There is typically one hearing and appearance needed if your tenant(s) file an Answer against the lawsuit.  You may represent yourself at any hearing without an attorney if you are in pro per.  We are not attorneys and we can not represent you in court. Should you require an attorney to represent you in court, one of our cooperating attorneys can represent you for a discounted fee on a limited scope representation. You can decide later if you want to hire a cooperating attorney to represent you, once the case becomes contested. Please note, entity owners such as corporations or trusts, require an attorney to be on record, upon filing the complaint. The attorney will bill the client separately after starting eviction services.

You will need to obtain a money judgment and writ for execution.  We can prepare and file for a monetary judgment order of the unpaid rent, holdover, attorneys fees, interest and costs you have incurred during this process.  If the tenant(s)  do not comply with the money judgment you may hire a judgment collection company to assist. Another option, we can assist in preparing and filing a small claims suit.  With a small claims judgment you may recover money on damages caused by tenant(s) such as property damage, stolen items, cleaning fees, and more.

If after the Judgment for Possession and Writ for Possession the tenant(s) are still at the premises you will need to get the Sheriffs involvement.  For an additional fee, we can submit your Writ of Possession for filing and take the Writ of Possession and deliver it to the Sheriff’s Department and pay their fee to evict the tenant(s).  The Sheriffs take about one to two weeks to evict, depending the county and backlog.  Typically within 72 hours (but they have up to 180 days), the local Sheriffs will place a Notice to Evict on the tenant’s front door specifying a date and time when the Sheriffs will return to evict.  Our office will inform the landlord and the landlord will be there on the exact date and time to meet the Sheriffs to change the locks.  If you cannot be present at the time and date of the lockout we can send a representative from our office for an additional fee.  We can also coordinate and hire a locksmith and towing to be present for your lockout if vehicles are left on the premises.

Our base-fee does not include the court’s filing fee, vendor electronic processing fee, process server fee, and the Sheriff’s fee to conduct the lockout, contested fees, and any other outside fees.  The court charges $240* for the filing of the initial lawsuit documents, summons and complaint.

This all depends on if your tenant decides to contest the matter or not. If the tenant does not respond or contest the matter, possession is granted by default. If the tenant does respond, then possession is granted by the judgment at trial.

How many days from the time the eviction case is filed all depends upon the courts and which California County you are in. California went through a series of court closures a few years ago and some counties basically went from fifteen filing courts to only five which has had a huge impact on the time frame of how long an eviction takes.

Generally, it can take between four to six weeks if the eviction is not contested, no answer filed, by the tenant. If the tenant contests the eviction, it can then take between sixty and ninety days.

However, it must be understood that the notice process contributes to the total time the eviction process takes from the time of first serving the notice. In other words, if you serve a tenant a 60 Days Notice to Vacate the time frame for the Unlawful Detainer runs after that 60 days expires.

So how long the eviction process takes is dependent upon when the Unlawful Detainer is actually filed with the court – and depends upon the California County you are in. For example, one week the courts can be backlogged for two weeks. A couple weeks later it’s relatively open. We don’t have control over the court.