Richmond District family faces $7,000 rent hike after ownership change

A Richmond District family got a notice that their monthly rent would rise to $7,000 in September, a near-90% jump that would almost certainly force them out of the two-bedroom at 6838 Geary Boulevard where Zachary and Ashley Waldman have lived since 2021 with their 19-month-old son, Henry.

The timing sharpened the blow. The notice came after the 10-unit condominium building changed ownership on May 20, 2026 for $6.15 million, turning a home that sits near the family’s subsidized daycare into a financial cliff. A move from roughly $3,700 a month to $7,000 would add about $3,300 in monthly housing costs, or nearly $40,000 over a year, to a budget built around staying put in the Richmond.

Whether the hike is legal turns on one fact: rent control coverage. San Francisco’s Rent Board set the allowable annual increase for covered units at 1.6% for the period from March 1, 2026 through February 28, 2027. But city rules also say buildings first constructed after June 13, 1979 are generally exempt from those rent-increase limits, and property listings show 6838 Geary was built in 1996. That construction date matters because an ownership change alone does not count as just cause for eviction, but an exempt unit can still be reset to market rent.

That is the renter-protection reality check at the center of the Waldmans’ case. If the apartment is exempt, the landlord may be able to demand market rent even after the sale, which is how a lawful increase can still land like an eviction notice in a neighborhood already under severe pressure. If the unit is covered, the new rent would appear far above the city’s 1.6% ceiling.

For the Waldmans, the practical next step is legal review of the unit’s status, the notice, and the tenancy records. The family is consulting a lawyer as the September deadline approaches, while the landlord has not responded to repeated requests for comment. The larger backdrop is a city where one-bedroom rents have crossed $4,000 and two-bedrooms are around $5,500, underscoring how a single building sale can become a displacement event in San Francisco’s fastest-rising rental market.