A lot is riding on this one, gang. No fear, Andrew Zakes is here!!!
It figures, it was a lawyer trying to screw them over.
Hopefully, Mr. Zakes prevails again!!!
Tenants are entitled to relocation expenses if evicted? How do they even calculate that? I imagine it could wipe out the entire profit of being a landlord. The landlord did it smart. Just raise the rent enough that they choose to not renew their lease. That way they weren’t evicted. I don’t get why you’d ever evict someone in the middle of a lease unless they weren’t paying you or were doing illegal activities.
In SF anyway, one can go to the Rent Board website for the fee schedule that would apply. I will try to find it later at lunch.
Ok, easy to find… first one applies to evictions under Ellis Act
This one applies to owner move-in
In SF, lease expiration means nothing because the tenant is entitled to live there forever after lease expiration unless there’s an eviction. City requires more than $5000 relocation fee per person if tenant has no fault. Actually paying tenant $5000 per person is not the real pain, the real pain is that you need to have an allowable reason to pay them and let them move. If you do Ellis eviction, you need to keep it non-rented for 5 years
This is called “just cause eviction”. Once you have a tenant, you have to evict them before you can have a vacant house again. San Jose is or has worked out this, so SJ tenant may soon become perpetual.
Do they count a tenant as each person that signed on the lease or do kids count as tenants too? That’s a racket.
Any adult is a tenant even if he did not sign the lease. SF is working on counting kids as tenant now
Hmm, are parents a protected class against discrimination? It would make sense to not rent to parents to save on eviction payments. What if one adult signs the lease then lets a roommate move in without telling the landlord? Is the landlord on the hook to pay fees to both? I think these fees only apply if the landlord evicts, because they are exiting the rental business.
For owner move in, same fees apply. Tenants are well protected so you just pay them and feel fortunate that you have the right to pay them. In most cases, you have no right to pay them so they will live there forever.
I would not worry about the fees. I would worry that they would live there forever and you can’t have a reason to pay them and see them leave
If it’s not rent controlled, you can just increase the rent once the existing lease ends. If you increase enough, then they’ll have to move out. That’s what the landlord in the case did. Then there’s no eviction. There’s no law that says you need to charge the next tenant the same rent you offered the existing one.
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Yeah, without rent control, you can raise rent. This tenant argues that the rent increase is too much and it becomes an eviction. Hope the judge will make a reasonable judgement. If the tenant wins, all the landlord will be at the risk of being sued for rent increases. When the rent is not controlled, how do you know a rent is high enough to be an eviction?
Every landlord would raise the rent differently and every landlord would charge different. What does it mean that landlord has the right to decide on asking rent? What if I increase the rent $50 more than another landlord? And another landlord increases $300 less than another? Or $1 more? It can quickly becomes unworkable
Curbed is now picking on this story… it is huge!!!
The key is raise rents slowly and often…Most tenants won’t mind a $50/m raise per year. .or say 3-5%…but a 10% or higher will get them to shop and compare alternatives. .I call it the boiling the frog method of property management. …Wait too long and the extra large rent increase will make the frog jump out of the pot…