Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in California

I rent my single house in San Jose to Song to do Airbnb business. He hadn’t paid the rent more than half a year, and both the lease contract and the business license from city of San Jose expired on 12/31/2021. But Song still list my property on Airbnb to get rent. I emailed Airbnb many times informed them that this is illegal, they should verify the host’s rights to do business through their platform, but didn’t work. I’m hiring attorney to do the eviction now but it will take long time to process.

In this case, can I just go ahead to take off the lock of the front door and rooms when it’s vacant?


Asked on 2/08/22, 3:00 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys

If your tenant is not living there, you should go through the notice of abandonment process rather than bothering with eviction. It is relatively inexpensive, much quicker than eviction, and if it doesn't work you still have the eviction option. Any qualified landlord/tenant attorney should know how to do it. However, until you have legal right to repossess the property either by abandonment or eviction, you must not take any steps that make the property legally uninhabitable, such as removing locks, or any steps to lock out the tenant. That can make you lose the eviction case and be sued by the tenant.

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Answered on 2/09/22, 8:01 am


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