Does Sacramento Require Rental Inspections?

Two programs, one name

This is the detail nearly every secondary summary gets wrong. Articles about "the Sacramento rental inspection program" routinely mix the county's $16 utility-bill fee with the city's inspection procedure, or vice versa, because both jurisdictions independently named their program the Rental Housing Inspection Program, both abbreviate it RHIP, and both even use an email address that starts with RHIP@. They are not the same program. The city's is run by the Community Development Department's Code Compliance division under Sacramento City Code Chapter 8.120. The county's is run by the county Code Enforcement Division under Sacramento County Code 16.20.400 and applies only to the unincorporated area, which excludes the city of Sacramento along with Elk Grove, Folsom, Citrus Heights, Rancho Cordova, Galt and Isleton.

The scale involved is not small. According to Sacramento County Code Enforcement (saccounty.gov), the county has identified approximately 90,000 rental units through its utility billing system and Tax Assessor records, and its Rental Housing Code Compliance fee dates back to 1993.

Inside the city: pass an inspection, then inspect yourself

According to the City of Sacramento's Community Development Department (cityofsacramento.gov), owners register each rental property, then the city schedules an inspection with two weeks' written notice to the owner and a separate notice to the tenant. If violations are found, the owner has 30 days to correct them; miss that window and the city can issue an Administrative Notice and Order, and the property is inspected again the following year with a $295 re-inspection fee.

Passing is what unlocks the lighter regime. A property with no violations, or with violations corrected within the 30 days, is placed in the Self-Certification Program: the owner inspects each unit annually and on any change of tenancy, using city checklists retained for three years. The city then randomly inspects 10 percent of self-certified properties, and a failed audit knocks the property back to annual city inspections at $180 per unit until it passes again. The fee schedule effective July 1, 2025 sets the annual program fee at $25 per unit, unit inspections at $180, rescheduling at $180, and adds an 8 percent Code Technology Fee. Exemptions exist for properties under five years old or units regularly inspected by another agency, and out-of-area owners must name a Local Contact Representative who can attend inspections.

In the unincorporated county: self-certify first, get audited

The county flips the sequence. According to Sacramento County Code Enforcement (saccounty.gov), every rental property in the unincorporated area must be registered, and County Code 16.20.400 lets owners who meet minimum requirements self-certify from the start. Anyone other than the owner of record who performs the inspections must first complete a County-approved certification course offered through the California Apartment Association, and the certification is valid for five years.

Self-certifying owners inspect every unit, interior and exterior, at the beginning of each new tenancy and annually during the tenancy, record it on the county's checklists, and give tenants a copy. Enforcement comes through random audits: Code Enforcement reviews the checklists and inspects the exterior from the public right-of-way, escalating to a physical unit inspection if the paperwork has gaps or violations are visible, with at least 72 hours' notice. Owners who do not self-certify get a county inspection instead, scheduled by letter at least 14 days out unless priority violations are found, and the county's owner guidance budgets roughly 15 minutes per unit. The annual Rental Housing Code Compliance fee is $16.00 per rental unit, normally part of the first county utility bill of the year, and it stays due even when a property is exempt from the inspection portion, such as properties under five years old or units regularly inspected by the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency.

What this means for operators

Sacramento is unusual among the jurisdictions in our rental inspection ordinance reference: in most cities that inspect, a government employee shows up on a cycle. Here, on both sides of the city line, the person legally responsible for inspecting every unit at every turnover is you, and the government's role is checking whether you can prove you did it. That makes the checklist trail, not the inspection visit, the compliance product. An owner whose move-in and annual inspections are documented with dated photos has both the audit paperwork and, as a side effect, the dated condition evidence that security deposit disputes turn on.

The operational risk is boundary confusion in the other direction, too: a portfolio spread across the metro can hold units in the city program, units in the county program, and units in the other incorporated cities where neither of these two ordinances applies, each combination with its own fees and paperwork. Sorting properties by jurisdiction once, and building the tenancy-change inspection into the turnover itself, is cheaper than reconstructing records under a 72-hour audit notice.

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