Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in California
we have lived in a rental for about 4 1/2 years now. we had a lease signed for 1 year after that expired the owners were going to bring a lease over to sign for another year, but they never brought it. we have been paying rent every month from then on. In November they sent us a letter saying there sone lost his house and they would need us to move by 1/31/12 so he could move in...do we have any rights. even though we didn't have a signed agreement anymore, we have lived there for all this time assuming we just extended our year lease every year.
1 Answer from Attorneys
In rent controlled jurisdictions you might have rights, but not in Folsom. Unless the lease contained provisions that it automatically renewed if not cancelled (a highly unusual, and possibly illegal provision in a residential lease), what happened when your lease expired was you became a "tenant at will" which is a fancy name for a month-to-month tenant. That means that either party can terminate the lease on 30-days notice if the tenancy has been for less than a year, and on 30-days notice by the tenant or 60-days notice by the landlord if the tenancy has lasted over a year. So if they gave their notice on or before 11/13/11, the notice was valid and you are in unlawful occupancy as of yesterday.
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