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- The Ellis Act, Government Code section 7060 and the sections after it, lets an owner take rental units off the market. Los Angeles runs it through LAHD under LAMC sections 151.22 through 151.28.
- Units come off the market 120 days after LAHD receives the Notice of Intent to Withdraw. A tenant 62 or older or disabled, with at least a year in the unit, can push their date out to one year.
- Every tenant is owed relocation assistance within 15 days of the termination notice, in amounts LAHD revises each July 1.
- Renting the units again within two, five or ten years each triggers its own rule, and since February 11, 2025 the Resident Protections Ordinance governs what can be built on the site.
What does the Ellis Act let an owner do?
Government Code section 7060 is the state law that lets an owner take residential units off the rental market, and in Los Angeles a withdrawal under it is one of the RSO's no-fault grounds for ending a tenancy. The City's procedure is in LAMC sections 151.22 through 151.28, and LAHD administers it.
The filing is a Notice of Intent to Withdraw, delivered to LAHD, and it is required whether the units are occupied or vacant. LAMC section 151.23 has you attach a copy of the memorandum you recorded with the County Recorder, which is LAHD's Form E1, along with a certification that you have started the legal steps to end each existing tenancy. LAHD then writes to the tenants. Its letter tells them the notice has been filed.
A buyer will find that recording. The memorandum sits in the property's public record, where any title search finds it, and the re-rental and rebuilding rules below attach to the withdrawn units, so the next owner prices them in.
How long does a withdrawal take?
The clock starts when LAHD receives the notice, in person or by first-class mail. Units come off the market 120 days after that delivery. Within five days of it, you must tell each affected tenant, in person or by first-class mail, that LAHD has been notified and on what date.
Some tenants get longer. A tenant who is 62 or older or disabled, and had lived in the unit for at least a year when the notice reached LAHD, can move their own withdrawal date to one year after delivery. Government Code section 7060.4 has them claim it by giving you written notice within 60 days of that delivery.
For a sale, the date that counts is the last one. A single qualifying tenant turns a four-month process into a year, and you may not know whether you have one until the 60 days run out. A buyer who wants the whole site vacant is buying a calendar along with the building.
What does relocation cost?
Every tenant displaced by a withdrawal is owed relocation assistance. It must be made available within 15 days of serving the written termination notice, and you may choose to pay it through an escrow account instead.
The amount turns on whether the tenant is eligible or qualified, how long they have lived in the unit, and their income. A qualified tenant is one who, on the day the notice is served, is 62 or older, is disabled, or has a minor dependent child. LAHD revises the figures every July 1, so take them from its relocation assistance page for the year your notices will go out rather than from an old bulletin.
Relocation is cash out before any upside arrives. It is paid unit by unit. The older and disabled tenants who can stretch the timeline to a year are also the ones LAHD's qualified schedule covers, so the same tenancies set both the delay and the relocation schedule.
What happens if the units are rented again?
The City's rules follow the units for a decade, and they tighten the sooner you come back to the rental market:
| Offered for rent again | What the City requires |
|---|---|
| Within two years of withdrawal | Each unit goes first to the tenant displaced from it, if that tenant asked in writing within 30 days of leaving, on LAHD's Form E4. Under LAMC section 151.25 you are also liable to displaced tenants for actual and exemplary damages, and they have three years from the withdrawal to sue. |
| Within five years | The first rent is the lawful rent in effect when the notice was filed with LAHD, plus the RSO's annual adjustments. |
| Within ten years | Each unit goes first to the displaced tenant if they ask in writing within 30 days after you tell LAHD you intend to re-rent. The offer goes by registered or certified mail, and they have 30 days to accept. |
Before any unit goes back on the market, you file Form E7, the Notice of Intention to Re-Rent, with LAHD. You also file an Annual Property Status Report every year for seven years after the notice reached the department. The first-offer rules are in LAMC section 151.27.
Taken together, these rules make renting the units again the weakest exit for five years. A building that comes back in that window comes back at its old rents, with its former tenants first in line if they ask. A withdrawal pays off only for an owner or buyer who plans to use the property for something other than renting it.
What can be built on the site afterward?
If you tear the building down, LAMC section 151.28 decides how the new units are rented. If new rental units go up on the same property and are offered for rent within five years of the withdrawal, you may set their first rents, and the RSO then applies to them. Where RSO units were torn down after September 29, 2006 without following the City's Ellis procedure, every replacement rental unit on the property is treated as an RSO unit, and the owner faces a penalty the Council sets.
Since February 11, 2025, the Resident Protections Ordinance sits on top of that. It counts units withdrawn under the Ellis Act in the past ten years as protected units, along with units under rent control within five years before the application. A project that demolishes protected units has to replace them, affordable units included, and those stay affordable for 99 years. Tenants may stay until six months before construction starts and can return at their prior rent, with later increases held to what the RSO allows. City Planning's fact sheet lists penalties for noncompliance starting at $250,000 per displaced unit, along with the withholding of LAHD permit clearances.
State law closes one more door. Government Code section 65852.21 rules out an SB 9 two-unit development on a parcel where rental units were withdrawn under the Ellis Act within the past 15 years.
A buyer who wants the land does this arithmetic first. Replacement units, affordable ones among them, return rights at old rents and a ten-year look-back all come off the value of the site before a single new rent is counted.
Should you withdraw before you sell?
If you withdraw first, you sell a building with its tenants gone, its relocation paid and every limit above attached to it. If you sell occupied, the choice and its cost pass to the buyer, who prices the timeline, the relocation and the restrictions into the offer. Which leaves you with more turns on the tenancies, the zoning and who is likely to buy. Price both before any notice goes out.
The notices, the certification and the escrow choice are legal work. Shaya is not an attorney, and a withdrawal should be run by one who handles landlord-tenant matters in Los Angeles. What Shaya can give you is a price for the building as it stands and a price for it withdrawn, so that attorney's work goes toward the better of the two.