With the passage of Senate Bill 608, Oregon is now restricting no-cause evictions. This is a major change for landlords in the state. Real estate and property management attorney Brian Cox discusses the ins and outs of the changes multifamily property owners need to understand as a result of the new law.
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Before the passage of this bill, unless a person was under lease and the lease hadn’t expired, or unless a person was under subsidized housing where a contract had a different requirement, we could give that person a 30-day or, if they had been there more than a year, 60-day no-cause eviction notice. Such a notice could have been because we wanted to do some do something different with the property, or it for some practical reason. It could have been a way to solve problems in a way that wouldn’t mean ruining that tenant’s tenancy record or requiring us to prove that all of those five-minute stops at night weren’t drug transactions. The new law has changed that.
If your tenant is renting month-to-month, then of course you can give a 30-day notice and 30 days later, they have to be out. If they’re under lease, you need to give that 30-day notice on the beginning of month 11, so it hits before they’ve been there a year.
First Year of Tenancy
However, we can still issue no-cause eviction notices during the first year of tenancy, and that’s a term of art. You would think, “Gosh, that sounds like English to me,” but it’s actually a term of art. The first year of tenancy happens one of two ways. One way is the way you think it does. They’ve lived there less than a year. That’s the obvious one. The other way it happens is if your tenants move somebody in and they changed the configuration of tenancies. As soon as they’ve done that by adding a roommate, that restarts the count, and they’re in their first year of tenancy once again. Saying yes to this is a strategy that has unintended consequences to the tenants.
One of your strategies as a property owner to solve the problem of losing no-cause eviction notices is to let your tenants make a change like that. Let somebody bring in a roommate. Let somebody swap one tenant for another. Because as soon as you’ve done that, it doesn’t matter how long they’ve lived there, you’re back to counting within one year.
There are some exceptions to this. Let’s say you bought a duplex as an investment and as a home, or you have a home with another unit out back on the same property. If you have two units and you occupy one of them, you can always give a no-cause eviction notice. There isn’t a limit, regardless of how long they’ve been there.
If you need a real estate attorney, contact Brian Cox.
If you want to learn more about the impact of Oregon Senate Bill 608, visit Pacwest Commercial Real Estate’s Oregon Rent Control Central for the latest information.
Disclaimer
Due to the complex nature of these changes, Landlords should contact an attorney with any questions or clarification of Oregon Rent Control SB 608.
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