A Hemet-San Jacinto eviction lawyer can be an extremely useful ally for any landlord in the local area. While you may not imagine you will ever have any trouble from your tenants, the sad fact is that you are likely to need to evict someone at some point in your time as a landlord.
This means you will need a good understanding of your legal rights, as well as those of your tenant. It’s important that you use a professional Hemet-San Jacinto eviction lawyer to advise you and to file paperwork on your behalf, to ensure that everything is above board. As you will see in this guide, things can get pretty complicated – so you will understand why you will need a helping hand!
The Eviction Process in Hemet-San Jacinto
The first stage of getting your Hemet-San Jacinto tenants to leave your property is to issue a notice asking them to leave. If they do not leave under the terms that you have set out, then you can trigger the eviction process by asking your Hemet-San Jacinto eviction lawyer to file an Unlawful Detainer Lawsuit in the Superior Court. This will create a suit in which you are the plaintiff, against your tenant as the defendant, which means that the legal process can swiftly be followed.
You shouldn’t try to take action against the tenant on your own. Landlords have been known to change the locks or dump their belongings outside of the property, but this is unlawful and could end up getting you into trouble. Instead, let the law handle this process!
Your tenant will be served with a Summons and Complaint detailing the lawsuit. They have five days to respond, and if they don’t, you will be able to see a judge in 20 days. They will hear your case in court and can usually make a very swift decision.
Hemet-San Jacinto Eviction Notices
Serving the eviction notice is the first step that you need to take for a legal process to begin. Failing to serve a notice contravenes your tenants’ rights, and will make it much more difficult for you to remove them from the property – if not impossible.
Make sure that your Hemet-San Jacinto eviction lawyer checks your notice, as it must fit a certain outline as provided by law. This changes based on how long the tenant has been at your address, what kind of rental agreement you have, what kind of property you are renting to them, and so forth. If you get the notice wrong, of course, your tenant might have legal recourse to stay in the property for a longer period of time. This means you need to be careful about what you serve.
Hemet-San Jacinto 3 Day Notice to Pay Rent or Quit
A 3 Day Notice to Pay Rent or Quit is exactly what you need in order to get your tenant to pay rent if they have failed to do so. The aim here is to get either the money you are owed or the tenant off your Hemet-San Jacinto property.
The first step is to serve the notice, the day after the rent is due and fails to be paid. You shouldn’t issue it on a Saturday, Sunday, or court holiday, so you may have to wait a little extra time if this would be the case. As soon as you are able to, you can issue the notice.
The three-day period then begins the day after the notice is served. Now your tenant has exactly three days to comply before their legal position becomes tenuous.
Your notice must include the following:
- The total amount of rent due – and only rent (avoid adding bills or other fees that remain unpaid)
- The name, address, and telephone number of the person to be paid
- The availability of said person if they are expecting a payment in person, and/or banking details for payment by deposit
Note that a 3 Day Notice can also be used if your rental agreement has been violated in another way – for example, breaking a no-pet rule, sub-letting, or so forth. In this case, everything is the same, except that they must correct the violation rather than paying rent.
30 Day Notice to Vacate or Quit
Should you have a tenancy agreement in which your rent is paid month to month and your tenant has been with you for less than a year, then you can issue a 30 Day Notice to Vacate or Quit. However, other circumstances will require a 60 Day Notice, with some exceptions – more on that later.
Under the law in Hemet-San Jacinto, you must serve the notice in a written form, but you don’t have to include your reason for wanting to end the lease. It’s your legal right to end it, so long as there is no discriminatory or retaliatory reason behind your decision. In other words, you can’t do it just because you don’t like the tenant or because they have argued with you. If you think there is a risk that your tenant could argue this in court, you should resolve the issue before issuing the notice.
Don’t accept any rent payments that would go over the notice period, as this will invalidate your notice. Should the tenant attempt to pay you, make sure to return the funds as soon as possible.
The 30 days of notice begins the day after you serve your tenants. This time, you can count weekends – but only up until the end of the notice period. On the last day, it must be a business day. If it is not, then your tenant gets extra time until the next business day in the interest of fairness.
60 Day Notice to Vacate or Quit
When the 30 Day Notice is not valid, you go to a 60 Day Notice instead. Your Hemet-San Jacinto eviction lawyer can advise you as to which notice period is appropriate, especially as there is actually a specific exception to this rule.
