For reasons I’m not clear about, a homeowner I know–I’ll call her Gertrude–has been told by the city that she will have to sell her home and move. She owns the back house she lives in, as well as the front house, where her sister and brother-in-law and family live (in Southern California).
The problem is that her sister’s family has apparently refused to move out. Gertrude was discussing this with the real-estate agent with whom she has listed her place; from what Gertrude told me, the agent seems to be clueless on what to do to make the relatives in the front house move.
Is there a CA statute about this? Or some legal/real estate procedure Gertrude or the agent have overlooked?
Sorry if this sounds flip, but the legal procedure is known as “eviction.” Gertrude should talk to an attorney who specializes in landlord/tenant issues.
Definitely consult an attorney, that’s what they’re their for.
But I’m curious, is it a matter of eminent domain? Are the putting a bypass through her house (that’s what we do…you’ve got to build bypasses), did the city discover that Cthulu is based on her land? What?
Because that seems a little ham-handed of the city.
‘Tenant Handbook’ from Nolo.com (nolo press) is great for california law. Its about $22.00. Our library also has it so yours might too, real easy to read.
If it’s eminent domain (i.e., the city is buying the land for a road or some other project), then she would be selling the house to the city. If the tenants won’t leave, it’s the city’s problem.
If she’s selling to someone else, something’s not kosher about the deal. However, she could still sell both houses and let the new owner sort things out.
If Gertrude’s real estate agent is clueless about eviction, what box of corn flakes was the real estate license obtained from?
Short of the legal procedure, cutoff the utilities. If the house in question is to be leveled by the state, review the movie “Hush, hush, Sweet Charlotte”. When the bulldozers arrive I imagine sis and the crew will get the message.
It doesn’t sound like eminent domain to me. If it were eminent domain, she would not need a real estate person (except to tell her what the city should pay her).
My guess is that she owes back property taxes. She may then have the choice of selling it and using some of the money received to pay the tax bill, or letting the taxing agency sell it at auction, and getting paid anything the tax agency received above what she owed plus the cost of the auction plus other fees. Perhaps the tax agency would pay her nothing at all, no matter what they got at an auction. She would probably come out a lot better selling it herself.
In any case, lucwarm has the right advice. If she can’t pay an attorney, there are legal aid societies that might be able to help.
As an alternative to eviction, which can be very time-consuming, she may want to have the real estate agent sell the property as a rental property, complete with tenant. This would only work if the sister is actually paying (or willing and able to pay) rent.
Eviction could easily take longer than the taxing agency (if I was right in my earlier assumption) would be willing to wait before auctioning the house themselves.
Doubting Robert is right. Eminent domain would not involve sale to a third party.
BTW, everyone seems to be assuming G’s sister is in the wrong. Not necessarily. For example, Mom may have left the property to G, subject to sis’s right to live in the front house (for life, a period of years or until some other event). In such a scenario, it is G who would be in the wrong.
In other words, G’s rights depend to a large extent on sis’s. If sis has a life estate or tenancy, G can’t just wave that away because she finds it inconvenient. If sis has neither and is just a squatter, eviction is the remedy. Doesn’t usually take that long either. Faster than tax authorities generally move, anyway.
That’s not quite how it works. Before the home can be sold, the seller has to specify that there are no unwanted/undocumented tenants in residence. It’s boilerplate in every mortgage contract I’ve ever seen. I’ll try to dig up some more information later tonight.
PBear is right to say that it makes a big difference how the sister happens to be there in the first place. I had not thought of the rights that might have been granted by a will, but even without that, if the sister has a lease and is paying rent, eviction would be very difficult, indeed, and cutting off the utilities (as someone suggested) would be illegal.
Hey evilhanz. Yes and no. I’m sure the standard form (and you mean, I assume, the standard purchase offer form, not the mortgage form) has the language you describe. But forms aren’t etched in stone. The clause can be x’d through and initialed by both parties. Or a specific rider can, well, override the clause.
