For Sale

Property for Sale

At this time in the economy, landlords are having problems and may need to sell the house or condo you are renting, or avoid foreclosure. Even when the economy is doing well, a landlord may want to sell the property because it has gone up in value and he wants to take the profits. You as a tenant don’t have any say in whether he can sell the property, but you have a great deal of control on how that happens, and how you are affected. The important thing is that you recognize that you are in control, and you just need to assert your rights.

How it Goes

In the typical situation, the landlord hires a real estate agent, the “listing agent,” to sell the property. All of the agents of that company parade through your house so they are familiar with the features of your house to talk to buyers about it. They may visit a dozen houses, driving from one to the other, in what they call a “caravan.” Usually, they just show up and expect to walk through your home, unconcerned with their invasion of your privacy, tracking in dirt, and interfering with what you are doing.

They take pictures of the inside of your house, furnishings and all, and publish those pictures on the internet in a system called the Multiple Listing Service, or MLS. It is open to the public, including burglars, but is intended to help agents from other real estate company see your place, in case their buyer would like to see it. Over the months, many people show up at your home, walking through at all times. The realtor and your landlord tell you that you can’t be there while they are showing the house, but they expect you to keep your house looking nice, so that the showing goes well for the realtor. The realtor might even set up an Open House of your home, where over a weekend, everyone is welcome to come in and see your home.  Realtor use your home as a remote field office, from which they take people who come to see your overpriced house to compare similar other homes in the area available on better terms.

In time, appraisers, lenders, contractors, and architects may expect to some in and see your place as well. The landlord didn’t want to fix things for you, but fixing it up for the buyer is important. He may even want to remodel your home while you are living there, tearing up your kitchen or other rooms and structures, filling your home with saw dust, fumes, construction debris, and equipment, noise and disruption. The landlord doesn’t want to wait until you leave, because doing this work while you are still living there and paying him rent keeps his mortgage paid and speeds up the timing of the sale.

Your utility services might be interrupted as these changes are made. Your furniture is piled up in the room, things are broken or missing, and nobody accepts responsibility for anything.  The building may need to be tented for termites for a few days, when you definitely can’t be there. Mold remediation or other major repairs may be required, as well. The landlord expects you to pay for your own hotel, meals out, and other expenses, but might offer to forgive the days of rent when you can’t be there , as your only compensation.  You get no current status of the sale, but at some point, you get a notice to get out, so that escrow can close, because the buyer wants you out as a condition of the sale.

It’s beyond disrespect that you receive. If you don’t take control of the situation, this is reality. 

Taking Control

It doesn’t have to be that way. You could work out a fair and amicable arrangement with your landlord and the realtor. You could agree to what they ask, but be properly compensated by a written agreement. While you are letting the property be shown, keeping the house looking good, and staying out of the way of the realtors’ showings, you might pay no rent for the rest of your tenancy. If you need to vacate to accommodate termite tenting or major construction, the landlord could pay for a nice hotel, meals out, incidental expenses and a generous compensation for your sacrifices, as well as commit to a definite time away, insuring against any lost or damaged property, and restoring your home to its clean and orderly condition. If the landlord paid for a boat cruise for you on the days that he wanted to have an Open House, you might agree to that.  In comparison, the bum’s rush just doesn’t sit well.

You might be able to get the real estate broker to convince your landlord to treat you fairly like that. If he has half a brain and recognizes that you just might know what you are doing, he will make it happen.  If he has even encountered a tenant like you before, he knows that he damned well better.

Since the landlord is planning to evict you anyway in order to sell the property, you have nothing to lose by asserting these rights, and a lot to gain. You have a landlord who needs to sell the property and a real estate agent and his broker who want their commission from the sale. You have all of the contractors and others lined up ready to do their jobs in a scheduled order. Maybe there’s some urgency on the landlord’s behalf, like a foreclosure, divorce, or financial plan with a deadline to get in.

You have control over possession. You can change the locks and prohibit anyone from coming in, under Civil Code 1954. You can stop the agents from taking pictures to post online. You can take down the For Sale sign and sue the broker for trespass by posting it, and the cost of your storing it. You can tell prospective buyers that if they buy the property, they may become defendants in the lawsuit you are planning to file against your landlord. You sue the real estate agents for trespass and invasion of privacy. You call in the government inspectors to cite the property for a variety of defects. You can even make a citizen’s arrest of anyone coming onto the property without your permission, using all force reasonably necessary to subdue the resisting criminal suspect. If the police come, they should side with you, and you call their Watch Commander if they don’t.  The contractors will all have to cancel, due to the uncertainty, and may not be available later. If the landlord retaliates by evicting you, now definitely nothing will happen towards his goal, while you stay rent free for months or years fighting the eviction, while the landlord has no rent coming in from which to pay his mortgage or his eviction lawyer. The sale falls through. The broker and agent lose their commissions. Nobocy want to list the property with your dispute still raging.  You will probably win the eviction case, because you are only asserting your rights under Section 1954 to the landlord’s prohibited abuse of the right of entry.

Heavy handed? Yeah. But these are tools in your tool belt, to be used as you wish. You gave the landlord and the broker the chance to avoid this, but they said what? “No.”  You want to remind them of that fateful decision whenever you can.  If they want to reconsider and play nice, what are they offering? It needs to be a lot more generous than you were willing to accept before they brought the battle on.  It needs to be in an airtight agreement, so if they dare to violate it, they suffer disaster.

No doubt, it’s an entirely different picture than you thought before.  You should watch the video on this page to help re-summarize this and get a few more points.  We’re hear to help you do all this. Just ask.