San Francisco Landlord Basics: Disclosures, Leases, and Screening

When I wrote my first San Francisco lease, I used a form I'd downloaded from a general legal site. It took one call from a tenant about a rent increase to find out the form was missing several pages required by city law. That's when I joined the local apartment owners' association.

The annual dues run roughly $600. It felt like a lot at the time. Within the first year, I'd already used their lease forms and tenant screening platform more times than I could count. A single mistake on a San Francisco eviction notice can cost far more than that, so I've never regretted the membership. I'm not a lawyer, so this is how I handled it, not a legal opinion.

Start With a Local Landlord Group

San Francisco has some of the strictest rental rules in the country. Rent control covers most buildings built before June 1979, which means annual rent increases are capped and leases automatically roll over even if the fixed term ends. Just cause eviction rules list the specific reasons you can end a tenancy. If you don't follow those reasons exactly, the case gets thrown out.

The local apartment association maintains lease and addendum forms that reflect current city law. They update them every time the supervisors change a rule. When I managed units there, I pulled all my paperwork from that library. I never wrote a lease from scratch.

The association also offers a tenant screening service. You run a credit report and an eviction history check through their system, and the results come back in a standard format that's easy to read. I always checked two things first: prior eviction filings and income. People with a recent unlawful detainer filing rarely worked out in my buildings. That's a court case where a landlord had to ask a judge to remove a tenant.

Get Your Disclosures Right

California requires several written disclosures before a tenant signs. San Francisco adds more. The two I dealt with most were lead-based paint and asbestos.

If your building was constructed before 1978, you must give the tenant a federal lead-based paint disclosure and the Protect Your Family pamphlet. This applies every time you lease a unit. If your building predates 1981, San Francisco's own rules also require an asbestos disclosure. You don't need to test for asbestos; you just disclose that it may be present, because the material was common in old buildings. I kept a folder with these forms and handed them out at every showing.

Then there's the deal with an HOA. If your condo or townhouse is part of a homeowners association, the tenant needs to sign a copy of the CC&Rs — covenants, conditions, and restrictions. Those are the community's internal rules about noise, parking, pets, and balcony use. I learned this after a tenant parked in the wrong space for three days. The HOA sent me a fine notice, and I had no leg to stand on because the tenant had never seen the parking rules.

Use a Leasing Agreement Built for San Francisco

Generic residential lease agreements usually lack the city-required addenda. San Francisco mandates things like a rent board notice, a security deposit interest notice, and a bed bug addendum if the unit has had an infestation. If you leave those out, the tenant can raise them later as a defense in an eviction case.

I used the association's lease package. It had a base agreement plus about a dozen city-specific pages. Each page had a signature line, so there was never a question about whether the tenant received it.

The base agreement defined the term, rent amount, due date, late fee, and security deposit. San Francisco caps security deposits at one month's rent for unfurnished units. A larger deposit is an automatic violation. I also always wrote in exactly how utilities were split, because water bills in older buildings often come in a single master meter. The tenant paid a flat monthly charge for water, and the lease said so.

Screen Tenants the Right Way

Fair housing laws apply in every step of screening. You cannot deny based on race, religion, national origin, sex, familial status, disability, or any protected class. San Francisco adds more protected categories, including source of income. That means a tenant using a housing voucher cannot be rejected just because the voucher is their income source.

I ran my screening through the association's online portal. The applicant filled out a form, paid a screening fee directly, and authorized the checks. I got back a credit report and an eviction history report, plus a criminal background report. My cutoff was a credit score below 650 or any eviction in the last five years. Those cutoffs were written on my application form before the tenant applied, so no one could claim I changed the standards after seeing their protected status.

The association's educational materials saved me from a few mistakes. They have seminars on security deposit accounting and rent board hearings. When I had to attend my first rent board hearing, I already knew what the examiner would ask because I'd watched a recorded session from the association's library.

If I were starting fresh in San Francisco tomorrow, I'd join the local apartment association and buy their lease package. Then I'd read the rent control ordinance cover to cover. I'd also hire a local landlord attorney for a one-hour consult on my specific building. That hour costs a few hundred dollars, but it's the cheapest insurance you'll ever buy in a city where the rules change every year.