Ending a Tenancy in Beverly Hills: The Ground You Pick Decides What It Costs

For Owners · Beverly Hills · October 2026 · 14 min read

A tenant in your 1961 building north of Wilshire has a lease expiring in February. You send a renewal on the same terms, at the rent the ordinance allows, and the tenant declines to sign it. That is a lawful ground for recovering the unit in Beverly Hills. It also carries a relocation fee of several thousand dollars, because the city attaches that fee to specific grounds rather than to the question of who was at fault.

That is the distinction to get right before anything else. In Inglewood, Culver City, and the City of Los Angeles, relocation money follows the no-fault label: the tenant did nothing, so you pay. Beverly Hills does not sort the grounds that way. It lists thirteen reasons a tenancy can end, then names seven of them as fee-free and leaves the rest owing. A tenant who refuses your renewal offer and a tenant whose building manager job ended both sit on the paying side. Pick the wrong ground and you have budgeted zero for something that can run to five figures.

Here is how the ordinance actually works, with the notice periods, the filings, and the conditions that decide whether a ground is even available to you.

First, which chapter governs your building

Beverly Hills runs two rent stabilization chapters, and they are not alternatives you choose between. Chapter 6 covers apartment units in properties of two or more units whose certificate of occupancy was issued on or before February 1, 1995. Chapter 5 is the older, narrower category: units built before September 20, 1978 whose original rent was $600 a month or less. A single building can contain units under different chapters, which is why the question gets answered unit by unit rather than by address.

For terminations, the practical news is good: Chapter 5’s eviction article runs through the same sequence of grounds as Chapter 6: nonpayment, violation of obligations, nuisance, illegal use, refusal to execute leases, refusal of access, unapproved subtenants, use by landlords, change of building managers, demolition or condominium conversion, withdrawal from the rental market, and disruptive tenant. The structure matches. What differs is each chapter’s own relocation fee article and its own rent adjustment rules. So the grounds analysis below holds either way, and the dollar figure is the thing you confirm against your unit’s chapter before you commit to anything. Our Beverly Hills property management page covers the rent side, including the separate annual increase percentages the two chapters run on.

Worth saying early: selling is not a ground. Neither is a lease expiration on its own, and neither is a plan to list the unit short term, which the city does not permit anyway. We wrote about that last point separately in the one-year lease rule.

The thirteen grounds, and the seven that cost you nothing

Section 4-6-6 bars an action to recover possession unless it rests on one of the listed grounds. Section 4-6-9 then says the relocation fee is not owed on evictions based on subsections (A), (B), (C), (D), (F), (G), or (M). Every other ground carries it.

The fee-free set:

• (A) Nonpayment of rent owed, or of a lawfully imposed surcharge.
• (B) Violation of obligations: a breach of a lease or tenancy obligation other than the duty to surrender possession, which the tenant did not cure after written notice from you.
• (C) Nuisance or damage: maintaining a nuisance, damaging the unit or common areas, or unreasonably interfering with other residents’ comfort, safety, or enjoyment.
• (D) Illegal use, which the ordinance defines to include occupancy above set limits: three persons in a bachelor or single, four in a one-bedroom of 1,200 square feet or less and five above that, five in a two-bedroom of 1,500 square feet or less and six above that, seven in a three-bedroom of 2,100 square feet or less and eight above that.
• (F) Refusal to provide access for repairs, improvements, inspections required by the lease or by law, or showings to a prospective buyer or lender.
• (G) Unapproved subtenant in possession at the end of the lease term.
• (M) Disruptive tenant, which is a city hearing process rather than a notice you serve. More on it below.

And the grounds that owe a fee:

• (E) Refusal to execute a renewal lease.
• (H) Use by the landlord or the landlord’s spouse, children, or parents.
• (I) Change of building manager.
• (J) Demolition, moving the building, or conversion to condominiums, stock cooperatives, or community apartments.
• (L) Withdrawal of all units from the rental market. Subsection (K) is reserved and has no content.

