Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: landlord selling building - tenant rights

When one owner/landlord sells a building, other than by a forced foreclosure sale, nothing at all happens to the tenants' leases. The new owner takes the building "subject to" the existing leases. Once in a while, the leases will contain a termination-upon-sale clause, but that is unusual. So, what usually happens is you just have a different landlord for the balance of your lease.

Of course, if you are there on a month-to-month, the new landlord doesn't have to wait very long for your "lease" to run out, and the usual notice provisions would apply, either 30 or 60 days depending on how long you've been a tenant.

As you can imagine, when corporate giant X buys a 300-unit apartment building from corporate giant Y, X would prefer to have the building full and remain full; they're looking for income, and in fact the basic principles of real-estate law give the tenants the right to stay in place, undisturbed by the ownership change, for the remaining term of their leases. The same is true for sales of single-family leased houses.

So, the answer to your question depends upon whether you have an unexpired lease term remaining, and if you were month-to-month, how long you've lived there.

One other note is that there are provisions of the Civil Code that protect your deposit, if any; the old owner has to return it to you so you can then give it to the new owner for safekeeping, or the new owner must give you notice that he assumes responsibility for refunding your deposit.