Does Someone Other Than My Landlord Have the Authority to Serve Notice and Enter

[ybfaluhelp]

My question involves landlord-tenant law in the State of: California

Hi,

This is actually related to my other post about excessive entries into my apartment (for apartment showing). In that post, I was asking whether the property management company has the right to enter my apartment with such frequency as 6 times a week, and under a circumstance when my lease will not expire in another 5 months.

In this post, I want to seek advice on whether the company that has been serving me notice and entering my apartment for showing, actually has the authority to do so.

I signed my lease with property management company A, and I pay my monthly rent to A. However, it appears that the property I am living in will be managed by a different company (B) starting August this year. Company B has, since about 3 weeks ago, been serving me notices to enter, and has been entering my apartment about 5-6 times a week.

I have not received or signed any documents on the change of "Landlordship" to company B for the purposes of my lease. I pay my rent to company A. And as I clarified with company A, I will continue to pay my rent to A for the remainder of my lease.

And when I emailed company A on whether company B has the authority to enter my apartment, A's response is that company B is helping them with unit showing, and apologized for not having formally notified me of this situation.

Can I deny entry to company B on the ground that they, in the absence of any legal document that establishes them as my Landlord, do not have the authority to serve me notice to enter, and let alone the right to enter?

Thank you.

[SChinFChin]

Normally, under rental arrangments via PM's (property management companys), although the PM prepares, issues, and signs the lease under the authority of the LL, the lease is still with the LL, who did not change. And in cases where there is a sale of the property, a lease is assigned to the new LL, and the new LL enjoys the very same rights as the "seller landlord" via the assignment.

The lease is between you and the LL.

If 6 appointments per week is all you can tolerate, I would work something out with the PM or LL that you'll pay some penalty so you can catch some sleep. I can tell you as a LL, when I place an ad in the paper, I generally get 30 to 40 calls for one of my units, with around 20 people coming to take a look.

So if I were to limit the showing to 6 per week, what I would wind up doing is after the 6th call, tell the next 20 to 30 people that we reached the limit for the week. And even though I advertise it as "for rent by owner", local rental agents also call to bring clients over, a very active market for me, and when I limited the showings to 2 hours per week as I mentioned in the other post, they told me to either get back to them when the tenant leaves, or more sarcastically, "when I get serious".

Maybe your PM company would do it, you can ask, but personally, at 6 showing a week, where I am at least, I would spend a lot of time and money on advertising and answering phones to have people call me only to be told they can't come. Simpy put, it's a big WASTE, especially if newspaper ads run over $100 every week I do it. For these reasons I wouldn't do it, and I would just charge the appropriate penalty when you leave as I was impeded from showing the place.

Think about it, to avoid an argument with you, I wind up arguing to 30 to 40 people everyweek who calls me. It's like putting an ad in the paper to sell something where you really got nothing to sell.

BTW, from your other post, you mentioned your objection to weekends. In my case, a lot of people called me when I advertised again on the unit that I was only showing 2 hours a week, weeknights, and most people tell me they plan a day or two on the weekend to see apartments, and reasons for not being able to come range all the way from "things are very busy at my office weeknights", to "I'm not going to get a babysitter on Thursday night just to see your place". Also people tend to want to make a decision after seeing several apartments, and they usually are not going to wait to the following week just to see one more place, mine, and then decide.

I was curious as to why my Thursday night showing were so poor, as it turns out, 95% of the people looking spend a day or two on the weekends doing it, not on weekday nights.