My poor wife found him outside in our driveway. I came home from work, mainly to support her.
Anyway, situation as follows: we’ve rented this place for 10 years, he lived in an illegal in-law downstairs. Our rent is inclusive–water, garbage, gas and electricity. We haven’t signed anything but our original lease, 10 years ago.
We are not sure if he had a will; he wasn’t too on top of things like that. We know, through past experience when he was in the hospital, pretty sick, a couple of years ago, that he has some skeevy relatives down south (we’re in Oakland CA) and out of state that were ready to swoop in, and as well an ex-girlfriend from back in the day, as well from down south, who pulled some stuff like having her adult son pose as a relative in order to try and get information from the hospital and others.
What are our rights as long-term tenants with a ten-year-old lease? Without a will? With a will? What should we do? We don’t want to stay forever, but don’t as well want to be rushed out of here before finding another place that suits. The Bay Area is insane market-wise right now. Feh. I feel guilty about being practical about this at this moment, but I am worried as to what could be coming. Thanks all.
I doubt that your ten year old lease was for 10+ years, so likely you are on a month-to-month basis now. Do you know if your payment is in arrears or forward. Again most likely forward. So, at end of your current month you could be expected to vacate, whenever the owner notifies you. Whoever is deemed as the heir to the property, will decide what your options are.
The heir may decide they like the property as an income property and permit you to continue as a tenant. If the market is as tight as you say it is, you could expect your rent to increase.
Even if the heir intends to sell the property, they may sell it to someone who wants it for investment purposes. Whereby property with tenants under lease help the property sell more quickly.
Whatever you do, make sure you hang on to the rent money. It may take months to get this sorted out, but eventually you’ll owe that money to somebody-or-other.
Oakland does have rent control, which would limit the increase to a relatively trivial amount. That said, I don’t think that applies to single family dwellings (e.g. standalone houses). I’m not sure how they’d count your legally suspect in-law suite in that calculation.
When we moved out of our Berkeley apartment (two storey house divided in two) we had been paying the same rent for three years. It went on the market for $500 more. I’m sure they got it, there was a line down the street for the open house.
My older son had this experience. He was renting the top floor of a home and another person was renting the bottom floor. Their landlord passed away suddenly. There was a loan on the house, so the bank stepped in and took it over. Each received a formal letter from the bank stating that the bank now owned the home and intended to put it up for sale. The kids were told that they could stay on until the house was sold, but would have to vacate by the time of the sale. Two months later, a rep from the bank called them and told them the house had been sold and gave them two weeks to vacate. This was followed by a letter stating the same. By this time both renters had something else lined up, so it all worked out well.
I would think, though, that you should begin looking right away, just in case the new owner of your property has other plans for it.
California laws generally protect the renter fairly well, meaning you can’t be evicted easily. You should have adequate notice to find another residence.
Definitely take a look at the links that Kimbalkid and ZipperJJ posted. Those links cover your rights.
Thanks all. Those links are helpful. His relatives are on their way, will be here this weekend. Wondering what to do about rent and any other demands they might make. If he doesn’t have a will, how long does it take to sort this kind of stuff out?
Probably makes best sense to contact a lawyer. But I’ll ask you folks as well.
You effectively have a month to month lease, pretty much everywhere if you stay long enough to count as a tenant or past the end of the lease term it automatically gets treated the same as signing a month to month lease. Beyond that, the specifics of ending a lease vary a lot from state to state and city to city. Really big cities tend to have really strong tenant protections, so you probably have a lot of warning time before having to move out - I would be really surprised if you they had to give less than 60 days notice.
What part of the US are you talking about here? I don’t know of anywhere in the US where you can force someone to leave their dwelling with less than 30 days notice outside of really special circumstances. It’s definitely not going to be the case in a big California city, where there are likely a ton of tenant laws and it can easily take 3-6 months to actually get someone out of a house.
If you don’t mind, what state were they in? I suspect the bank trying to get them out of the house, and that the process would work differently if they didn’t want to leave right away. When I looked into what I would have to do to evict a non-rent-paying, never-signed-a-lease ex- from my house if she didn’t leave, it turned out that I would have had to give her at least 30 days notice of the final day, then once the 30 days were up could start the eviction process, which would take 1-2 weeks more. And I’m not in an area with rent control or any other heavy tenant protections.
When you said you have a ten year lease, do you mean you actually have a lease that covers a period of ten years? That seems pretty unlikely. I’m assuming you actually had a more standard shorter term lease that was signed ten years ago. If so, then you’re actually in a month-to-month situation.
It appears from what you’re saying, that your landlord was charging you less than market prices for rent. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely the new owner will choose to do the same. They presumably have the legal right to raise your rent to a higher amount. You’ll then have a choice of paying the higher amount or moving out. Unless you have a lease that’s still in effect, the new owner is under no obligation to continue the old rent. And this is assuming the new owner is even interested in renting the house. They may want you to leave regardless of whether you’re willing to pay a higher rent.
One piece of advice I’d give you is to be careful about who you pay rent to. You don’t want to end up in a situation where you think you’re paying rent to the new owner only to find out they’re not actually the heir and don’t have the right to charge you rent. In that case, you could end up owing back rent to the real owner. At the same time, you don’t want to be in a situation where you’re living there and not paying rent to anyone - doing that could be grounds for eviction or other legal action. This is a situation where you really need to get some professional legal advice.
Per little Nemo be very careful about who you pay any demanded rent to. Unless there is a relative who is ready to replace you immediately chances are pretty good you can probably continue your tenancy for at least 3 to 6 months if not longer.
If I was in your position, however, I would begin making plans to move. The disposition of real estate that is put into play and becomes part of an estate often ones up being sold.
Don’t make any rent checks out to any of the relatives. The rent money now belongs to the estate, not to any individual. I’m not sure if it would be better to make a check out the “The Estate of Landlord Guy” or to open a wholly separate bank account to deposit the money into to hold it for when an executor is identified.
I wouldn’t be so quick to say the lease is now month to month. In a number of jurisdictions a lease for a term of years is automatically renewed for the same term if the landlord accepts ongoing rent after it expires without other arrangements.
Motorgirl gives good advice, though if the landlord’s estate does not qualify for probate making the check out to the estate will likely make it a nullity.
IANAL. Good idea to not pay just anybody who asks for it without knowing their legal right to your rent money. But I would suggest putting the rent money in escrow while things are ironed out. This shows that you are acting in good faith rather than just deciding not to pay rent. Tenant law varies greatly from place to place and you should research or get advice on the laws in your area.
If you’ve been paying by any method other than handing landlord cash, continue in same manner, mailing a check to his address would be best. Putting it aside in a special account means you have the money, but it also means you haven’t paid rent. Continue on as normal.
Until Estate goes through probate, no one else owns it but you still need to be paying rent.
As usual IANAL, … but I do listen to Handel On The Law very regularly.
Of course the down side is with him dead, unless the utilities were a draft, you may lose power and water when they do not get paid, and since they are now in your name you will not be able to get service restored.
But until it goes through probate and someone inherits it, do NOT pay anyone other than the estate of Land Lord.
Best bet may be cough up a few bucks and buy an hour of time from a Tenant Attorney.
Thanks again all. MAking a call to an attorney this afternoon. Wondering, though, how one knows, for real, who the executor is, if there is a will, whether it has gone through probate.