If you are selling the property, then you might be able to shorten the notice period to 60 days again. However, there are a number of criteria that must all be met to allow this to happen. Not only does the sale need to be legally agreed, but it should also be with a buyer who has a genuine intention to move into the property themselves and live there for at least a year. You also have to let the tenant know pretty quickly – 120 days after the funds for the sale are placed in escrow, you will have run out of time and will have to keep the 60 day period.
This is quite a lengthy list of criteria, and all of them have to apply. But your eviction lawyer can help you figure everything out.
For calculating the notice period, you use exactly the same rules as we noted in the 30 Day Notice period. The only difference is that one is longer than the other. Everything else is just the same, down to the fact that the term must end on a business day.
90 Day Eviction for Section 8
When tenants are judged to be more at risk, they may be given more rights to protect them. This is the case for tenancies undertaken under Section 8, meaning that they are subsidized by the government. In order to give your tenants more time to find suitable replacement housing, which may be difficult for them, you will have to give them a 90-day notice period.
The calculations are done in the same way as before, and it’s important that you do not try to make any changes to the tenancy after the notice is served. You can’t raise the rent or change your agreement. That would not be fair to your tenants.
You should expect your tenants to leave within their notice term, but if they do not, your Hemet-San Jacinto eviction lawyer can step in to make sure that the next step goes as planned. This is where you can start to enforce the need for your tenants to move out.
Filing an Unlawful Detainer in Hemet-San Jacinto Courts
Your Hemet-San Jacinto eviction lawyer will now file the Unlawful Detainer Lawsuit, as we mentioned earlier. Around half of the cases in our county of this sort tend to be uncontested – meaning that the tenant does not make any response to the lawsuit. This means that the Sheriff will go ahead and issue a 5-Day Notice to Vacate. They will post the notice on the front door of the property so that the tenant cannot ignore it.
Don’t try to take matters into your own hands at this point. If you try to forcibly remove, intimidate, or lock out your tenant, the courts can issue you with a fine of as much as $200 per day. You will also be held liable for any damages that occur as a result of your unlawful behavior, such as if your remove your tenants’ belongings and they then need to be replaced thanks to weather damage.
Residential Evictions
So far we have covered the important points for residential evictions, which can become very confusing if you are not trained as a Hemet-San Jacinto eviction lawyer. The important thing to do is to respect the rights of your tenants so that they do not have any legal recourse to expect to stay longer or even win compensation against you. You don’t want to get in trouble yourself.
It’s important to regain access to your property since it belongs to you as your investment. You’ll also want to use it in a way that suits you or earns money as quickly as possible. However, you should not be tempted to try and take the law into your own hands, as the courts will not reward you for this.
Commercial Eviction
Being the landlord of a commercial property can be more problematic. Your tenants will base their entire business and marketing around their location in many cases, which means that the stakes are so much higher. But you also have to protect your own livelihood, and since it will be the actions of the tenant that lead them to being evicted, you cannot go too soft on them.
Your Hemet-San Jacinto eviction lawyer can take care of all of the paperwork and processing for you so that you do not have to get too involved. The only reason you should evict a commercial tenant before the agreed end of a lease is if they have broken the terms of their rental agreement, such as by failing to pay rent.
Make it clear how much money you are expecting from them in reasonable terms, and how long they have to pay you what they owe. If they make only a partial payment, you need to ensure that they understand that this will not stop the eviction.
Only full payment can stop the process – and, in fact, it must. You shouldn’t go forward with the eviction if you have received the rent owed.
Should they fail to correct the issue for which you are evicting them, then it is time to file an Unlawful Detainer Lawsuit, just the same as in residential cases. Then you will follow the due process that we have outlined here, going before a judge if necessary to receive legal vindication. This will soon help you to be free of your problematic tenant, so you can bring in someone who will pay and follow the rules.
This is where you will need to go for evictions in Hemet-San Jacinto:
SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA
COUNTY OF RIVERSIDE – Hemet Courthouse
880 State St
Hemet, CA 92543
(951) 572-5408
If you are here because you are looking for a Hemet-San Jacinto eviction lawyer, then we urge you to contact us today. The sooner we begin the process, the sooner we can help you to regain control of your investment and remove difficult tenants from your property.