The Costa Mesa Rental Registry: What Every Multifamily Owner Needs to Understand Right Now

By Jimmy Leach & Anthony Annunziata Strands Realty Group

March 16th, 2026

Something is changing in Costa Mesa, and it is moving faster than most owners realize.

The City Council is actively considering a citywide rental registry program — a proposal that would require every housing provider to register their rental units, report detailed rental data, submit tenant notices directly to the city, and pay annual registration fees. A formal vote on whether to direct city staff to move forward is expected imminently.

This is not a distant policy conversation. It is happening now, and the owners who understand what is actually being proposed — and what it means for how they operate — will be better prepared than those who tune in after the decision has already been made.

What Is on the Table

At its core, the Costa Mesa rental registry would require owners of covered multifamily units to submit property addresses, owner contact information, unit counts, unit types, and current rental rates through an online city portal. Beyond that baseline, property owners could also be required to submit eviction notices, rent increase notices, and vacancy-related information within specified timeframes — meaning the city would have a near real-time view of activity across the rental market.

The program is projected to cost approximately $321,335 annually to operate, with startup costs of roughly $213,350. Based on an estimated 16,700 rental units citywide, the projected registration fee lands at approximately $19 per unit per year.

That $19 figure is worth pausing on. It is a starting point, not a permanent number. In Santa Ana — the city whose rental registry program explicitly serves as the model for this proposal — the equivalent fee began modestly and has since climbed to $100 per unit per year. Owners with larger Costa Mesa portfolios should be underwriting the trajectory, not the launch price.

One critical clarification that every owner should understand: the motion currently before the Costa Mesa City Council proposes a rental registry **explicitly excluding rent caps. Costa Mesa has not adopted rent control. This proposal is not a rent stabilization ordinance. What it is, at this stage, is a data collection and compliance infrastructure. That distinction is important, but so is understanding exactly what that infrastructure makes possible.

Why the Santa Ana Comparison Matters

The city's own agenda report states that the Costa Mesa proposal is modeled on Santa Ana's rental registry program. For anyone who owns multifamily in Orange County, that reference point carries real weight.

Santa Ana is the only city in Orange County with both a rental registry and a local rent stabilization ordinance. And the two are not separate programs — they are directly linked. In Santa Ana, the rental registry was built specifically as the enforcement arm of the city's Rent Stabilization and Just Cause Eviction Ordinance, which caps annual rent increases at 3% or 80% of CPI, whichever is less. The registry is what allows the city to track compliance with that cap, unit by unit, in real time. Without the registry, the rent control law would have no reliable enforcement mechanism.

Costa Mesa's proposal borrows the registry framework from Santa Ana but, as currently written, stops well short of Santa Ana's rent stabilization structure. Under California's AB 1482, Costa Mesa owners are currently subject to a statewide annual rent increase cap of 5% plus CPI, with a maximum of 10%. Nothing in the current proposal changes that.

It would be inaccurate to say Costa Mesa is on the same regulatory path as Santa Ana — it is not, at least not today. But the Santa Ana example is still the most relevant local data point available for understanding what this kind of program looks like once it is operational. It shows what the fee structure looks like over time, what compliance actually requires from owners, and what the city gains in terms of market visibility and enforcement capacity. That context is useful regardless of where Costa Mesa's policy goes from here.

What the Registry Actually Means for Owners

Even without a rent cap attached, the operational implications of a rental registry are real and worth thinking through carefully.

Your rent roll becomes a city record. Rental rates, unit counts, tenancy duration, and potentially tenant contact information would flow into a government database on an ongoing basis. Similar programs in other cities have drawn significant privacy concerns, both from owners uncomfortable with the scope of data being collected, and from tenants whose personal information is being shared with a government system without their explicit consent. The scope of what gets collected in these programs tends to expand over time, not contract.

