Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Trespassing Landlord

A written contract, including a lease, can be modified or terminated by oral agreement, but the ability to prove such an agreement is usually a practical limitation on a party's ability to rely upon the oral modification or termination in court. Unless you have impartial witnesses, your case is rather weak.

Next, your actions on the date to return the property are inconsistent. In order to preserve your argument that the lease was terminated as of that day by oral agreement, you should have been completely moved out on or before that date and should have handed over the keys and said goodbye.

I'm not at all sure that ther landlord is on solid legal ground, either; if the landlord is treating the lease as still in effect and that you are behind on rent, his proper action is to give you a 30-day notice to pay rent.

The landlord has very limited rights to be in your unit, and is required to give reasonable notice, usually 24 hours, unless there is a bona fide emergency.

I don't know what you mean by "excepts a letter of intent......." This seems to be a spelling mistake or ???? Showing actions of willingness to release you from your lease would, to be sure, be good evidence to support your contention of an oral modification of the lease.

Does your lease contain an arbitration provision? How about a mediation provision? Either of these might make enforcing your otherwise dubious rights a little cheaper and easier.

I think your main problems are cost of litigating your dispute, even if you are in the right, and the difficulty of establishing an oral modification of a written lease.

A practical solution is to negotiate a graceful exit with the landlord, recognizing that you may have the moral high ground but have made a few tactical mistakes such as failure to vacate on the day your oral agreement said you would.