Anaheim Rent Control — What Owners Should Be Watching

By Jimmy Leach & Anthony Annunziata Strands Realty Group April 28th, 2026

What Every Anaheim Property Owner Needs to Know Right Now

Something is moving in Anaheim, and the window to understand what it means for your property is shorter than most owners realize.

A rent control and just cause eviction ballot measure is actively working its way toward the November 2026 ballot. Signatures are being collected right now. If this measure qualifies and passes, it would be one of the most consequential regulatory shifts for rental property owners in Orange County history. The owners who understand what is actually being proposed — and what it means for their income and their asset value — will be in a far better position than those who tune in after the vote has already happened.

Where Things Stand

In January 2026, a tenant advocacy group called Tenants United Anaheim formally submitted a rent control and just cause eviction initiative to the Anaheim City Clerk. After clearing the title and summary process, signature gathering began.

To qualify for the November 3, 2026 General Election ballot, organizers need to collect approximately 18,000 valid signatures from registered Anaheim voters. Their internal target is 20,000 to account for invalid signatures. The deadline to submit signatures is early June 2026, with the official ballot qualification deadline set at August 7, 2026.

Volunteers are actively canvassing the city right now. This is not a future conversation — it is happening today.

The California Apartment Association and the Apartment Association of Orange County have both formally opposed the measure and are working to prevent it from qualifying. That opposition is meaningful, but it does not guarantee the measure fails to reach the ballot. And if it does reach the ballot, the math matters: more than half of Anaheim's approximately 100,615 households are renter-occupied — 55,113 to be exact. In a November general election, that is the electorate deciding whether this passes.

What the Measure Actually Proposes

The four core provisions are what every owner needs to understand clearly.

Annual rent increases would be capped at 3% maximum. 

The formula limits increases to 80% of the Consumer Price Index with a hard ceiling of 3%. If CPI comes in at 4% in a given year, your maximum allowable increase is 3%. If CPI comes in at 1%, your maximum is 0.8%. Your operating costs — property taxes, insurance, maintenance, utilities — are not subject to the same ceiling. That gap compounds quietly over time.

Rents would be rolled back to January 1, 2026 levels. 

This is not a freeze going forward. It is a retroactive reset. Any rent increases taken after that date would need to be unwound if the measure passes. For owners who have already raised rents in 2026, this is an immediate and direct financial exposure — not a hypothetical one.

Relocation assistance requirements would increase substantially.

For qualifying no-fault evictions, owners would be required to provide displaced tenants with up to four months of HUD fair market rent as relocation assistance. Current state law requirements under AB 1482 are considerably less burdensome. This provision significantly changes the calculus on tenant turnover and unit renovation strategy.

Just cause eviction protections would expand beyond current state law. 

AB 1482 already requires just cause for evictions after 12 months of tenancy. This measure goes further, restricting removal under additional circumstances and adding procedural layers on top of existing state protections.

To put this in context — what Anaheim property owners currently operate under is AB 1482, the state's Tenant Protection Act, which caps annual increases at 5% plus CPI with a maximum of 10%. That law has real restrictions but preserves meaningful flexibility. What is being proposed is not a modest step beyond AB 1482. It is a structural departure from it.

What This Does to Property Values

The connection between rent control and property value is not complicated. It is math.

Multifamily properties are valued based on income. Buyers underwrite based on net operating income. Lenders size loans based on stabilized cash flow. Appraisers comp based on what similar income-producing assets have traded for. When you cap rent growth at 3% — or less — and roll back rents to a prior baseline, you are directly reducing the income number that every valuation is built on.

The effect is not immediate or dramatic in year one. It compounds. Over a five to ten year hold period, the gap between what rents could have been under AB 1482 and what a 3% cap permits becomes the difference between meaningful appreciation and an asset that has quietly fallen behind its own cost structure in real terms. Buyers underwrite that gap at acquisition. In rent-controlled markets, cap rates expand to reflect constrained income growth, underwriting becomes more conservative, and the buyer pool narrows. Sellers who wait until the ordinance is in place are negotiating in that environment — not the one that exists today.

The Santa Ana Comparison

Santa Ana is the only city in Orange County with a local rent stabilization ordinance currently in effect. Its structure is nearly identical to what is being proposed for Anaheim — annual increases capped at 3% or 80% of CPI, combined with expanded just cause eviction protections.

The Santa Ana experience is the most relevant and available local data point. After the ordinance took effect, transaction volume in Santa Ana's multifamily market slowed, cap rates widened, and investor underwriting assumptions shifted significantly. Owners who sold before the ordinance was operational consistently achieved better outcomes than those who waited.

Anaheim is a larger and different city. But the regulatory mechanics being proposed are nearly identical, and the economic logic applies the same way. Constrained income growth means compressed valuations. Every rent-controlled market in California has performed below comparable uncontrolled markets over time — not because of a single bad year, but because of what compounding income restriction does to an asset's long-term value trajectory.

What Owners Should Be Thinking About

The measure has not yet qualified for the ballot. It may not. If it qualifies, it may not pass. None of those outcomes are certain and framing it otherwise would be inaccurate.

What is certain is that the window between now and November 2026 is the period during which Anaheim multifamily operates under its current regulatory framework. After November, it either continues that way or it does not. Owners who are already considering a sale or refinance in the next two to three years have a specific reason to think carefully about where that November date falls in their timeline.

The practical questions are straightforward. What does the rent rollback to January 2026 mean for your in-place income? How does your asset perform under a permanent 3% annual rent cap relative to your current hold assumptions? If the buyer pool for Anaheim multifamily contracts meaningfully after a yes vote, how does that affect your exit? And if you were planning to sell in 2027 or 2028, does the current market — before the vote, before the uncertainty is priced in — represent a better window than you had assumed?

Those questions do not have one right answer. They depend on your specific asset, your debt, your cost basis, and your goals. But they are the right questions to be asking right now, while the situation is still developing and while the Anaheim market still reflects the assumptions of a pre-rent control environment.

What to Watch

The early June signature deadline is the first gate. If organizers fall short of the roughly 18,000 to 20,000 valid signatures required, the measure does not qualify and the conversation changes. If they clear it, Anaheim voters decide on November 3, 2026.

The question of what Anaheim's regulatory environment looks like in 2027 will be answered before the end of this year. The owners who are paying attention now will have more options than those who engage after the decision has already been made