We thank those of you in the rental housing community, our colleagues, referral partners, and real estate professionals for your continued engagement. Here’s what is top of mind.

Tenants facing eviction get extra time to respond to unlawful detainer actions with a full ten days to answer.

Under current law, renters have five days to chime in when they are served an eviction notice but they have bought more time. Changes to the law will not only extend the eviction timeline.

Housing providers will also have to demonstrate that they have served proper notice to the outgoing tenant. 

Rest assured that tenants’ attorneys ordinarily adept at finding procedural mistakes in notices will soon have even more errors to spot.

Smile. The unit’s before-and-after condition will be on camera. 

A new law will require landlords to photograph the rent unit immediately before a tenant moves in, at the end of the tenancy, and also before and after any necessary repairs or cleaning. 

We have always been sticklers for photos and documentation, so this law codifies what we already recommend housing providers do. The concern we have, though, is that landlords will be burdened by a new set of procedural requirements.

Time is flying by. It seems like yesterday we were alerting rental housing providers to new laws going into effect in 2024, but now we set our eyes on 2025. Our paramount focus, though, is the November election.

On the eve of this exercise we call democracy, there are dire concerns that Proposition 33, dubbed the Justice for Renter Act, will pass in November. If so, it will upend the rental housing industry.

The bad news is that pollsters say that the rental housing industry is losing the battle to win over the hearts and minds of voters. The political winds are against us.

How many rent-burdened voters show up to vote is yet to be determined. Anyone logical will vote against Proposition 33, but the late Zig Ziglar, a renowned sales trainer, said that people buy on emotion and then justify it with logic.

Tenants who scream that the rent is too damn high will vote on emotion and may have no interest in hearing out the logical reasons why the ballot measure is to their detriment. But will their voice be heard? 

A swath of tenants have no inkling of what Proposition 33 is and polls do not lift somebody off the ground and drag them to the ballot box. We trust that our informed and sophisticated bunch of followers, however, understand the consequences of the measure and will do their civic duty to vote it down. In our view, this will come down to voter turnout.

Dedicated to your real estate success in any regulatory regime,

This subject matter engenders many questions. Email daniel@bornstein.law.