(E) Refusal to execute a renewal lease has three conditions

This ground is narrower than it sounds, and it is not a way to decline a renewal yourself. It applies where a written lease has expired and the tenant refuses to execute a written renewal. All three of these have to be true: you made a written request or demand at least thirty days before the lease expired, the renewal term is the same length as the agreement that expired, and the renewal is on the same terms with its rent set under section 4-6-3.

So a renewal offer at a higher rent than the ordinance permits, or on a shorter term, or sent two weeks out, does not set the ground up. And when it is correctly set up and the tenant still declines, the relocation fee is due. Treat (E) as a procedure with a price tag, not as a lease-expiration exit.

(H) Use by the landlord or family: the conditions are the hard part

The conditions on this ground are stricter than the equivalent in Inglewood or Culver City, and they are where a move-in plan can come apart.

The notice is at least ninety days in writing, and it has to name the proposed occupant and that person’s current address. A copy must be filed with the city’s rent stabilization program before the tenant is served. Serve first and file after and you have an ineffective notice.

Then the conditions:

• No comparable vacant unit may exist in the building at any point during the ninety-day period. Not just on the day you serve, but at any point. A unit going vacant mid-notice is a problem.
• The unit you recover has to be the one occupied by the most recent tenant of a comparable unit type. You do not get to pick the unit you like best.
• Tenants who are senior citizens, meaning sixty-five or older, and handicapped tenants cannot be evicted on this ground if any other comparable unit exists on the parcel. Where that is the case you must instead recover the comparable unit held by the most recent tenant who is neither. The city decides what counts as comparable.
• Only one unit per parcel may ever be recovered under this subsection, regardless of how many buildings sit on the parcel.
• “Landlord” here means natural persons holding the largest ownership interest in the building or in the owning entity. An LLC cannot move into a unit, and the ground is written to reflect that.
• A rebuttable presumption of bad faith arises if the owner or relative does not move in within thirty days and then stay at least twelve continuous months. Where the unit is being remodeled under a city building permit, the thirty days runs from the Department of Building and Safety’s approved final inspection instead.

Note also the relative list: spouse, children, parents. Siblings, grandchildren, and grandparents are not on it. Culver City and Inglewood both include grandchildren and grandparents, so an owner working across cities cannot carry one list to another.

Once the owner or relative has occupied the unit for at least a year it becomes exempt. Re-rent it to someone outside that family group and it is covered again.

(J) Demolition and condominium conversion: permits before notice

The sequence here is unforgiving, and it runs in one direction. You may not serve the notice until you have filed all required applications (demolition, moving, or tentative map permits), paid the related fees, notified the rent stabilization program of what you filed with other city departments, and obtained every permit needed to begin the work. Then the notice: at least ninety days, approved by the rent stabilization program, stating the specific reason and including your representation that the reason falls within the section. If the relocation fee is not enclosed with the notice, the notice has to state the amount and tell the tenant it can be collected on vacating. A copy is filed with the program before service, with a minimum fee of $100 per building, plus $10 per unit above ten in buildings with more than ten covered units.

One more trap at the end of the process: no judgment or writ issues unless your complaint includes a declaration under penalty of perjury confirming the notice, the expired notice period, payment or escrow of the relocation fee, and that work will begin within sixty days of filing. A project that is not actually ready to start cannot complete the eviction.

(L) Withdrawal from the rental market

This is the Beverly Hills route for taking a property out of the rental business, and it sits on the same state statute as the Los Angeles version. All units on the parcel go at once. Where a parcel holds several buildings of four or more units each, whole buildings may be withdrawn instead.

The headline numbers: a notice under penalty of perjury to the rent stabilization program at least 120 days before withdrawal, listing the address and legal description, the units, tenant names, move-in years, base rent, and current lawful rent. A notice recorded with the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder. Copies of the recorded notice and the tenant notices filed with the program. A program-approved notice to affected tenants at least thirty days before the city notices are served and recorded, covering the withdrawal, the tenant’s re-rental interest right, the extension right, and the relocation fee.

