Maybe. When an owner serves a termination notice pursuant to the owner move-in eviction provision under the San Francisco Rent Ordinance, the termination notice is a sixty-day notice that requires the tenants to vacate on or before the end of the sixtieth day. After that deadline, the tenancy has been terminated, the tenants are no longer legal occupants, and are considered holdover tenants. Just because they are unlawful occupants, however, they still have a legal right to possession until that right is either surrendered voluntarily by the tenants or terminated by court order.
The San Francisco Rent Ordinance requires a landlord to rescind an owner move-in eviction notice if a comparable unit becomes vacant and available prior to a landlord recovering possession. If the building containing the owner move-in unit also contained a comparable unit, and that comparable unit became both vacant and available prior to the landlord recovering possession, the notice must be rescinded. This requirement could even be interpreted so broadly to require a landlord to rescind the owner move-in notice not only while a landlord was litigating an unlawful detainer action for possession based on the owner move-in, but even after a landlord received judgment in their favor and was merely waiting for the sheriff to execute the writ of possession!
The spirit behind the rule requiring rescission of the notice of termination is that if a comparable unit did become vacant and available prior to the landlord recovering possession, the landlord should be required to move into that unit rather then displacing a tenant. The Rent Ordinance also places requirements on a landlord if a non-comparable unit becomes available while an owner move-in eviction is pending, however that obligation only requires the landlord to offer for rent the non-comparable unit to the tenants being displaced.
It is not uncommon for a landlord endeavoring to recover possession pursuant to an owner move-in notice to be informed that tenants in another unit in the same building will be vacating, or already have vacated, while the owner move-in eviction is pending. If this were the case, the law surrounding comparable and non-comparable units is complex, as is the law surrounding vacant versus vacant and available units. If you are considering performing an owner move-in or relative move-in eviction on a San Francisco property, it is advisable to speak to an experienced real estate attorney who handles owner move-in and relative move-in evictions on a regular basis.
If you are curious about learning more about performing an owner move-in eviction or relative move-in eviction for a San Francisco property you own or are looking to purchase, it is advised that you contact an experienced San Francisco Real Estate attorney who represents property owners and landlords in San Francisco.
San Francisco Owner Move-In Eviction and Relative Move-In Eviction information provided by San Francisco Real Estate attorney Mark Chernev.
Mark B. Chernev, Zacks, Freedman & Patterson, PC, 601 Montgomery Street, Suite 400, San Francisco, CA 94111 : 415 – 956 – 8100