Gardena, CA Rental Property Rules: Rental Registration (2026)

Gardena Municipal Code Section 5.08.350 requires anyone owning, operating or leasing residential or living units for rent, other than hotels, motels or motor courts, which are licensed separately under Section 5.08.230, to hold an annual business license. The fee is $50 for the first four rental units on a parcel and $10 for each unit beyond four, so a landlord with a single-family rental pays the flat $50 minimum while an owner of an eight-unit apartment building owes $90 a year ($50 for the first four units plus $10 each for the remaining four).

Section 5.08.350(B) requires a separate license for each property parcel, so an owner of rental units spread across multiple parcels in the city must license each parcel independently rather than combining units into a single citywide license. The requirement covers lodging houses as well as ordinary residential rentals, and functions as Gardena's registration mechanism for rental housing: because the license must be renewed annually, the license collector's rolls track which residential parcels in the city are actively being rented. Owners of nonresidential rental space, such as offices, warehouses or commercial buildings, are licensed instead under the square-footage formula in the adjacent Section 5.08.355, which charges $50 for the first 5,000 square feet and one cent per additional square foot.