California’s eviction process has become a legal obstacle course for property owners. Even minor errors can derail a case and allow tenants to remain in place without paying rent.
According to Niv Davidovich, Managing Partner at Davidovich Stone Law Group, enforcing lease agreements now requires landlords to meet a growing list of technical requirements. Meanwhile, a single landlord misstep can stop the entire process.
“It’s like going through the American Ninja Warrior course,” Davidovich says. “For a tenant, all he has to do is throw one banana peel and can win the case. But for the landlord, you have to get from the beginning to the end, you can’t make one slip.”
His analogy reflects a growing imbalance in California’s landlord-tenant laws. Over the past several years, California has added procedural protections to an already complex system, making the eviction process slower and riskier for property owners. Davidovich’s firm handles evictions across commercial, residential, healthcare, office, and retail properties. The firm now sees regulatory changes every few weeks, each introducing new compliance rules that can invalidate an entire case if missed.
Regulations Keep Changing Fast
Regulatory change has accelerated to the point where even experienced property managers and owners struggle to keep up, even with legal counsel. Davidovich says his team spends much of its time educating clients on new requirements that emerge faster than the industry can adapt to.
“As soon as we figure out how to manage a rule, they’ll pass a new rule,” he says. The firm regularly receives calls from clients confused about recent changes and what those changes mean for enforcing leases or removing nonpaying tenants.
A recent example highlights the technical complexity. California now requires landlords to formally notify tenants of their right to legal counsel before starting eviction proceedings. If a landlord fails to provide this notice, the eviction cannot proceed. The landlord must restart the process once the notice is properly served. Many property managers are still unaware of this requirement.
“If you don’t give them that notice, you can’t evict them. Gotta start all over again. That’s a fairly new rule, so a lot of managers and owners don’t know it,” Davidovich says.
This is only one of many steps where a single oversight can void the entire process. Davidovich says his firm uses extensive compliance checklists before filing any eviction, a process many owners find burdensome.
“The owners get frustrated when we start asking them, ‘Did you do this? Did you do this? Did you do this?’” he says. “They’re like, we don’t want to go through all of this effort every single time we do an eviction.”
Skipping these checks carries significant risk. A single missed step can result in dismissal, forcing the landlord to restart while the tenant remains in the property rent-free.
“You’re either getting frustrated here or getting frustrated there,” Davidovich says, describing the choice between up-front compliance work and the risk of losing the case on a technicality.
Some Counties Deter Investment
The regulatory burden is not uniform across California. Some areas have adopted rules so stringent that they have effectively discouraged property investment.
Unincorporated Los Angeles County stands out, where local ordinances have made it nearly impossible for landlords to enforce leases in a timely or cost-effective way.
To understand how the rules stack, it helps to start with the City of Los Angeles. Under city rules, landlords cannot file for eviction until a tenant owes one month of fair market rent. That figure is set by federal guidelines based on bedroom count and location, not the actual rent in the lease.
Davidovich offers a specific example. If the fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $2,500, but a rent-controlled tenant pays only $1,000 per month, the tenant would need to accumulate $2,500 in unpaid rent before the landlord could begin eviction proceedings. At $1,000 per month, that equals nearly three months of missed payments before the threshold is reached.
Unincorporated Los Angeles County then doubled that requirement, raising the threshold to two months of fair market rent. Using the same example, that tenant would need to accumulate $5,000 in unpaid rent before the landlord could begin eviction proceedings. At $1,000 per month, that equals five months of missed payments.
“That’s five months of rent you’ll never see. The tenants know it, the landlords know it, the government knows it. It’s essentially a giveaway, and you have to sit there and do nothing,” Davidovich says.
He argues that these rules make property investment in unincorporated Los Angeles County financially irrational.
“If I’m an investor, why in the world would I buy a building in unincorporated LA County? You’d kind of have to be an idiot,” he says.
Meanwhile, jurisdictions outside Los Angeles County and the Bay Area, such as San Bernardino, Orange, and Ventura Counties, have fewer local restrictions. State-level tenant protections still apply, but these areas lack the most restrictive ordinances and offer more favorable courts. Free legal counsel for tenants, which can significantly extend case timelines, is also not available in these jurisdictions.
“It’s a different world, different planet,” Davidovich says.
Landlords Need Integrated Legal Help
In response to this changing legal landscape, Davidovich’s firm now offers legal services that integrate eviction work with related areas, including real estate disputes, construction matters, and administrative law. This approach allows clients to receive advice that accounts for how decisions in one area can affect risk and outcomes in another.
Many property owners still use separate attorneys for evictions, general landlord-tenant matters, real estate transactions, employment issues, and administrative hearings. Davidovich believes this fragmented approach leads to higher costs, inconsistent strategy, and advice that does not reflect the client’s broader exposure.
“If you have all these different people, and they’re focused on their own area, and they’re not talking to each other, you’re not going to get the best results. You’re not going to get the most economic information, you’re not going to get the most economical service, and you’re not going to get a holistic experience,” he says.
He emphasizes the need to make economic, business, and strategic decisions, not purely legal ones. That distinction has become critical in an environment where legal compliance and business goals often diverge.
For property owners navigating California’s eviction system, the challenge is no longer just knowing current law. It also means anticipating how fast-changing regulations will affect pending and future cases. Davidovich says his clients are increasingly frustrated by the compliance burden, but those who shortcut the process face case dismissal and prolonged tenant occupancy without rent.
The result is a system where landlords must follow every procedural step correctly, while tenants can prevail with a single landlord error. This dynamic is pushing investment out of the state’s most regulated markets.
New regulations and local ordinances are likely to deepen this divide. Landlords who fail to adapt risk financial losses and longer vacancy periods, while investors are already directing capital toward less restrictive counties. In California’s most regulated areas, these trends signal a future where rental housing supply may shrink as compliance costs drive owners elsewhere.
