In Point Richmond, the Year a Duplex Was Built Decides More Than Its Price

Say you're standing in front of a duplex near Point Richmond's historic triangle, the kind of building the neighborhood is known for: tall windows, a covered porch, maybe a hundred years of paint layers under the trim. The listing agent mentions rental income potential. Your lender is running numbers on a house-hack scenario, live in one unit, rent the other. Everything about the property says straightforward investment.

Then you check the build date. If it went up before February 1, 1995, and the parcel holds two or more units, you're not buying a rental. You're buying a fully rent-controlled asset, subject to the same Annual General Adjustment and just-cause eviction rules that govern apartment buildings across the city. The charm that made the duplex desirable is the same thing that makes it regulated. Richmond's Fair Rent, Just Cause for Eviction, and Homeowner Protection Ordinance doesn't care about curb appeal. It cares about a construction date, and Point Richmond's housing stock happens to sit right on top of that line more often than most of the city.

The Cutoff Date Nobody Puts in the Listing Description

Richmond voters approved the ordinance in November 2016, and the city's Rent Program stood up in January 2017 to administer it. The coverage rule is simple to state and easy to miss: a property is "Fully Covered," meaning both a rent cap and just-cause eviction protections apply, if it has more than one dwelling unit on a single parcel and was built before February 1, 1995. Everything else, meaning single-family homes, condominiums, and newer construction, is "Partially Covered." No rent cap, but just-cause eviction rules still apply.

That second column is where most out-of-area buyers get surprised. A single-family home or condo in Point Richmond isn't exempt from the ordinance. It's exempt from one piece of it. The City of Richmond's landlord page is direct about this: any property with a rental unit, including single-family homes, condos, and new construction, still owes a Residential Rental Housing Fee and still has to justify any termination of tenancy with one of the ordinance's specific just-cause reasons.

Why This Bites Harder Here Than in Most of Richmond

Point Richmond's downtown core, the blocks around the town triangle and running out toward Washington and Montana Avenues, was largely built out in the early twentieth century. A Victorian duplex at 17 and 19 Montana Avenue, built in 1903, and another two-unit property on Washington Avenue built in 1919, are the kind of listings that show up regularly in this neighborhood. Both predate the ordinance's 1995 cutoff by roughly seventy to ninety years. Neither is a marginal case.

Compare that to the newer single-family ranch homes and later infill construction in the neighborhood's northern and southern edges, and you get a genuine split personality. The oldest, most photogenic multi-unit buildings in Point Richmond, the ones that show up on real estate tours as character properties, are almost automatically Fully Covered. The newer single-family stock is Partially Covered but not unregulated. There's no segment of the neighborhood where an investor can assume the ordinance simply doesn't apply.

The Rate Itself, and Why It Keeps Sliding

For units that are Fully Covered, the Annual General Adjustment is the number that actually matters, and it has moved meaningfully in the past few years. In 2022, the pre-adjustment AGA was set at 5.2%, a reflection of that year's inflation. Richmond voters intervened directly that November, passing Measure P, which rewrote the formula from 100% of the local Consumer Price Index down to 60% of CPI or 3%, whichever is lower. The 2022 rate was retroactively reduced to 3% once Measure P took effect.

The trend since has continued downward. The 2025 AGA, adopted by the Rent Board in June of that year, came in at 1.62%. For the current cycle, covering rent increases that take effect between September 1, 2026 and August 31, 2027, the city's official rent increase page caps the standard adjustment so that a landlord's Maximum Allowable Rent tops out at 1.5% above the current rent, with a higher ceiling of up to 6.5% only available to landlords who have banked unused increases from prior years. For context, that 1.5% baseline now runs below Oakland's newly effective rate for the same period. If you're underwriting a Fully Covered building in Point Richmond, that 1.5% ceiling, not the asking rent, is what sets your realistic rent growth for the next twelve months.

The city's own program materials describe the ordinance's purpose plainly:

to promote neighborhood and community stability, healthy housing, and affordability for renters while ensuring landlords a fair return

That balance, a capped but real return rather than an open market, is the operating assumption behind every number above.

