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I have a landlord who does the yardwork for our rental home. Does he need to give 24 hours notice before showing up to do yardwork? We rent a single family home on a city lot. There is also a separate garage on the alley behind the house we are renting that he uses to store tools. Does he need to give notice to access his garage? It does not specify in the lease anything about the separate garage that he uses. The lease does say that the landlord will take care of the yardwork. Landlord usually comes by once a month to do yardwork on Friday or Saturday. I know CA law says landlord must give 24hrs notice to enter rental unit for maintenance, but I don't know if that applys to yard. Also I don't know how the situation with the separate garage should be handled. He wants us to sign a new lease and I don't want to sign if these issues aren't clarified. Thanks
Could you just ASK him to give you 24 hours' notice and to write that into the lease? Or just talk to him about your concerns? (It's not clear from your post what those concerns ARE. Does he wake you up by doing yard work early in the morning? Does he want to come into the house, e.g. to use the bathroom, and you feel like that is violating your privacy? Does his doing yard work just feel intrusive?)
I will likely be renting out my house in a few months, and I will likely have a provision in the lease about stopping by once a month to do landscaping, check on the furnace, or whatever. Part of it is that I will just want to keep an eye on my property, but I will try to do it in such a way as to violate their privacy as little as possible. Can you talk to your landlord about your concerns?
landlord who does the yardwork for our rental home.
Does he need to give 24 hours notice before showing up to do yardwork?
NO.
There is also a separate garage ... that he uses to store tools.
Does he need to give notice to access his garage?
NO
Only the house qualifies for the 24hr notice thing.
The need for a tool or the time to do yardwork is rarely something people rigidly schedule.
That said... if he is coming around outside of normal business or work hours then he is pushing it.
Be grateful your LL takes care of the yard and it's not part of your lease agreement! But, seriously, even if you rent a home which is under a yard maintenance agreement with an outside contractor, there's really no guarantee that the crew is going to show up on the same day of every month. If it's the scheduling of his visits that takes you by surprise then sit down and talk with him to see if you can come to an agreement about some semblance of a routine and maybe if you ask he will indeed give you 24 hours notice.
What's the problem with him entering the storage garage? Since it's located "on the alley behind the house" and it's separate from the property which your lease agreement covers, I'm a bit lost there.
Anyway, I would have a chat with him first and see what happens before even debating whether or not to sign a new lease if these minor issues aren't addressed in it. Hope it works out for you.
You should be grateful that your LL shows up and cares for the property.
You shouldn't be mandating that he gives you notice before he comes to clean-up and make your living structure beautiful, you should be asking whether its appropriate to offer him a cold beer after he is done.
What exactly is your problem with this? I honestly don't get it.
My personal opinion, which has no relation to CA law, is that if the lease says the LL is going to do the yard maintenance, they have no obligation to give you notice to enter the yard or an exterior shed/garage to do said maintenance.
Additionally, my personal opinion is that even if the lease doesn't say that the LL is doing the yard maintenance, the LL still doesn't have to give notice to be on the premises, as long as they do not want access into the house.
I would ask for it to be specified in any new lease whether or not you have the right to the shed/garage or whether it is not included in the lease.
You can ask for the LL to give notice before coming over, but as a landlord, if I was going over every 10 days to 2 weeks, I would not agree to be giving 24 hour notice every time, and yard work is weather sensitive, so I wouldn't agree to a specific schedule. If it rains one day, that bumps everyone back. If you have a super wet spring, like we did this year, everyone gets squeezed in as needed and as weather permits. No advance scheduling is possible.
Apartments don't give 24 hours notice when they work on the yard. A yard isn't a private space. The garage is iffy - as a landlord I wouldn't want to access it if there was tenant property in there without the tenant present, and I'd give notice.
I'm glad you are thinking about this now before signing on for another year since it is important to you.
Clarifying is a good thing... helps to avoid misunderstandings down the road.
I'm responsible for the landscape for many of my rentals... I have it in my lease that landscape maintenance will occur at the Landlord discretion, during daylight hours, Monday through Saturday... so you won't see me or someone working for me on Sunday or working in the dark...
I have one tenant now that does an outstanding job taking care of the premise, so much so... I lowered his rent... He moved from a home and had all the tools... mower, edger, trimmers, brooms, rake, etc...
Rule number one is do not sign anything you don't agree with... much better to relocate and avoid problems.
As to the garage... I have a few alley single car detached garages the are specifically not included in the lease, they have their own electric meter or get power from the house meter that I pay for... my agreement clearly states that I require 24 hour access, 7 days a week and tenant shall not block access.
One time this caused a problem... the tenant got married and her husband wanted the garage for his car and made a big deal about it... even called the city parking enforcement which didn't have an issue since the home had two off street spaces not including the ally garage.
My reply to the couple was to ask if they were planning to move...
I have a landlord who does the yardwork for our rental home. Does he need to give 24 hours notice before showing up to do yardwork? We rent a single family home on a city lot. There is also a separate garage on the alley behind the house we are renting that he uses to store tools. Does he need to give notice to access his garage? It does not specify in the lease anything about the separate garage that he uses. The lease does say that the landlord will take care of the yardwork. Landlord usually comes by once a month to do yardwork on Friday or Saturday. I know CA law says landlord must give 24hrs notice to enter rental unit for maintenance, but I don't know if that applys to yard. Also I don't know how the situation with the separate garage should be handled. He wants us to sign a new lease and I don't want to sign if these issues aren't clarified. Thanks
What's the issue? Didn't you know all this when you signed your lease? Maybe you can negotiate doing your own yardwork in the future. Is your LL
violating your privacy in some way that you were not aware of? Is he 'peeping"? Some LL are known to use the excuse of 'doing yardwork' in order to have access to property w/out having to give any sort of notice.
Been there and it's quite intrusive.
Koale
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As others have said, generally the law only applies to the inside premises. It's hard for small landlords to think of these sort of things, but when you leased he should have explained his situation to you and there should have been a special lease clause you both agree to.
Something like, " Separate garage on prop is not part of the rental and may be accessed by LL or third party at any time." "Landlord or LL's agent to provide yard care at time selected by LL per government codes."
The main thing is to communicate. If having the LL on the property is an issue for you (and in a SFH it would be) then your option is to talk to him about an alternative and perhaps additional deposit if you fail to keep up the yard, or move. It's hard to harness the horse after it's out of the barn.
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I don't understand...