A tenant aged sixty-two or older, or disabled, who lived in the unit for at least a year before the city notice may extend the withdrawal date to one year after the city delivers notice, claimed within sixty days of that delivery. The tenancy continues on existing terms, and you have reporting obligations to the program on a thirty-day and a ninety-day clock once a claim is made.

Then the re-rental constraints, which are the reason this is a long-term decision and not a tactic: within two years, you notify the program thirty days before re-renting, offer at the withdrawal-date rent plus allowable increases, and give interested former tenants a right of first refusal by certified or registered mail with at least thirty days to accept, with civil exposure for three years including punitive and exemplary damages. Within five years, the thirty-day program notice and the withdrawal-date rent still apply. Within ten years, the first-refusal right still applies, with punitive damages up to six months’ rent for failing to honor it. Successors in interest are bound. Our post on withdrawing units in the City of Los Angeles walks the parallel process there, which differs in its deadlines and its paperwork.

(M) Disruptive tenant is a city hearing, not a notice

You cannot proceed on this ground until a hearing officer has found the tenant disruptive. The grounds are repeated or continuing unreasonable disturbance of other tenants, such as excessive noise, or threats, harassment, intimidation, or bullying of other tenants, and in either case the tenant not stopping when asked.

The sequence: a written notice to stop the conduct, delivered personally, by certified mail, or posted on the door. If the conduct continues ten days after delivery, a second notice on a city-approved form offering mediation goes to all affected tenants, who have thirty days to respond, with silence counting as rejection. You pay the mediation charge. If mediation fails or is declined, you file an application with proof of service, a description of the conduct and dates, the prior requests to stop, and a declaration under penalty of perjury that the conduct continued ten days after notice.

The city schedules a hearing within thirty days of a complete application and holds it within sixty, subject to continuances. Written materials are due five business days before, responses two business days before. You bear the burden of proof. The hearing officer issues a written decision within thirty days after the record closes. A finding in your favor lets you serve a state-law termination notice with no relocation fee, and the rent cannot rise above the prior amount apart from otherwise allowed adjustments. A finding against you generally bars refiling for a year, though the hearing officer may shorten that.

What the relocation fee actually is

The codified base amounts in section 4-6-9 are $6,193.00 for a studio, $9,148.00 for a one-bedroom, and $12,394.00 for two or more bedrooms, with an additional $2,000.00 where the household includes a senior, a disabled person, or a minor. Those are base figures, not current ones: since July 1, 2018 they increase every July 1 by the positive change in the Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County CPI measured May to May. The schedule in effect from July 1, 2026 is substantially higher than the codified base, and it is the published schedule that you pay. Confirm the current figure for your unit size with the rent stabilization program before you put a number in a budget or a notice.

Mechanics worth knowing:

• The fee is paid when the tenant vacates. A copy of the eviction notice must be filed with the program within one week of serving it.
• It is owed even if you never use the unit for the stated purpose, unless you withdraw the notice in writing before the tenant gives a last-occupancy date or moves out.
• A tenant who moved in after the required termination notice was given receives nothing.
• Where you cannot in good faith determine who is entitled, the fee goes into escrow and you bear the escrow costs. With multiple tenants, the fee can be split or paid to one tenant only where all adult occupants agree or have signed a stipulation to judgment. You never pay more than the stated amount in total.
• In place of the fee you may physically relocate the tenant into a comparable unit the tenant finds satisfactory, in which case you owe actual relocation costs capped at the fee amount. The tenant may not unreasonably refuse. Comparability takes in size, price, location, access to medical, recreational, and shopping facilities, parks, community centers, transit, schools, religious institutions, and amenities.
• Two waiver rules cut the other way. A tenant who received a thirty-day notice, stayed past it, and is then ordered by a court to vacate waives relocation rights and must repay anything received with legally allowed interest. So does a tenant who signed a stipulation for judgment, took the fee, and stayed more than sixty days after receiving it.