The Exemption That Isn't

Here's the part that catches even experienced landlords who've operated in other East Bay cities. Just-cause eviction protection isn't limited to rent-controlled units. It extends to nearly every residential rental in Richmond, full stop. A single-family home purchased with an existing tenant in place cannot simply be handed a 30-day notice at the end of a lease term. The landlord needs one of the ordinance's specific just-cause reasons, whether that's nonpayment of rent, an owner or qualifying relative moving in, or withdrawal of the unit from the rental market entirely.

If your plan involves reclaiming a unit for an owner move-in, model the relocation cost before you close. Under the most recently published figures, permanent relocation assistance for an owner move-in or Ellis Act withdrawal ranged from roughly $4,356 for a studio up to $21,009 for a two-bedroom-or-larger unit with a qualified tenant household. Those figures apply per unit, so a triplex with three occupied units can turn a straightforward move-in plan into a five-figure line item you didn't budget for at the offer stage.

There's also a rule that follows the property rather than the person. If you buy a Fully Covered duplex with a tenant already in place, the base rent doesn't reset at closing. The starting point for that unit is whatever rent was in effect on July 21, 2015, or the first rent charged if the tenancy began after that date, and the ordinance's per-unit enrollment and registration obligations transfer to you as the new owner regardless of when the property changed hands. If the previous owner never enrolled the property or registered the tenancy, that compliance gap becomes yours to close before you can lawfully raise the rent.

What to Check Before You Write the Offer

• Confirm directly with the Richmond Rent Program whether the specific parcel is Fully Covered or Partially Covered. Build year alone can be ambiguous for properties completed right around the cutoff.
• If the property is tenant-occupied, request the existing Tenancy Registration and base year rent documentation from the seller as part of your due diligence.
• Verify the seller's Property Enrollment and Rental Housing Fee payments are current. Noncompliance carries forward to you and can block both rent increases and lawful evictions.
• If your business plan involves an owner move-in, renovation, or any no-fault termination, budget relocation payments as a real transaction cost, not a contingency.
• Any notice of rent increase or termination of tenancy has to be filed with the Rent Program, typically through its online iMS portal, within a set window after service on the tenant, separate from the state notice periods you may already know.

A Few Questions Worth Asking First

Does buying a single-family home in Point Richmond mean the ordinance doesn't apply to me? No. The rent cap doesn't apply, but just-cause eviction rules and the Residential Rental Housing Fee still do, unless you meet the ordinance's narrow temporary-tenancy exception, which requires the owner to be the primary resident and the arrangement to be documented in writing before the tenancy starts.

If I buy a rent-controlled duplex with long-term tenants, am I stuck with their current rent forever? The base rent carries over and you inherit the existing tenancy registration, but you can still apply each year's Annual General Adjustment, or petition the Rent Board for an individual adjustment outside that framework if circumstances warrant it.

What if I want to move a family member into one unit right after closing? Owner or relative move-in is a valid just-cause reason, but it requires a relocation payment to the departing tenant, and if that tenant is elderly, disabled, or terminally ill with five or more years in the unit, additional protections apply unless the incoming owner or relative meets the same criteria.

How do I confirm coverage before I even write an offer? Contact the Richmond Rent Program directly. Build year is the main test, but partial-year construction and prior use changes can complicate a straightforward reading, and the Richmond Municipal Code, Chapter 11.100, is the underlying text worth reviewing with your agent or attorney before you're under contract.

Point Richmond's older buildings are part of what makes the neighborhood worth buying into. They're also the properties most likely to carry regulatory obligations a standard proforma doesn't account for. Before you write an offer on a rental property here, it's worth running the numbers with someone who checks coverage status as a matter of course, not as an afterthought. Suzie Koide works with buyers across Point Richmond and the wider Marin and East Bay markets on exactly this kind of underwriting. Get a complimentary home valuation and plan before your next offer goes in.