In these difficult economic times, as more and more people are forced to walk away from their homes and lease a home or apartment until the economy turns around, it becomes important again to know some of the rules regarding leases in California.

If you live in any of the cities in the Coachella Valley including Indian Wells, Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Cathedral City, Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree, Rancho Mirage, Desert Hot Springs, Twentynine Palms, Thermal, Indio, Coachella, La Quinta or in Orange County, San Diego or the Inland Empire in the cities of La Jolla, Del Mar, Encinitas, Carlsbad, Oceanside, San Marcos, Vista and Escondido, Huntington Beach, Westminster, Buena Park, Anaheim, Santa Ana, Costa Mesa, Irvine, Newport Beach, Corona del Mar, Laguna Beach, San Clemente, San Juan Capistrano, Yorba Linda, Fullerton, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Riverside, San Bernardino, or Temecula and if you ever lease a home, here is some basic legal information about leases. 

The Statute of Frauds in California requires that a lease for more than a year must be in writing. Consequently, an oral agreement for a rental period of a year or less is still valid where the parties intended to create such a lease.

Here’s the tricky part to all of this. If the parties verbally agree to a year’s lease before the lease goes into effect, the oral agreement is invalid as the lease will expire more than a year after the lease was made.

The minimum legal components of a lease are a statement of the parties, a description of the property, the duration of the lease, the amount of the rental, and the time and manner of the rental payment.

Leases usually require a great more than just those terms however. What extra terms are included are up to the parties. The failure to contain other elements does not cause the lease to be invalid. However, if the tenant is required to waive his legal rights as to security deposits, litigation, notices of hearings, suing the landlord or a landlord entering the premises, such waivers are generally void and can be attacked as contrary to public policy.

Security deposits are a matter of real estate regulation. Landlords of residential (as opposed to commercial) property are limited to requiring a security deposit of two month’s rent for unfurnished property and three month’s rent for furnished property.

A landlord can increase the security deposit by one-half a month’s rent for a waterbed, but when was the last time anyone saw a waterbed?A landlord can also require that the first month’s rent be paid in advance. If the lease states that late charges will be imposed for late payment of the rent, late charges are legal. Courts have held 1 ½ percent to be legal and 20 percent to be excessive.

Landlord-tenant law is in many respects far more complex than basic contract law. The handbooks on landlord and tenant law are extensive and the statutory regulations are many.

On top of that, the rules regarding leases differ dramatically between residential and commercial leases.

When seeking the advice of an attorney regarding a commercial lease, it is helpful to hire an attorney who is also a commercial real estate broker or Realtor as such an attorney may also have additional experience in the practical aspects of commercial real estate leases.

It doesn’t matter whether you live in Del Mar, California, Palmdale, CA, Corona, Escondido, Orange, Fullerton, Costa Mesa, Victorville, Carlsbad, Temecula, Murrieta, Mission Viejo, El Cajon, Vista, Westminster, Santa Monica, Santa Barbara, Hesperia, Newport Beach, Buena Park, Indio, Coachella, Rancho Mirage, Indian Wells, La Quinta, San Diego, Orange County, Palm Springs, Corona del Mar, Laguna Beach, Palm Desert, Long Beach, Santa Ana, Anaheim, Riverside, Chula Vista, Irvine, San Bernardino, Huntington Beach, Fontana, Moreno Valley, Oceanside, Rancho Cucamonga, Ontario, or Garden Grove, you don’t need to be a California mortgage attorney or a CA real estate lawyer to know that it’s next to impossible to sell your house in California and nearly as difficult to obtain a loan to buy another.

After months of investigation, I finally uncovered the person responsible for the Mortgage Crisis that has spread from California to Florida and from there to the rest of the country and now around the world.

Like investigating the cause of a fire, you can usually find the exact place where the fire started and from the evidence that is left, find the person who started it.In this case it wasn’t who you would expect.

It wasn’t someone named Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac who took on huge amounts of mortgage risk because it was pushed into it by Congress. It wasn’t just one bank executive or investment institution. It wasn’t just one congressman, or Secretary of this or that.It was someone who feels really bad about what he did. It was Steve.

Because of attorney confidentiality I’ll not state his last name. But Steve has admitted his fault and has already spoken to the authorities. Actually, the authorities contacted him and Steve is in hiding.

“I feel like a heel,” Steve said. “Everything was going so well in America. Home prices were going up and up. The price of oil was still relatively cheap. I just wanted part of the American dream.”

“So what exactly did you do, Steve?” I asked.

“I fudged,” Steve said.

“You mean you lied?” I asked.

Steve held his head in shame. “When I applied for a home loan I lied about how many times I’d been married.

“I laughed. “Did you lie about anything else?” I asked.

Steve nodded. “My income.”

“How much did you say you were making?” I asked.

“Five million,” Steve said. “A month,”

I must have looked shocked.

“I didn’t know they would believe me,” Steve said.

“How much were you making a month?” I asked.

“I wasn’t working,” Steve said.

“You didn’t just lie, you lied like someone on Wall Street,” I said.

“That’s where I got the idea,” Steve said.

“Didn’t the bank check your finances?” I asked.

Steve shook his head. “When I told them I was buying a 10 million dollar home, you should have seen everyone’s eyes light up with the thought of their commissions and fees from the sale and the loan.”

“I can imagine,” I said. “Did you buy the home?”

Steve nodded. “Got it on sale.”

“You turned it back over to the bank, right?” I asked.

“I wish,” Steve said. “But when it started to go up in value, I borrowed against it and bought five more just like it.”

“Criminey,” I said. “What happened next?”

“I was the toast of the banking world,” Steve said. “What would you do?”

“In hindsight?” I asked. “I would have unloaded them.”

“Not good old me,” Steve said. “The worse the financial condition became, the more the bank needed me so I borrowed some more. The way the bank figured it, I was good for it. They didn’t have any other customers with that much in loans. Who better to give money to?”

“You caused your bank to fail, didn’t you?” I said.

Steve nodded.  “They went under just like the Titanic,” Steve said. “Then their parent banking corporation in Florida flipped over on their back like a dead fish, then the bank in England that bought up all their mortgage backed securities got fried as well.”

“What happened to your mortgages,” I asked.

“Beats me,” Steve said. “Last I heard, three foreign banks and the U.S. Treasury own most of the paper from their various bailouts.”

Today, Steve apparently moves around a lot. Costa Rica one day, Belize another. Steve’s last e-mail said he was writing a book called, “I did it. Blame me.”

I told Steve, not to bother. Even if he was the last card added to a house of cards that our leaders in Washington D.C. put up, right now there’s plenty of blame to go around.