I'm a tenant in San Diego, California and my rental unit is an older, stand alone raised foundation apartment.

My questions are:

2. Are there any actions I can take to get the owner to provide proper 24-hour notice?

1. I am in a 1 year lease, if I choose to give 30 days notice, will I be able to break the lease and get my deposit and not be charged additional months rent?

The privacy issue:

The owner listed the property for sale in Feb 2019 and did not notify the residents. I suspected something was going on when contractors began showing up daily on the property, inspecting my roof, looking through my windows, entering my crawl space and knocking on my door asking to look at the unit. All of this with absolutely no notice. On one occasion a few weeks ago, two men came to my door and said they needed to inspect my heater due to the ventilation being installed incorrectly. I didn't know who they were and was given no notice, so I told them they could not enter. They kept asking and told me it would be quick and they wouldn't tell anyone. They continued to pressure me until I closed the door.

I have a raised foundation apartment and the original floor heater has been removed, so essentially I have a big hole in my floor with a grate and some black paper under it. I can have a clear conservation with anyone in the crawl space from inside my apartment since there is no real separation between the two. The owner is conducting maintenance to my foundation, which I found out by contacting the realtor since the management company will not let me know what's going on. I constantly have contractors entering my crawl space with no notice and not as much as a knock on my door. For example, yesterday I was eating lunch in my kitchen and out of nowhere I heard drilling and talking under my floor. It was so loud it sounded like someone was inside my apartment. I had to confront the men and ask who they were and what were they doing. They said I should have been given notice and I told them I wasn't. I have documented each privacy violation through email with the property management. They apologize and admit it is an invasion of privacy and say it won't happen again. They claim it is the property owner doing this without their knowing.

The privacy issue began before the property was for sale. When I moved in 4 months ago, the unit had no working heater. After I placed a request, a lock box was put on my door and contractors began coming by to quote the installation of a new heater. This is totally understandable as I was the one who put in the maintenance request. However, I soon realized that each of these contractors were given the keycode to the lock box and I was never given any notice of the appointments. On one particular day, a few weeks after I placed the request, I was in my living room doing yoga and a man unlocked my door and opened it. He apologized profusely and said he assumed the unit was vacant as he had never been given full access to a home just to quote a job. The lock box stayed on my unit for a few months.

The property management company is out of San Francisco and handles everything remotely (hence the lock box). I like my place and I'm hoping the sale happens fast and the new owner/management company are not as unethical (I have heard many stories from the other tenants of illegal behavior from the property management company).