Hey everybody it's Andy and welcome again to my office in Los Altos, California. I'm
an attorney licensed to practice law in California as well as New York and in
this video I'm going to go over the five questions that I think you should be
prepared to answer if you are getting involved into a California residential
landlord-tenant case. So, uh, specifically I'm going to talk about evictions.
Landlord-tenant law as a practice area in California includes more than just
that, but in my experience at least in the San Francisco Bay Area, the
overwhelming number of, I guess, requests or inquiries, the overwhelming
number of prospective clients in the landlord-tenant sort of space are looking
for evictions either from the landlord- side, like you know landlords looking to
evict tenants or from the tenant-side, tenants needing defense, let's say. So
because of that, right now in this video I'm going to talk about evictions only.
Later on if the demand sort of warrants it, I might record another video - another
five questions video - on other non- eviction types of cases in California. So,
anyway, hopefully that kind of, you know, established the ground rules about what
this video is about so let's go ahead and get started. So the first question
that I think you should be prepared to answer is, well, to be honest with you I
think this might surprise some of you, but the first question basically is 'What
do you want out of this situation?' So if you are a landlord, you know, you should
be prepared to kind of explain to yourself and to any lawyer that you
are interviewing, for instance, what exactly do you want? Do you want the rent?
Do you want, you know, the rent that this tenant has not paid you? Do you want the
tenant out? Do you want the property back, you know, do you want all of that, do you
just want one or two of those, etc. In my experience - this might be kind of specific
to the San Francisco Bay Area - but a lot of the landlords that I've represented
up here, a lot of landlords that I've dealt with up here, a lot of times they
are willing to waive small fees. So for instance, if you didn't pay rent for a
month, they don't really, I mean they want you
to pay it, but the thing is you when push comes to shove, it is actually
something that they are willing to let go in a surprising number of instances.
To them because, I think you know, the rents in the San Francisco Bay Area are
so high, it's actually much more worth it financially for them to basically
waive small things and basically get the property back sooner, put a new tenant in
it, and then, you know, reap the $3,000, $4,000, $5,000, whatever it is per month.
It just makes business sense to get the property back as quickly as possible,
waive everything else in some, in some instances. So, conversely, if you are the
tenant, you might have to kind of, you know, explore, I guess, or kind of think to
yourself what exactly it is that you want out of the situation. Some tenants I
will tell you that, like the ones that I've dealt with, some, sometimes they do
want to stay. And unfortunately, I think a lot of those instances are ones that are
not really sort of grounded in reality, like the tenant, for instance, views it
as their home, but it's really not because it's just, it's just a rental, etc,
etc. So ignore those kind of minority sort, sorts of cases. The, I guess, I
wouldn't say it's the majority, but there's a lot basically, there's a lot of
tenants out there who are facing evictions where they agree to move so
moving out really is not the kind of the holdup. The holdup basically is that, you
know, they can't move out in the time that the law normally prescribes. So if
you've never been involved in landlord- tenant case, it moves really quickly.
Stuff that might take years on a kind of non-landlord-tenant case, in a landlord-
tenant, sorry in a landlord-tenant eviction case rather, stuff that might take years
otherwise only takes a few weeks or a month or two or something like that. So
stuff moves really quickly. If you are a tenant and you lose a landlord-tenant
eviction case, it might be something where you have to move out in five days
and realistically, you know, a lot of times people can't do that in five days,
like they just have too much stuff, they have to pack it all up, they have kids,
they have work, they have, you know, to go find a new place, they have a U-haul
truck that they have to wait for blah, blah, blah. So a lot of times, you know, the
dispute basically is not that the tenant won't move, the tenant just won't move in
the amount of time that the law kind of prescribes. In those situations, if the
tenant basically just needs more time, the landlord just wants to get the
property back, is it possible that some sort of
middle ground, some sort of compromise that kind of benefits both parties
could be reached? Sure. I guess because I've done it a couple times already like
it's not surprising to me, but I could imagine, I guess, that it would be
surprising to a lot of landlords or tenants who are going through this the
first time that compromise can be, can be had I guess. So,
anyway, that's kind of a really long explanation of the first question. So
what exactly do you want out of the situation? Do you just want the property
back? Do you want more time, etc, etc? So that's the first question. The second
question that you should be prepared to answer basically is what city or county
is the rental property in? Obviously that's going to be a really simple
question to answer hopefully, but the reason why that question is important is
because if you are in a city, er, if the rental property is in a city or county
that has additional rules on top of what state law requires, number one that's
something that you have to tell your lawyer because your lawyer might
restrict on geography that way. I'll explain what that means in a second, but
if you have additional rules, regulations, etc, based on the city and the county
that you're in, you need to comply with those, of course, and, you know, you have to
figure out what those are if you don't know them, etc. So on top of that, if you
happen to be in a city or county that has a lot of rules that, you know, like
most lawyers in your area don't know about, for example, because it just
doesn't, it's not something that's really worth it for them to kind of know, that's
important also and I'll give you an example. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the city
of San Francisco, city and county of San Francisco has its own rules and
regulations about what, you know, what landlords and tenants have to do
basically. So those rules and regulations are specific to the city and the county.
