Do you know how long it takes to evict a tenant in California? You can see the original blog post by clicking here!
http://www.fastevictionservice.com/bl...

Hi, welcome to another tips for landlords and property managers video brought to you by fast evict.com law group! On today’s episode, we will talk about how long it takes to evict a tenant in California, the tactics tenants deploy to purposefully delay the eviction process and give you additional tips to avoid lengthy and costly delays on your end.

The first thing to consider when trying to figure out how long it typically takes to evict a tenant in California is that there really is a lot of different factors that weigh in on the overall process. Some factors include what kind of notice was served to the tenant? Was the notice properly served? Where in California is this property located? How long has the tenant lived at the property? Is the property under a rent control ordinance? Does the tenant know how to delay your case?
If you’d like a more accurate estimate of how long your case could take, please contact us and we’ll gladly assist you.

With that said, it takes an average of 45 days to evict a tenant in California for an uncontested eviction if everything is done correctly. An uncontested eviction means the tenant does not show up to court to fight the eviction. On average, a contested eviction in California can take anywhere up to 75 days.

An eviction case begins once the initial notice has expired. If it is a 3 day notice to pay rent or quit, you can start the process on the fourth day by filing an unlawful detainer in a court of law. So depending on what kind of notice was served, you can then start your eviction. Pay special attention to detail in the serving of the notice since this is one of the main reasons why cases get thrown out in court. Make sure you prepare the correct notice and you serve it correctly.

So once the unlawful detainer is filed in court, the defendants must then be served a copy of the lawsuit. There are 3 ways you can serve a tenant, which are personal service, substitute service or posting service. The last two can only be done after 3 failed personal service attempts and you must obtain a posting order from the court.

The tenant will then have 5 business days to file a response to the lawsuit if it was personally served or 15 business days if it was sub served or a posting order was obtained.

If the tenant decides to fight the case, then a trial date must be requested and depending on the congestion of each court, the clerk schedules it between 10 and 20 days of the date of request.

Other time factors to consider is the discovery process, which is a time period where the landlord’s attorney requests the defendants to produce documents or answer questions to determine if the defendant has factual support for their defense.

If the defendant does not file a response, then a request for entry of default or default judgment could be filed and the clerk will process that as soon as the court’s work load allows.

Once you obtain your judgment either after trial or default, the judge signs it and it is processed by the clerk of the court.

The next step is to file for a writ of possession. The writ is what the county sheriff’s department needs to post on the rental property to inform the occupants of the date and time of lockout. This process takes at least 20 days from the date you receive the judgment.

Once the sheriff shows up and performs the lockout, the eviction process is now complete unless your tenant has left behind valuable property behind. If this is the case, please watch our video on “What to do if tenant leaves personal property behind”.

If only every case was as easy and smooth as the process we just went through. The truth is though; that a lot of tenants will do just about anything they can to delay the eviction process. Some of these tactics include:

• Filing demurrers, motions to strike and other pretrial motions when they have no case.

• Tenants file bogus bankruptcy or file to remove the case to federal court.

• File for more time to respond to the unlawful detainer which could add 30 additional days.

As you can see, the question “How long does it take to evict a tenant in California” isn’t as easy to answer as we wish it were. The only thing we can assure you, though, is that having a highly trained and experienced eviction attorney such as Fast Evict.com Law Group on your side during this process can dramatically shorten the time it takes to evict a tenant.

Thanks for watching, please subscribe, share and let us know your thoughts in the comments below! My name is Cesar, I’ll see you on the next one.