Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: when renting a house

It should be reasonable notice, usually construed to be 24 hours, unless it's an emergency.

Re: when renting a house

A landlord can enter the rented or leased premises for any of several valid reasons, including planning for or making repairs, showing the property to buyers or prospective tenants, safety inspections, and the like.

Reasonable prior notice to the tenant is required. By statute, 24 hours' prior written notice is "presumed" to be reasonable. However, this presumption, like all true legal presumptions, is rebuttable. In other words, a longer or shorter notice period can be shown to have been reasonable under the circumstances.

This protects the landlord if he has to enter when he smells methamphetamine cooking (to give an extreme example); it also protects the tenant under circumstances where the landlord knows the tenant won't have received the notice because the tenant is, known to the landlord, off on a three-day weekend trip.