Culver City Property Management

Property Management in Culver City, CA

Bessa Properties runs rental houses, duplexes, and apartment buildings in Culver City. Rent collection, maintenance, leasing, the city’s annual rental registration, and its rent control and tenant protection rules, handled by a California DRE-licensed company that already works the Westside.

A small city with its own rulebook

Culver City is about five square miles, wedged between the City of Los Angeles on three sides and unincorporated Ladera Heights to the south. That geography decides which rules apply. A “Culver City” mailing address does not mean the property is inside city limits. Palms, Mar Vista, Del Rey, and much of the Culver City Arts District along Washington Boulevard are actually Los Angeles, where the LA Rent Stabilization Ordinance applies. Ladera Heights is unincorporated county territory with different rules again. The first thing we do with a new Culver City property is confirm which government it answers to.

For properties that are inside the city, Culver City adopted permanent rent control and tenant protection ordinances in the fall of 2020. Every rental unit has to be registered with the city, apartment buildings first occupied on or before February 1, 1995 generally have a capped annual increase, and tenants who have been in place a year can only be asked to leave for a reason the ordinance lists. The city’s Housing and Human Services Department enforces all of it and publishes the numbers owners have to use.

The location does a lot of the work. Sony Pictures, Amazon’s studio operations at the Culver Studios, Apple’s offices on Washington, and the office campus at Ivy Station sit within a couple of miles of each other. The E Line stops at Venice and Robertson, a short ride from Downtown Los Angeles and Santa Monica.

How Culver City’s rules affect you as an owner

Rent increases

For covered units, which in general means apartment buildings first occupied on or before February 1, 1995, the annual increase is tied to the Consumer Price Index with a floor of 2% and a ceiling of 5%. The city now announces the allowable percentage once a year; the figure for increases taking effect June 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027 is 3.25%. Only one increase is allowed in any twelve-month period, and there is no banking of years you skipped. Single-family homes, separately owned condos and townhouses, and units first occupied after that 1995 date are exempt from the city cap, though the statewide cap under AB 1482 can still apply to some of them. We look up the current percentage, prepare the notice, and keep a copy of everything with the registration file.

Registration

Every landlord in Culver City has to register their rental units with the city and renew each year by July 31, with a per-unit fee set by the city. Late renewals accrue penalties starting in September. The registration also has to be updated when the property changes hands, when a new tenant moves in, or when the housing services included in the rent change. Registration is not optional paperwork: the city treats it as a precondition for a rent increase and for any eviction. We file it, track the renewal, and update it at every turnover.

Rent registration is separate from the city’s business tax, which goes to the Finance Department. Under the city’s residential rental regulation, a property with four or more units being rented needs a business tax certificate, pays the annual business tax and has an annual fire inspection; a three-unit property has the fire inspection only. The detail, and how Culver City compares with Beverly Hills, Inglewood and Los Angeles, is in our guide to city business tax certificates for rental owners.

State safety rules sit on top of the city’s. California requires working smoke alarms in every rented unit, and a carbon monoxide device in any unit with a gas or other fuel-burning appliance, a fireplace or an attached garage. Both must work on move-in day, and the owner fixes any problem a tenant reports. Placement, the sealed 10-year battery rule and entry notice are covered in our guide to smoke and carbon monoxide alarms in a rental.

Bed bugs have their own state rules. Every new tenant gets a written bed bug notice before the tenancy starts, a unit the owner knows is infested cannot be shown or rented, and the tenants of every unit a pest control operator inspects must get the findings in writing within two business days. The full sequence is in our guide to bed bugs in a Los Angeles rental.

Parking spaces carry a state rule too. If the lease includes a parking space and the property has five or more spaces, Civil Code 1947.6 generally requires you to approve a tenant’s written request to install an electric vehicle charger there, with the tenant paying for the installation and the electricity under a written agreement. For leases signed, extended or renewed since January 1, 2019, being under rent stabilization is not by itself an exemption. The exemptions and what the agreement should cover are in our guide to tenant requests to install an EV charger.

