.325 and the City of Culver City Rent Stabilization & Tenant Protection Measures page (removal from the rental market as a no-fault ground, relocation of three times the greater of current rent or the HUD small area fair market rent plus $1,000, the small-landlord 50% reduction limited to landlord-occupancy evictions, and the SB 8 Replacement Unit Determination timeline). Inglewood Municipal Code ch. 8, art. 9, §§ 8-122 and 8-123 (the Ellis Act and demolition bases, permits and Board approval before notice, relocation of three times monthly rent plus the applicable single tier, payment within 15 calendar days of service, the contents of the notice, and filing copies with Housing Protection within three calendar days). Beverly Hills Municipal Code §§ 4-6-6 and 4-6-9 (withdrawal from the rental market under subsection (L) on not less than 120 days’ written notice, recorded with the County and filed with the city, as a ground owing relocation, with fees by unit size adjusted each July 1). Current as of October 2026. This article is general information for property owners and is not legal advice. Withdrawal under the Ellis Act is one of the most heavily litigated areas of California landlord-tenant law, relocation schedules and fees change, and a defective filing or notice can be unwound years later. Confirm your situation with the Los Angeles Housing Department, the Culver City Housing Services Division (Rent.Control@CulverCity.org, (310) 253-5790), the Inglewood Housing Protection Division ((310) 412-4330), or the Beverly Hills rent stabilization program as applicable, and retain a California landlord-tenant attorney before filing anything or serving any notice. Bessa Properties is a California DRE-licensed company.