Rent control, I guess you know, if you've heard of that before, but specific rules
that, er, rules that are specific to San Francisco - the city and the county - unless
you're a lawyer who takes eviction cases in San Francisco all the time, you're
probably not going to know those rules. So, for instance for me, I know the state
law rules, but I don't know the city and county rules, the City and County of
San Francisco's rules, because I don't take cases up there with enough
regularity. So if you were to approach me with
a request to do an eviction or to defend an eviction in the City and County of
San Francisco, I might have to (a) turn you down or, (b) I would
have to refer you to a specialist who does those types of cases in San
Francisco all the time. Because they do it all the time, they know the rules way
better than me, the occasional sort of lawyer, I guess, who would do those
cases. So hopefully that made sense. That's
question number two. So question number three is basically 'Are you on lease or
off?' and what I mean by that is are you still bound by the terms of a written
lease - six months, a year, etc - or has your lease basically expired and now you're
on a month-to-month situation. So I guess if you ignore the landlord-tenant sort
of scenario for a second, you can hopefully sort of imagine that if you're
on contract of any kind, if you have a contract of any kind, and you're still
bound by it, that basically imposes restrictions on your freedom, like you
know, you basically are not able to do the things that you would otherwise do
normally. So if you are on lease, for example, and you're a tenant you, one benefit
could be that you have a, I guess, your rent basically is locked. So let's say
you sign a 12-month lease and your rent is specified as $1,000 per month for the
entire 12 months. So if the landlord tries to raise your rent you could say
'Well excuse me Mr. Landlord, I have a contract with you that says that my rent
is frozen at $1,000 a month. At the end of, at the end of this lease, you
know, this written lease, you can, you know, try to raise the rent and at that
time I might move, I might not, etc.' So that's, like if you're on lease, you
know, you're going to have some restrictions on your freedom. If you are off lease, you
know, you might have some restrictions on your freedom, but they're
generally going to be a lot less. So if I go back to that rent scenario, if the, if
you're a tenant and your lease has expired, your written lease has expired, if the
landlord basically tells you 'Hey Andy, you know, I'm going to raise your rent from
$1,000 to $1,200, you know, per month starting next month.
In that scenario I might go 'Okay well, you know, I'm sorry but I, I really don't want
to pay that. Tell you what I'll give you my notice now and I'll move and then, you
know, next month, hopefully, you can advertise this and get another tenant
in here who will pay that, you know, for instance. So, anyway, hopefully all that
made sense, I guess, but if you're on lease or off lease, that kind of
determines how much freedom you have to do things and that, you know, freedom to
do things that's always going to be important in any type of scenario. So
that is number, I think, three is what we're talking about. So number four: what
notices have been given in your situation and when were they given? So I
have another video on my channel about 60 vs. 30-day notices when you're trying
to terminate a tenancy, a landlord-tenant sort of relationship and, I guess, in that
video I cite to a whole bunch of codes and, you know, about what note, the notices
have to contain, what type of notices have to be given, etc. If you've never
done a landlord-tenant case in California, those notices are basically
strict compliance. If you do the notice improperly, if you serve it improperly, if
you give them a 30 when you, they actually should have had a 60, etc,
all of that's going to be really, good gonna be real available. [Eyeroll] Going to be
really, really important is what I meant to say. I've been in front of some judges
who are basically really, extremely strict on it. If you don't do the notice
correctly, the judge will dismiss your case if you're on the landlord-side, for
instance. If you have your case dismissed, you basically lose the filing
fee, you know, you have to pay your lawyer to do the case again, you have to pay
another filing fee, etc. So it just is, I guess, if the notices are not done
correctly, a lot of problems can happen and depending on which side of the case
you're on those problems might work for you or against you, but in general,
lawyers, I think, will want to know what notices have been given, when were they
given and so forth. Yeah. So anyway, the last kind of question, number five,
basically is - I wouldn't say it's a catch-all, I guess, but in landlord-tenant
eviction cases what's very, very common is for accusations to be kind of, you
know, slung back and forth, I guess. The landlord says the tenant broke this,
didn't pay rent, caused a noise disturbance, whatever. The tenant said 'Oh
well, you know, the, the heater didn't work the air conditioner didn't work, the landlord didn't
fix any of this stuff, etc. So accusations being flung back and forth really, really,
really common. So because they are very, very common, I guess,
you know, question number five basically is going to be 'What evidence do you have?'
