Just cause, relocation payments and the buyer who takes the tenant: San Francisco, Berkeley and Richmond
Ask "what do I owe the tenant if I want them out" in San Francisco, Berkeley and Richmond and you get three different answers from three different boards. I managed in Richmond. I dealt with the SF and Berkeley boards because the trust's relatives owned a four-unit on 24th Street in the Mission and a duplex near Ashby BART, and that became my problem. If you own in one city and take advice from a friend in another, you'll get it wrong.
This piece assumes you already know a sale isn't a just cause anywhere in the Bay Area. Here we're talking about the machinery around it, and what the buyer of an occupied house reads before they write a number.
How the three boards differ
San Francisco has the oldest ordinance, from 1979, and the most case law. The SF Rent Board publishes the list of just causes under Section 37.9, and for the no-fault ones (owner move-in, Ellis, capital improvements, demolition) it sets relocation payments per tenant under 37.9C, with a cap per unit and an added amount for tenants who are elderly, disabled or have minor children. The dollar figures adjust every March 1.
Owner move-in in SF comes with a 36-month residency requirement and real restrictions on which relative can move in and into which unit. Tenants over 60 with ten years in the unit can be protected outright.
Berkeley runs the strictest registration regime of the three. Every covered unit is registered with the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board with an annual fee, and the board keeps the rent history on file. Berkeley's good-cause list looks like SF's, but its relocation ordinance, Chapter 13.84 of the municipal code, sets its own amounts, and an owner move-in there has its own protected-tenant rules and its own filing. Single-family houses in Berkeley are outside the rent ceiling but, in most cases, inside good cause and registration.
Richmond is the youngest. Measure L in November 2016 created the Richmond Rent Program, and the ordinance splits units into "fully covered" (rent control plus just cause) and "partially covered" (just cause only). Most single-family houses are partially covered. Richmond sets relocation payments for no-fault terminations by resolution and adjusts them, and it has its own forms for every notice you serve, which get filed with the program.
I won't print any of the three cities' relocation amounts here because they'll be wrong within a year. Each board posts a current schedule. Use it. For scale, though: on the Mission four-unit, the relocation owed for one no-fault termination in 2023 was more than four months of that unit's rent, and that's before the lawyer.
The Ellis Act trap
Every few months an owner in a hurry discovers the Ellis Act and thinks they've found the exit. Ellis lets an owner leave the rental business entirely: withdraw all the units in the building from the market. It isn't a sale tool.
The problems, in order. The notice period is 120 days at minimum and a full year for elderly or disabled tenants. Relocation is owed to every tenant. The building carries restrictions for years afterward: re-rent it within five years and the displaced tenant has a right to come back at the old rent, and the right of first refusal runs ten years. A buyer inherits those restrictions with the deed, and any buyer with a lawyer will price that in or walk. In San Francisco an Ellised building is a flag on the title, and I've seen one sit unsold on Guerrero for 14 months because of it.
If you can afford to wait 120 days and can afford relocation, you can afford to sell occupied and skip all of it.
Buyouts: the paperwork is the point
A buyout is a private deal: money for the tenant to leave voluntarily. All three cities regulate it, and what they regulate is the paperwork, not the amount.
San Francisco's rule, Section 37.9E: before you even open negotiations you hand the tenant a Rent Board disclosure form, file a declaration with the board that you've done so, and the tenant then has 45 days after signing to rescind. The signed agreement itself gets filed with the board. Berkeley's Tenant Buyout Ordinance, Chapter 13.79, runs the same way with its own form and a 30-day rescission period. Richmond has moved in the same direction; check the program's current requirements before you say a number out loud.
Skip the disclosure and the agreement can be voided, which means the tenant keeps the money and the tenancy. I watched that exact outcome on the Ashby duplex in 2021. The owner paid $28,000, the tenant's lawyer sent a two-page letter, and the tenant is still there.
Estoppels and deposits
Before closing, the buyer asks each tenant to sign an estoppel certificate: rent, deposit, lease start, side agreements, repairs promised, pending complaints. A tenant who won't sign one is a data point. A tenant who signs one that contradicts your rent roll is a bigger one.
Security deposits transfer with the house. Under Civil Code section 1950.5 the seller either hands the deposit to the buyer and notifies the tenant in writing, or returns it to the tenant. Do one of them, in writing. San Francisco and Berkeley also require interest on deposits, paid every year, so a buyer will ask whether you've been paying it. If you haven't, expect it to come off the price.
What a cash buyer actually checks
When I sat on the other side of the table, deciding whether the trust would buy a small occupied building in Richmond or El Cerrito, I read four things before I read the listing. The lease, including every addendum. The rent roll against the bank deposits. The board registration and fee history. And the notice file: every notice ever served, with proof of service.
That's the whole underwriting, honestly. What a buyer who closes with the lease in place is really buying is a tenancy with a house attached, and a tenancy is worth more when its file is clean. Registered, current on fees, rent that matches the deposits, no unfiled notices, deposit accounted for. Clean file, better offer. I never saw it go the other way.
The tenant-side pages at selfhelp.courts.ca.gov show what your tenant will be told if you get anything wrong, which is why the buyer reads them too. The archive at sfrb.org is where I'd send a San Francisco owner who thinks their case is unusual. It isn't.
This is general information from a former manager, not legal or tax advice, and the boards change their rules more often than I update this page.
My recommendation
Clean the file first. Register, pay the fee, fix the deposit paperwork, pay any interest you owe, get the lease and addenda into one folder. One house, one weekend. Then, if you'd rather not spend a year on relocation math, get a written cash offer on an occupied house and compare it with your best honest estimate of the empty-house price minus everything above. It's an evening with a calculator and the board's fee schedule.