Renting Your ADU

California ADU rental basics

Updated October 28, 2026. These notes are general reading for a California homeowner. They are not legal advice about your lease or your lot. On October 28, 2026, two official pages loaded: the ADU sections of the Government Code on leginfo.legislature.ca.gov, and the HCD accessory dwelling unit page. HCD's page says the ADU Handbook was updated in March 2026, and that Senate Bill 477 renumbered the ADU statutes as of March 25, 2024. Read the code section itself before you rely on a summary.

Accessory dwelling unit on a single-family lot. Government Code section 66315 says section 66314 sets the maximum standards a city uses to evaluate a proposed accessory dwelling unit on a lot that includes a proposed or existing single-family dwelling. The section says no additional standards, other than those in section 66314, shall be used or imposed, including an owner-occupant requirement. The exception in the same sentence is narrow: a city may require that the property be used for rentals of terms 30 days or longer. That is a local choice about short stays. It is not a statewide ban on renting, and it is not a promise that every city has adopted the 30-day minimum. Check the ordinance for your city. The legal guide and the planning guide cover the permit side of the same statutes.

Junior accessory dwelling unit. A junior ADU is a different article of the code. Government Code section 66333, amended by AB 1154 and effective January 1, 2026, says a local agency may, by ordinance, provide for junior accessory dwelling units in single-family residential zones, and it lists what that ordinance shall do. If the junior ADU shares sanitation facilities with the existing structure, the ordinance shall require owner-occupancy in the single-family residence. The owner may reside in either the remaining portion of the structure or the newly created junior ADU. Owner-occupancy shall not be required if the junior ADU has separate sanitation facilities, or if the owner is another governmental agency, land trust, or housing organization. The same section requires a deed restriction that prohibits sale of the junior ADU separate from the sale of the single-family residence, and it requires that a rental of a junior ADU be for a term longer than 30 days.

What this page does not decide. A rent amount, a security deposit, a just-cause rule, and a local business license are not set by the two sections above. Those depend on the city and on other state laws this summary does not restate. Do not treat the rent table, the sample income figures, or the calculator defaults elsewhere on this page as an official rate. They are not from HCD or the Government Code. For how some loan programs count expected rent when you finance the build, see the financing guide. A longer article on rental income is ADU rental income in California. Dollar figures there are outside these two statutes.