Rent regulation & tenants
Owner move-in (OMI)
A no-fault eviction ground letting an owner or close family member occupy a unit; SB 567 requires move-in within 90 days and 12 months' occupancy.
Definition
Owner move-in (OMI) is the no-fault just-cause ground in Civil Code § 1946.2 allowing termination so the owner — or a spouse, domestic partner, child, grandchild, parent, or grandparent — can occupy the unit as a primary residence.
SB 567 (2023) turned the assertion into a test: the intended occupant must move in within 90 days of the tenant leaving and live there at least 12 continuous months, or the unit must be offered back to the displaced tenant; violations expose the owner to actual damages, treble damages for willful conduct, and attorney's fees. Local ordinances tighten it further — restricting OMI against elderly, disabled, or long-tenure tenants and adding relocation above the state's one month.
Why it matters in an underwrite
OMI was the classic soft path to unit recovery; SB 567 priced it. The 90-day/12-month follow-through and re-offer remedy make a pretextual move-in provably expensive, and in strict cities a protected tenant can be OMI-proof entirely. For a small-building buyer genuinely planning to occupy — one unit, one household, documented intent — the path works. For a portfolio repositioning, OMI is not a scalable vacancy strategy and should not appear in the model as one.
Sources & related guides
See also
See the term in the law itself
Read the controlling text in the Code Library, or ask the AI how it applies to your project.
Last reviewed 2026-07-29. General information, not legal advice.