So, if you're the landlord, let's say, and you're basically saying 'Okay you know,
I'm gonna break this guy's lease. I'm going to you know, you know, evict him, etc,
because he was - I don't know - manufacturing methamphetamine in the
house, let's say. If that's, if that's the basis that you're, you're using, great.
But I, as a lawyer, for example, I'm going to want to know, okay, what evidence do you have
that he was doing this? Do you have neighbors, you know, who are saying that?
Do you have the police who are saying that, etc, etc. If you're the tenant and you're
saying that the landlord didn't fix the air conditioner, that the landlord, you
know, didn't spray for termites, etc, etc, like what evidence do
you have that the landlord did not do these things? So I guess hopefully this
should not be surprising to anybody, but evidence generally is going to be what's
necessary when you go to court. So the judge is not going to just believe you
that 'Oh well, yes, you know I'm going to believe you that the landlord didn't fix
this' or 'I'm gonna believe you that the tenant was manufacturing methamphetamine.'
Yeah just evidence, in general, is going to be really, really important when it
comes to court and it's something that, you know, I think, at least, you should be
prepared to sort of provide to your attorney at the very beginning. I think
in in my first five questions video about divorces, I think I mentioned in
there that, you know, one benefit of, you know, thinking through these five
questions, one question, er, one benefit of being prepared, is that you basically
come across as the more, as the client that's more with it, and if you're more
with it generally the, like you're gonna have a
better time, you know, finding a lawyer to help you out of whatever situation
you're in. So hopefully all of that helped. To kind of summarize real quickly:
Question number one what do you want out of this particular situation? A lot of
times actually, what the client, sorry, what the landlord wants versus
what the tenant wants actually are not mutually exclusive. It is possible to
benefits both parties, give them what they want.
It just takes some artful negotiation. Number two what
city and county are we talking about and that's because, again you know, there
might be individual rules, ordinances that are specific to that County, to that
County or to that city. Number three is are you on lease or off?
You know, do you have a written lease that's still in effect or has the lease
passed and you are on a month-to-month situation? And that's important because
that will determine how much freedom you have to do things, regardless of whether
or not you're the landlord or the tenant. Number four is what notices have been
given in the situation and when and the reason why that's important is because
there are a lot of strict compliance, I guess, sort of, sort, sort of rules where
if you actually get to court and you haven't done, you know, the background properly,
you haven't done your homework properly, you could have your case dismissed, for
it, for instance and then number five is basically kind of a cop out sort of
question, uh, what evidence do you have that actually backs up all the stuff
that you're claiming? Yeah, so anyway, hopefully all that helps. Again these are
just my five questions that I thought of when I was shooting this video and it's
something where if you have your own five questions, for example, leave them
down below. If I included questions that, you know, you didn't think are, you know,
terribly important, that you would have included other ones, leave me that
stuff down below in a comment also, but again, hopefully this helps you, you know,
be, sorry, helps you, helps you be more prepared, is what I meant to say, helps
you be more prepared as a prospective client, helps you find a lawyer faster
and ultimately helps you out of whatever situation you're in. So anyway, again
hopefully all that helps. Go ahead and comment, share, like, subscribe all that
stuff, uh, and I will talk to you guys next time.
Thanks.