The California Association of Realtors (“CAR”) is one of the largest professional groups in the United States, numbering over 200,000 members. As one of the most influential organizations in the field of real estate, it plays a major role in policymaking questions affecting real estate matters and other industry issues in the Golden State and around the country. In light of this fact, my blog articles regularly feature news and information that either involves the CAR or has been generated by it.
In recent months, I have written about a few significant changes in California law affecting real estate going into effect in 2020: Imposing rent control, promoting residential development, and streamlining the approval process for accessory dwelling units (“ADUs”) at the local government level have all been featured. After posting the latter article, however, I realized that many other legislative changes affecting the California real estate industry had occurred that I had not had an opportunity to write about. Fortunately, however, the CAR had already published a summary of such legislation, and I am now sharing it with you here.
The bullet points below identify several new state laws discussed on the CAR’s website that may be of interest to you:
- SB 329 (Government Code Sections 12927 and 12955, effective 1/1/2020): Landlords may not refuse to rent to tenants based on the tenant’s receipt of federal, state or local subsidies, including Section 8 housing vouchers.
- AB 1399 (Government Code Sections 7060.2, 7060.4, and 7060.7, effective 1/1/2020): The Ellis Act, which regulates how landlords may exit from the residential rental market, is modified (1) to prohibit landlords from paying their former tenants to give up the right to be offered an opportunity to re-rent their former unit at a regulated rental rate, and (2) to clarify that the date on which rental property is deemed to have been withdrawn from the market is the date on which the last tenant’s tenancy has been terminated.
- AB 91 (Revenue and Taxation Code Sections 18031.5 and 24941.5, applying to exchanges that have been completed after 1/10/2019): In the wake of federal tax law changes eliminating the benefits of Section 1031 tax deferred exchanges for personal property, California law is now in conformance with federal law with respect to corporations, which now are limited to Section 1031 tax deferral for real property exchanges only, but continues to allow non-recognition of gain or loss for exchanges of both real property and personal property for most individuals.
I invite you to take a closer look at the information on the CAR’s link regarding these new laws, as well as the other resources available on the CAR website. Even if you’re not a realtor, the CAR is a rich fount of useful information about California real estate matters.
