Our topic today is the 614 Notice and whether you need to use it when you’re renting out your home in San Francisco. A 614 Notice is a legal notice that a San Francisco landlord would serve to tenants when you have a roommate situation and one of the original roommates on the original lease moves out and a new roommate moves in.
For many years, this was the standard operating procedure for landlords who were renting to roommates. Things have changed and now, most attorneys in San Francisco recommend you do not serve a 614 Notice. It has to do with provisions in the California Costa Hawkins law, which we don’t need to get into with much detail.
The bottom line is this: do not use the 614 Notice. Instead, you want to treat your new tenant in a roommate situation as an unauthorized sub tenant. This means you do not recognize them. Do not have them fill out a rental application and do not accept any information or rental checks from them. You don’t want to take work order requests or emails from those tenants. They are considered subtenants of your original master tenants who signed the original lease.
This gives you more flexibility down the line. When you sign a 614, you are essentially saying that when the last remaining original tenant moves out, you can raise the rent to market rates but you have to offer the property to those tenants who received a 614 Notice from you. That can be problematic if you have other plans for the property. Without the 614 Notice, you can choose to keep those tenants or let them go.
Instead of using the 614, treat any replacement roommates as unauthorized subtenants. Hopefully this explanation has helped you and if you have any other questions, you can always contact us at Gordon Property Management.