Moreover, there are landlords who will take property with eviction risk. Just not so many as who will take without. In other words, it depresses the price but doesn’t (generally) make the property unsaleable.
I have not pried into the matter enough to know how Gertrude acquired the property; all I know about that is that she owns both front and back house outright.
To clarify: Eminent domain doesn’t seem to be the issue here. From what else Gertrude has told me, she is supposedly making improper use of an “addition,” the part of her back house farthest from the street. She suggested the city told her she was wrong to use this extension as living space, which I think IS out of line on the part of the city; she lives alone, is widowed, suffered a stroke a few years ago (her sister-in-law, who lives in another part of the city, referred me to Gertrude to do yard work she can’t do anymore).
I referred Gertrude to an old teacher of mine, a real-estate attorney who teaches part-time at El Camino (I needed his class, Legal Aspects of Real Estate, to complete my qualifications for a paralegal certification); and I also referred her to an attorney I’ve done legal interning for. I also suggested that, since the agent didn’t seem to know what to do, Gertrude go over the agent’s head and contact the realtor directly.
Still doesn’t jibe. Cities don’t make you sell property because of unauthorized-or-illegal improvements. They make you remove the improvements. Nor would sale cure the problem. Frankly, I suspect she may be using that story as a cover because, well, losing your property for non-payment of taxes (the most likely explanation) is embarrassing.
In any event, it sounds like you’ve referred her to some very good resources and I’m going to stop worrying about this now.
“Mother-in-law” units are often illegal, because they violate either zoning (if they’re built right - you can only build one house on a plot) or building codes (if they’re built wrong) or both. This is no reason to sell the property, however–she can just move into the house. If she doesn’t want to move in with her sister-in-law, I can see where she’d have an eviction problem.
I think I haven’t made something clear. Gertrude has lived in the back house, alone, for a long time–apparently since her husband died; I’ve been doing yard work for her since about June 1996. (I also saw a [different] family name written in concrete, in the patio area close to one corner of the garage in the back [the garage is simply part of the eastern, or streetward, section of the back house]–around 1958.)
:o
I spoke to Getrude this evening on the phone. She is not being forced–by the city or any other agency or person–to move out, except by dint of her age and health, apparently; she would prefer to live someplace which is less demanding of her to maintain, especially since her stroke. She had listed the place with a realtor, of her own volition, and her sister’s family provided the only real problem.
Many years ago I knew a family with a title problem brought about by changing times and certain restrictions which, I believe, still remain on land ownership in California.
Two old women I’ll call Lana and Lorraine owned and lived in a house next door to us, in Venice, CA. I didn’t have much contact with them, being a little kid. Their niece and her husband and two daughters lived on the other side of us.
In time Lana and Lorraine died; the niece and her family moved into the house on the other side. But there was a problem: Lana and Lorraine’s will left the house to the niece’s two daughters, both of whom were pre-teens at the time. Near as I can figure, the law in CA was such that, while the niece and her husband (both well past 50 at the time) were nominal owners (if that’s the term; they could be owners ad litem for all I know), the daughters could not legally own property in CA until they reached adulthood; and in order for the terms of the will to be carried out, the niece, her husband, and the girls had to stay in the house until they were old enough to inherit it. To make matters worse, the neighborhood had started to deteriorate; we moved out in December 1959 but the family living in the inherited house stayed there until 1972, presumably when the younger daughter reached adulthood.
Well, that makes more sense.
BTW, since we’re in this deep, why won’t sis move? And does she have a lease?
As someone else mentioned, cutting off utilities can get a landlord in a lot of trouble. And Gertrude might be a landlord, even if she doesn’t know it. For one thing the law might consider her to be a landlord even if she’s not collecting rent. In addition, it’s likely that her family members will remember some kind of oral agreement with Gertrude.
Getrude has apparently scrapped plans to sell the property. She has hired people to refurbish the front house (she and a relative and I pulled almost a carload of abandoned property, including a computer, out of the attic crawl-space!) and apparently will move into the front house herself. What she plans to do with the back house–I have no idea. :rolleyes: