AB 1482 owner-occupied exemption + where South Bay house-hack math works

[Ryan Winston]

Pairing a legal quirk with the numbers this week, because one without the other misleads new house-hackers. California's AB 1482 rent cap generally exempts owner-occupied duplexes — a real edge for a first-timer living in one unit. But the exemption only matters if the deal actually pencils. South Bay multi-family (2–4 unit) right now: - Sunnyvale median: $2.20M, +10% YoY, just 7 active listings, 42 DOM. - Los Gatos: down 34% YoY and moving in 9 days — small sample, but a real dislocation. - Gilroy 95020 is the only non-San Jose ZIP cracking my top gross-yield list at ~3.7% ($1.04M Zillow value vs ~$3,222/mo rent). - HUD 2BR FMR: Sunnyvale $3,972 vs Gilroy $3,115 — the rent gap nowhere near closes the price gap. The owner-occupied exemption makes a duplex cleaner to operate than a 3–4 unit for a first-timer, but the Sunnyvale numbers tell me a 2-unit basically requires you to treat your own saved rent as the whole return. Anyone in the South Bay actually cash-flowing an owner-occupied duplex today, or is the AB 1482 exemption mostly valuable for the eviction flexibility on the rented unit? Curious what folks closer to the deals are seeing. I dig into these numbers weekly for 11 Santa Clara County cities in my South Bay Multi-Family Pulse newsletter — happy to pull a specific city or ZIP if it helps.