The rent reset nobody plans for

Section 4-6-5 is where the two halves of this meet. A unit may be re-rented at any amount you and a new tenant agree on when the prior tenants vacated voluntarily, or were evicted on grounds (A), (B), (C), (D), (F), or (G). That agreed rent becomes the new base rent, with later increases under 4-6-3.

Read those two lists next to each other. The six grounds that give you a market reset are six of the seven grounds that cost you no relocation fee. The grounds you pay on (owner or family occupancy, a refused renewal, a manager change, demolition, withdrawal) are not on the reset list. An owner-occupancy plan therefore costs relocation money and does not hand you a repriced unit at the end of it. That is the arithmetic to run before you serve anything.

Separately, 4-6-5 requires that at least twenty-four hours before a tenant signs a lease you give written notice, in the form and languages the city requires, covering the chapter’s provisions including the allowed annual increase, parking restrictions near the building, how a holdover becomes a month-to-month tenancy when rent is accepted, how a month-to-month tenancy ends, the city’s home occupation requirements, and state landlord-tenant law. The tenant acknowledges receipt in writing and you keep the records for the whole tenancy. If you cannot produce them, a rebuttable presumption arises that the notice was never given, and the administrative penalty is $500 on top of other remedies.

What about paying a tenant to leave?

Chapter 6 contains no buyout procedure. There is no city-prescribed disclosure form, no statutory rescission window, and no filing requirement of the kind Inglewood’s section 8-123.1 and the City of Los Angeles both impose on buyout agreements. That is not the same as a green light. A voluntary move-out agreement in a rent-stabilized Beverly Hills unit still has to be genuinely voluntary, still interacts with the relocation provisions if a termination notice has already been served, and still produces a vacancy whose rent treatment depends on how the tenancy actually ended. Have a California landlord-tenant attorney paper it.

The state-law layer underneath

The city grounds sit on top of state procedure rather than replacing it. California Civil Code section 1946.1 sets thirty days’ notice for a tenancy under a year and sixty days at a year or more, and the city’s ninety-day and 120-day requirements override those where they apply. Notice periods for the at-fault grounds come from state law and the lease. Service and proof of service follow state rules, including Code of Civil Procedure section 1013 for mailed notices. And nothing in the ordinance replaces the court process. A ground only gets you to the courthouse, and a defective notice can lose a case that was otherwise winnable. We cover that side in how eviction actually works in Los Angeles.

How we handle this for Beverly Hills owners

Bessa Properties is a California DRE-licensed property management company working across Los Angeles County, Beverly Hills included. On a termination question, the useful work happens before anything is served: identifying which chapter the unit falls under, whether a ground is actually available on the facts, what the current relocation schedule says for that unit size and household, what has to be filed with the rent stabilization program and in what order, and what the unit can be rented for afterward.

Our flat fee management option is one predictable monthly amount rather than a percentage of the rent, covering rent collection and maintenance coordination, with leasing quoted separately when a unit turns over. Ask us for a quote on your building. For what we do day to day in the city, see our Beverly Hills property management page and our flat fee management page.

Questions owners ask

My tenant’s lease expires in March. Can I decline to renew it?

No. Lease expiration is not one of the grounds, and ground (E) is the reverse situation. It applies where you offered a lawful renewal at least thirty days out, on the same term and the same terms with rent set under 4-6-3, and the tenant refused to sign. The tenancy otherwise continues. And when (E) is correctly set up and used, you still owe the relocation fee.

I own the building through an LLC and want my daughter in a unit. Does ground (H) work?

Not as the entity. Subsection (H) defines “landlord” as natural persons holding the largest ownership interest in the building or in the owning entity, and the qualifying occupants are the landlord’s spouse, children, or parents. The individual owner question has to be answered on your actual ownership structure, and the one-unit-per-parcel limit applies regardless. Get the structure reviewed before you plan a move-in date.

The tenant has not paid rent in two months. Do I owe relocation?

No. Nonpayment is subsection (A), which section 4-6-9 lists as fee-free, and it is also one of the six grounds that allow a market rent reset for the next tenancy. What you do owe is a correctly served notice and a properly pleaded case.