Compliance becomes a recurring operational obligation. Registration is annual. Eviction notices and rent increase notices would need to be submitted to the city within specified timeframes. In comparable programs, the consequences for non-compliance are not minor. In Santa Ana, an unregistered landlord cannot legally advertise a unit for rent, raise rents, or pursue an eviction until registration is fully current. Owners who fall behind on compliance do not just face fines; they lose operational leverage at exactly the moments they need it most.

The city gains direct, systematic visibility into your market. This may be the most consequential shift of all. Right now, Costa Mesa does not have a real-time, comprehensive picture of its rental market. A registry changes that entirely. City officials would know how many units exist, who owns them, what tenants are paying, how fast rents are rising, and where evictions are happening across every covered property in the city. That level of visibility is the foundation on which future policy decisions get made. It does not determine what those decisions will be, but it changes what becomes administratively and politically feasible.

Administrative costs and burdens will increase. Beyond the registration fee itself, owners should factor in the staff time, systems, and processes required to stay current with annual filings, notice submissions, and data updates. For self-managed owners or smaller operators, this is a meaningful new layer of overhead. For larger portfolio owners, it requires building compliance workflows that do not currently exist.

The Broader Orange County Context

Costa Mesa is not operating in isolation, and this proposal does not exist in a vacuum.

Across Orange County, cities are actively revisiting their approaches to tenant protections and rental market oversight. Buena Park recently passed a Just Cause Eviction ordinance. Anaheim is exploring additional renter protections. Santa Ana — already the most regulated rental market in the county — continues to expand its enforcement framework and has recently moved to ban algorithmic rent-setting software. The direction of travel across the region is toward more local regulation, not less.

Costa Mesa sits at the center of this shift in a specific way. According to census data, more than 60% of Costa Mesa residents are renters — approximately 24,987 of the city's 41,019 households. The median gross rent in the city is $2,446, and community advocacy for stronger tenant protections has been consistent and organized since at least 2023. The city adopted a Just Cause tenant protection ordinance in November of that year, and the rental registry is the next step being brought forward.

The council members supporting the registry have been clear about their reasoning. They want data. They want to know who owns the rental housing in their city, what tenants are paying, how fast rents are rising, and where evictions are occurring. Councilwoman Arlis Reynolds put it directly at a recent council meeting: "There's not a lot of public information about trends in terms of rental prices, who owns this rental housing, how fast prices are going up, where evictions are happening — and that affects two thirds of our residents."

That framing — data first, policy second — is exactly how the registry is being positioned. Whether additional policy follows is a separate question that will be shaped by what that data shows, who is on the council when it is reviewed, and what the broader political environment looks like at that time.

What Owners Should Actually Be Doing Right Now

The registry as proposed is a data and compliance tool. It is not rent control and framing it otherwise would be inaccurate. But informed owners do not wait until a policy is fully formed to start thinking about what it means for their assets.

The practical questions worth asking now are straightforward. How does increased regulatory oversight affect your operating model — particularly if you are self-managed? How do you think about your long-term hold strategy in a city where the compliance environment is becoming more complex? If you own in Costa Mesa and are already considering a sale or refinance in the next two to three years, does the current window — before the registry is fully operational and before any future policy decisions layer on top of it — factor into your timing?

None of those questions have a single right answer. They depend on your specific asset, your debt structure, your operating setup, and your goals. But they are the right questions to be asking, and the owners who are asking them now are in a better position than those who are not.

What to Watch

The situation is still developing, and several near-term milestones will determine how this unfolds.

• Whether the City Council directs staff to develop a formal registry ordinance following the March 17 meeting

• The final scope of data and tenant information requirements as the program is designed

• Whether the proposed Network for Renters' Solutions, also being considered alongside the registry, expands into broader tenant advocacy

• Any future council discussion of local rent stabilization as a separate but related policy question

  
  

The regulatory landscape in Costa Mesa is moving. The details of what is being built here — what data gets collected, how it gets used, and what policy decisions follow — will matter for every multifamily owner in the city. Staying informed is the first step.