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How to Evict a Tenant from Your Rental Property

Do you have a tenant that’s not paying rent? Learn how to evict a tenant from your San Diego rental property.

The most common reason to evict a tenant from your San Diego rental property is nonpayment of rent. You may also be evicting for some other lease violation like the tenant having a pet that’s not allowed. Be careful if you’re evicting for anything other than nonpayment. Winning in court is difficult in those cases. San Diego owners need to follow a few specific steps to successfully evict a tenant.

Serve a Notice

Start by serving a notice to the tenant. We strongly advise you to call an eviction attorney and have one of their process servers serve the notice for you. This is important because getting the notice right is half the battle when you’re doing an eviction.

Judges have specific things they want to see when the eviction makes its way to court. For example, San Diego landlords can only ask for the amount of unpaid rent in the notice, and it must be filled out properly. Your notice needs to document the period that rent wasn’t paid, and instruct tenants on how to pay. Proper service is also important, and there are three main ways to serve this notice:

Personal Service – Go to the property, knock on the door, and if the tenant answers, hand over the notice. This is easy.

Substitute Service – Go to the property, knock on the door, and if someone other than the tenant answers the door, you can serve the notice as long as the person is 18 years or older. You’ll also need to mail this to the tenant.

Post and Mail Service – Go to the property, knock on the door, and if no one answers you can tape it to the door and then mail a copy.

After serving this notice, you’ll need to wait the three days before you can do anything else. Day one is the day after you serve the notice. If there’s a holiday or a weekend, you’ll need to wait until the following business day.

Summons and Complaint

Contact your attorney, and file the Summons and Complaint. The Summons tells the tenants why they are being sued, and the Compliant provides the legal reason for your court action. Wait between five and 15 days, depending on how the notice was served.

Once the notice period is up, the tenants can respond or not respond. If they don’t respond, you win and it cuts your time down. If your tenants do respond, a court date will be scheduled for about 20 days from that time. Should the judge rule in your favor, a writ of possession will be ordered.

Writ of Possession

The judge will order a judgment in your favor, and restitution for the court costs and attorney fees. Five to 14 days later, you’ll get a Writ of Possession. This gives instructions to the sheriff to lock the tenants out of the property. The sheriff will go to the property and notify them that they must be out in five days. If they are not out, they will be forcibly removed.

The total eviction time period is 45 to 60 days. It’s best to try to avoid the official eviction process. Try working with the tenants to avoid court and get them out early. The only people winning in court are the attorneys.

San Diego also has just cause eviction laws that affect when you can evict a tenant. For more information, check out the blogs below!

How the San Diego Just Cause Eviction Ordinance Affects Your Property

AB 1482: Rent Control & Just Cause Eviction in California

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Steve Welty

CEO at Good Life Property Management DRE #01744610

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Tagged local topics Tenant Issues

Hi everyone, Steve Welty here, broker/owner of Good Life Property Management, where we manage single-family homes, condos, and small apartment buildings throughout the Greater San Diego area. Today we’re going to discuss how to evict a tenant from your San Diego rental property. So the most common reason for eviction is non-payment of rent, but you may also be evicting them for another lease violation. Maybe having a pet on the premises and it’s not allowed. Be very careful if you’re evicting for anything other than non-payment of rent because doing so and winning in court can be very difficult. So first step in the eviction process is properly serving a notice to the tenant. I strongly suggest you call a local eviction attorney and have one of their process servers serve the notice for you. The reason is getting the notice right is over half the battle in an eviction. Judges have a very particular procedure they want to see when you serve a notice. For instance, you can only ask for unpaid rent, you have to fill it out properly explaining what the missing rent is for, which period, where they can pay it, who they can pay it to, days and times. And then serving it. Serving it properly is very important. So there’s three main ways you can serve a notice to the tenant. The first is personal service, so you go to the property you knock, the tenant answers, you give them the notice, easy. Second is substituted service. So if you knock and anyone other than the tenant answers, as long as they’re over 18 years of age, you can give them the notice. That’s called substituted service and then you also need to mail them a copy to their residence. Third and usually the most common is post and mail. So you knock on the door nobody comes to the door. You tape it or nail it to the door and then go back to your resident and mail them a copy of the notice. So that’s post and mail. Now you need to wait the three days before you can do anything else. So as you count day one is the day after you serve the notice. And then day two, day three, now if day three falls on a holiday or weekend, you need to wait until the following business day to take further action. So the next step, you’ve waited your time, contact the attorney and they’re going to file a summons and a complaint with the court. So the summons is telling the tenant why they’re being sued and the complaint is the legal reason you have to sue them. So they’re going to have to wait again between 5 and 15 days depending on how the tenant was served. So if they can reach the tenant and give them the notice, it’s 5 days. If they can’t find the tenant and have to do post and mail, then it’s going to be up to 15 days. So at that point, once that notice period is up, the tenant’s either going to respond or not. If they don’t respond, you win, easy. And it cuts the time significantly down. If they do respond, then they’re going to schedule a court date for about 20 days from that time. Then hopefully you win the court case, have an attorney with you, bring all your documentation and the judge will order a judgment, hopefully in favor of you. Can give you restitution for court cost, attorneys fees, unpaid rent during that period. And it will take 5 to 14 days for the court to issue what’s called a writ of possession after you win, which gives the instructions to the sheriff to lock the tenant out. So the sheriff’s going to take another five to fourteen days to go to the property, notify the tenant they need to be out in five days. And then if the tenant’s not out in five days, the sheriff comes back and forcibly removes them. The whole process takes anywhere from forty-five to sixty plus, 75 days, so you’re looking at a good length of time. So it’s always best practice to try to avoid the official eviction process. Work with the tenant, see if you can get them to move out early and agree to avoid in court because the only people that win in court is the attorneys. I hope this helps give some information on how to evict a tenant from your property. If we can help you with anything please let us know and make it a great day!