California Landlord Friendly??

[Justin Koopmans]

Hello BP-California!

I'm a newbie from Utah planning on moving to California (northern) in the next few months and was planning on house hacking for my first purchase. But then........ my father (who is an experienced investor in Southern Utah) told me to be sure and see if California's laws are landlord or tenant friendly before I dive into the deep end. 

So what is y'all's experience with this? 

Is this something I should be concerned with? If I get a bunch of horror stories back I've also thought to live-in-flip instead, in which case I obviously would not be dealing with tenants haha. 

Lemme know :) Thanks a ton for your help!

[Kyle J.]

I've always heard that California in general is very pro-tenant when it comes to evictions, but I didn't have any firsthand experience to know whether or not that was actually true since I've never had to evict a tenant (though I've come close). In any event, I thought it was important to find out how the process actually works and whether or not it was as bad as people seemed to think.

So, a while back, I actually went to my local courthouse and sat through an entire day of eviction hearings. I watched all different types of hearings (i.e. landlords represented by attorneys, landlords not represented by attorneys, uncontested evictions, as well as evictions contested by the tenant both with and without witnesses on their side, etc). However, in every case, the judge seemed to listen to both sides and reached the same conclusion I would have had I been in her shoes. She was very reasonable.

My main takeaways were that evictions aren't nearly as bad as some people make them out to be. In fact, they were fairly easy and quick. The judge said she is required to hold these hearings within 20 days of the eviction process being filed. If the landlord wins the case (and the landlord won every single case that I watched), then the judge said it usually takes the sheriff about another 2 weeks to remove the evicted tenant (i.e. do the lockout).

So we're talking about 4-5 weeks total for an average eviction. Keep in mind there are attorneys out there who specialize in helping tenants delay the inevitable in eviction hearings, so obviously if you run into that type of situation it could take longer. I also don't doubt that other counties could be different, and certainly some judges may not be as fair. But that is just as likely anywhere.

Here's some more resources on the subject if you're interested:

California Courts Eviction Process for Landlords

California Dept of Consumer Affairs: The Eviction Process