Cash for keys in Los Angeles

Relocation assistance is owed. It attaches to a no-fault termination, such as an owner moving in or a withdrawal under the Ellis Act, it follows a published schedule, and the landlord has to pay it whether or not you want to leave. A buyout is bargained. No ordinance sets its size, and nobody is bound by anything until both sides sign.

The two often arrive together, and that is where tenants lose money. An offer made instead of a no-fault notice, or while one is being threatened, can look generous until it is compared with what the notice itself would have obliged the landlord to pay. If a landlord is offering cash for keys to avoid serving a notice, the relocation amount that notice would trigger is the number the offer is competing with.

Where the landlord has no ground at all, your position is stronger still. A tenant covered by rent stabilization or the Just Cause Ordinance can only be made to leave for a reason the ordinance lists. If none applies, the only way the landlord gets the unit back is by agreement, and an agreement is priced by what you are willing to take.

The calculator works out what a no-fault termination would cost the landlord for your tenancy: how long you have lived there, whether you are in a qualified category, whether the building is stabilized, and whether the owner qualifies for the reduced Mom-and-Pop schedule. That figure is not what you should ask for, and it is not a minimum anybody owes you for signing. It is what leaving on a no-fault ground would have been worth, which is the thing an offer is being weighed against.

Above the floor, a buyout is worth whatever the things no schedule measures add up to: what it would cost you to rent something comparable now, the cost of the move itself, how much time you have, and what the unit is worth to the landlord empty. A stabilized unit rented well below what it could bring in today is the clearest case, because that gap is what the landlord is really buying.

Nobody can tell you the right number, and this site does not try. What it can tell you is the number below which saying yes makes no sense.

For a rent stabilized unit, the Tenant Buyout Notification Program in section 151.31 of the Los Angeles Municipal Code regulates buyouts, and the LA Housing Department administers it. It is about the process rather than the price: what you are told before an offer, how long you have to reconsider, and a record of the agreement kept by LAHD.

Before making any buyout offer, the landlord has to give you a signed and dated RSO Disclosure Notice setting out your rights. The written Buyout Agreement has to tell you that you may cancel within 30 days of all parties signing. The agreement has to state that right in 12-point bold type immediately above the signature line, so it is a thing you can check in the document in front of you. It also has to be written in your primary language. Once both sides have signed, the landlord has 60 days to file the Disclosure Notice and the agreement with the LA Housing Department.

Three of those are things you can check on the paper in front of you. Were you given the disclosure notice before the offer, signed and dated. Is the cancellation right printed in bold above the line you are being asked to sign. Is the agreement in your language. An agreement that fails any of them is not one to sign while somebody waits.

The program covers rent stabilized units. For a unit outside rent stabilization, this site has not checked what, if anything, applies in its place, so ask LAHD before signing an agreement for one.

Get the offer in writing: the amount, the date you are expected to leave, and when and how the money is paid. Money paid on signing or into escrow is worth more than a promise to pay after you have moved, and the difference matters most when the relationship with the landlord has already gone wrong.

Read what you are giving up. A buyout agreement usually ends the tenancy and releases claims you might have against the landlord, which can include ones you have not thought of yet, such as repairs never made or rent charged above the legal cap. Ask exactly what is being released, and do not sign a release wider than the money justifies.

Take advice before signing rather than after. LAHD answers questions about the program, and a tenants' rights organization or a lawyer can read the agreement itself. A signed buyout is one of the few decisions in a tenancy that is hard to undo once the window to cancel has passed.