Pls help - serve pay or vacate now or wait till moratorium ends

[Michelle Phimmasone]

Please help! We are in southern California and have tenants that we told in December that we were going to sell the house in 2 months.There were many reasons why, because of repairs, HOA fines, tenants not making full rent, we basically were operating at a loss. Come January, the tenants stopped communicating, never paid rent and wouldn't give us access to the house even though we were in the middle of repairs in the kitchen. They wrote once by text, were very angry and told us they had Covid and were also advised by a friend to stop paying rent in case we sold the house.

We said we would help them out if we could and just let us know when we could get back inside to finish repairs. They never replied again or responded. We got a property manager to help us, they ignored him too and wouldn’t respond. He repeatedly told us there was nothing we could do. Almost 2 months later, they finally responded and the property manager says to us that he thinks he can get them to start paying. They spoke with him on the phone and this time claim they never paid rent because they have some complaints about the repairs. However we could never do anything because they impeded us by not responding or giving access to the house. Property manager says they are due to inspect the house, try to get the tenants to trust them and start paying rent. Says we can evict them in July. husband fully believes him and wants to go this route.

I however, contacted an eviction service, he told us we should have taken action months ago. He says we can file a 15 day notice to pay or quit plus a 30 day notice to end tenancy. He says we can put the house on the market to show intent to sell. He says if we wait till later on with the tenants, we would take a bigger hit. The property manager thinks this is a horrible idea, he says the courts always side with the tenants right now, that we should terminate our service with him if we go this route.

What should we do? I don’t want to delay any longer for many reasons. We are charging below market rent with these tenants, they have been vindictive and angry, have taken full advantage of us on numerous occasions. We desperately need to refinance, however we can’t because this house is in forbearance. It also seems weird to have them be in good standing 4 months from now and try to evict them then.