Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Former condo owner retains keys & parking space

The prior owner must vacate upon a closing, and subsequently is a trespasser. As a practical matter, however, this doesn't look to me like a big deal in terms of financial damage to you, although it probably seems like an affront to your rights as owner.

Further, I don't see the real estate people who handled the transaction as necessarily resonsible or liable to you, although possibly they might be.

The practical thing to do here is to contact the seller and demand that the trespassing vehicle be removed within, say, 14 days, Tell her that if it isn't, you'll repaint it in a color of your own choosing, using a broom for a brush. Don't really do that, of course. Just try to scare or shame her out of there. She probably assumed that no one would care, maybe that no one would notice.

You are right and she is wrong, but this is not the kind of dispute that should ever find its way into the courts.

You are also entitled to change the locks, and I would do so if necessary to protect property, but a simple request for return of the access tools might be successful, and if so would be a much better approach. Cool it, man!