This is the time of year when I sum up big legal milestones in real estate. Unsurprisingly, COVID-19 was the driving force for emergency regulation in 2020 and most of the new law was due to the pandemic. In reviewing the real estate legal landscape in California for 2020, it’s not surprising that I would dub it The Year of the Lease.

Residential Leasing:

The big law of 2019 was AB1482 (the California Tenant Protection Act of 2019) and the big law of 2020 was AB3088, the COVID-19 Tenant Relief Act of 2020, followed closely by Prop 19 and SB1079. Both AB1482 and AB3088 were enacted to protect California’s residential tenants.

Continuing the trend in California caselaw, an appellate court concluded that no, the trustee does not have duties beyond the deed of trust itself and the governing statutes.

California property developer citrus El Dorado LLC owed its lenders over $20 million in late 2014. Unsurprisingly, its lender Stearns Bank instructed the trustee, Chicago Title Company, to conduct a nonjudicial foreclosure sale of the real property secured by the deed of trust.

We are still seeing the effects of the subprime meltdown ripple through the appellate courts. In the case of Taniguchi v. Restoration Homes, what appears on first blush to be a straight forward analysis that under California law borrowers can stop a foreclosure sale by reinstating the loan had a twist.

The Taniguchis own a home in San Mateo County and in 2006, they borrowed $510k. They missed 4 loan payments in 2013, and normally to cure the default with the lender, the borrowers would simply need to reinstate the 4 missed payments and late charges under the promissory note.  Here's the twist back in 2009, the Taniguchis entered into a loan modification that adjusted the principal amount, reduced the interest rate and monthly payments, and deferred until the maturity of the approximately $116k (including accrued and unpaid interest and principal, fees, and foreclosure expenses).

California real estate brokers are required to have a written contract with their clients to list a property for sale. A real estate commission is usually a percentage of the transaction, and with multi-million dollar San Francisco Bay area real estate values, the commission is often five or six figures.

In California, real estate often has multiple owners due to investment structure or inheritance of family property.

Co-owners of California real estate can hold title to the property as joint tenants or as tenant-in-common.  These two types of ownership have different legal ramifications and tax treatment.  However, under the law, each co-owner has equal rights to the property regardless of co-ownership percentage.

After the subprime meltdown, California enacted the Homeowner’s Bill of rights (HBOR) to amend the non-judicial foreclosure processes. Among the changes were to bar “dual-tracking” and require a 30 day pre-foreclosure communication period. Those changes sunset in 2019. SB818 reinstates certain provisions of the HBOR and Governor Jerry Brown signed the bill a few weeks ago. Most of the bills signed will go into effect Jan. 1, 2019. [https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB818]