Smoking has been prohibited in Culver City multi-unit housing since May 26, 2016, inside units, on balconies and patios, and in common areas, under Chapter 9.11 of the Municipal Code. Every lease entered into, renewed or continued month-to-month must carry the smoking provisions the city requires, and common areas need “No Smoking” signs. The city’s definition does not cover vaping, so a lease clause is the way to address it. The details are in our guide to smoking and vaping rules for LA rentals. The smoking clause is one part of a longer lease package. The city also requires its Rent Stabilization Ordinance notice to be posted in a common area or at the building or unit entries wherever a registration certificate is required, and state law adds its own notices to every lease. Our lease disclosure checklist lists them all.

Just cause and relocation

Once a tenant has lived in a unit for twelve months, a tenancy can only be ended for a reason in the Tenant Protections Ordinance. Nonpayment, uncured lease violations, refusing access, and nuisance are at-fault reasons. Owner or eligible relative move-in, taking the unit off the rental market, demolition, and a government order to vacate are no-fault reasons, and those require relocation assistance. The city’s formula is three times the greater of the current rent or the small-area fair market rent for the unit, plus $1,000. Landlords with three or fewer units pay half of that amount for an owner move-in. An owner or relative move-in is not simply a notice either: it runs through an application to the city with service deadlines that start the day you file, which we walk through in our guide to ending a tenancy in Culver City. The city also runs a Landlord-Tenant Mediation Board, and an owner can be required to attend mediation over a disputed rent increase. For anything that could end up contested we work with a landlord-tenant attorney instead of guessing.

When a tenancy does end and the tenant leaves furniture or boxes behind, California’s abandoned-property procedure applies in Culver City as it does everywhere in the state: a written notice to the former tenant and anyone else who may own the property, at least 15 days to claim it after personal delivery or 18 after mailing, reasonable storage in the meantime, and a public sale unless the unclaimed property is worth less than $700. Removing a tenant’s belongings outside that procedure to end the tenancy is prohibited. The steps are in our guide to belongings a tenant leaves behind.

What we handle in Culver City

• Rent collection through an online portal, with an owner statement every month
• Maintenance coordination: tenant requests, vendor dispatch, follow-up, and photos when the work is done (under state law a mold report starts the repair duty the day the owner has notice of it)
• Annual city rental registration and updates at every change of tenancy or ownership
• Rent increase notices that use the percentage the city posted for that year
• Leasing: pricing against current Westside comps, photos, listing syndication, showings, and screening that follows California fair housing law and the application fee rules in Civil Code 1950.6
• Lease documents with the Culver City tenant protection notice included
• Move-in and move-out inspections with written condition reports and photos
• Notices, city filings, and coordination with counsel if a tenancy has to end

Who it suits

A single house, condo, or townhouse

Individually owned houses and condos in Culver City are generally outside the local rent cap, but they still have to be registered with the city and the tenant protection rules can still reach them. We register the unit, set the lease up correctly, keep the house maintained, and send one statement a month. If the property is a Fox Hills condo, we also deal with the HOA so you do not have to. If you are weighing a backyard unit on a house like this, the build standards and what the finished unit falls under are set out in our guide to Culver City ADU rules.

Duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes

Living in one unit of a duplex in Clarkdale, Lucerne-Higuera, or Park East does not take the other unit out of the city rules. In Culver City the rental unit still needs to be registered, and the rent cap and just-cause rules follow the building’s age and ownership, not whether you live next door. We work out which rules apply to your building and run it accordingly.

Larger apartment buildings

For buildings with five or more units we handle unit-by-unit registration, the annual increase cycle, turnovers, vendor contracts, and capital work. Culver City has a formal pass-through process for capital improvements, and we can help you decide whether a project is worth applying for. Owners get a clear monthly picture of income, expenses, and what is coming up.

One predictable monthly fee

Percentage-based management fees go up every time your rent does. We offer flat fee management as an alternative: one fixed monthly amount per property that covers rent collection and maintenance coordination. The amount does not change when you take the annual increase. Leasing a vacant unit is a separate, one-time fee, charged only when we place a tenant.

The fee depends on the property, so we quote it after a short conversation about the building. Request a quote and we will send it to you in writing.

Questions Culver City owners ask us