My resident manager is leaving. Can I recover the unit for the next manager?

Ground (I) covers exactly that: good faith recovery of a unit held by a building manager whose employment has ended or is ending, solely so a new manager can occupy it. Subsection (I) sets no notice period of its own, so the state-law notice applies. The relocation fee is owed, because (I) is not on the fee-free list, and section 4-6-9 still requires a copy of the notice to be filed with the rent stabilization program within one week of serving it. Note too that subsection (J)’s demolition provisions expressly do not apply to a manager whose occupancy rests solely on that position.

My tenant is seventy-one. Does that change what I can do?

On ground (H) it can decide the outcome. Senior citizens sixty-five or older and handicapped tenants cannot be evicted for landlord or family occupancy if any other comparable unit exists on the parcel; you have to recover the comparable unit held by the most recent tenant who is neither, and the city determines comparability. Age also matters on the relocation fee, which adds $2,000 where the household includes a senior, a disabled person, or a minor, and on a market withdrawal, where a tenant sixty-two or older or disabled with a year’s occupancy can extend the withdrawal date by a year.

Can I raise the rent to market after an owner move-in ends?

Not under 4-6-5. The reset is available after a voluntary vacancy or an eviction on (A), (B), (C), (D), (F), or (G). Owner or family occupancy is none of those. If the unit is later re-rented to someone outside the family group it is covered by the chapter again, and the rent follows the chapter’s rules rather than the market.

If you own in more than one city: the files do not transfer. Inglewood pays relocation on every no-fault ground and makes you file notice copies within three calendar days. Culver City has exactly five at-fault and five no-fault grounds with no catch-all, and an owner move-in there is an application to the city certified under penalty of perjury, not a notice to the tenant. Beverly Hills ties the fee to the ground, protects seniors and handicapped tenants from an owner move-in where another comparable unit exists, caps that ground at one unit per parcel, and has no buyout section at all. Three cities within a few miles of each other, three different sequences.

Sources and disclaimer. Beverly Hills Municipal Code, Title 4, Chapter 6 (Rent Stabilization, Part II): section 4-6-6, Evictions (the thirteen grounds; the occupancy limits defining illegal use in (D); the thirty-day renewal request, matching term and terms in (E); the ninety-day notice, named occupant and address, pre-service filing, comparable-vacancy and most-recent-tenant conditions, senior and handicapped protections, one-unit-per-parcel limit, natural-person definition of landlord, and the thirty-day and twelve-month bad-faith presumption in (H); the permits-before-notice sequence, ninety-day program-approved notice, $100-per-building and $10-per-unit fees and the perjury declaration prerequisite in (J); the 120-day program notice, County recording, thirty-day tenant notice, senior and disabled one-year extension and the two-, five- and ten-year re-rental constraints in (L); and the two-notice, mediation and hearing sequence with the landlord’s burden of proof in (M)); section 4-6-9, Relocation Fee (the (A), (B), (C), (D), (F), (G), (M) exclusions; codified base amounts and the $2,000 senior, disabled or minor addition; the July 1 CPI adjustment; payment on vacating and the one-week notice filing; escrow and allocation; physical relocation in lieu of the fee; and the two waiver and repayment rules); section 4-6-5, Vacancies (the grounds permitting a negotiated new rent, and the twenty-four-hour pre-lease notice with its $500 administrative penalty); and Chapter 5 (Rent Stabilization, Part I), Article 5 Evictions and Article 6 Relocation Fees, for the parallel structure governing Chapter 5 units. California Civil Code section 1946.1; California Code of Civil Procedure sections 1013 and 1094.5. Current as of October 2026. This article is general information for property owners, not legal advice, and the relocation amounts are adjusted each July 1, so the codified figures above are a base rather than the schedule now in force. Confirm your unit’s chapter, the current relocation schedule and the required filings with the City of Beverly Hills Rent Stabilization Program, and have a California landlord-tenant attorney review any termination notice before you serve it.