Updated August 16, 2026
LA City's Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance prohibits an owner from taking actions intended to pressure a tenant into vacating, and it gives tenants a private right of action with statutory damages and attorney's fees. It matters to a sale in two directions: an open or threatened claim is a disclosable liability that will affect price and can complicate closing, and the ordinance constrains a set of pre-sale behaviors that owners sometimes reach for without realizing they are prohibited. The sale itself is not harassment. Selling a building, showing it to buyers, and telling tenants about the transaction are all ordinary and lawful. What is not lawful is using the sale as leverage.
The ordinance reaches conduct that a reasonable person would find intimidating, coercive, or intended to induce a tenant to give up their tenancy. In practice, the categories that come up around a sale are:
Reducing or interrupting services. Letting maintenance lapse, shutting off amenities, or failing to make repairs in units occupied by tenants an owner would prefer to see leave.
Abusive or repeated contact. Persistent pressure to accept a buyout, repeated unscheduled visits, or communications designed to make staying uncomfortable.
Threatening statements about the sale. Telling tenants the new owner will evict them, that rent control is ending, or that they should take a payment now because they will get nothing later. This is the single most common problem, and it usually comes from a well-meaning on-site manager rather than the owner.
Improper entry. Entering units without proper notice, or using inspections and showings as a pretext for pressure.
Threatening immigration or citizenship status. Explicitly prohibited, with serious consequences.
Misrepresenting the tenant's rights. Including misstating what the sale does to their tenancy — which, in a straight sale, is nothing.
A sale creates exactly the conditions where these claims arise: unfamiliar people walking the property, tenants who are anxious about what happens next, buyout conversations underway, deferred maintenance that suddenly feels not worth doing before closing, and an owner working against a deadline. Tenant counsel in Los Angeles is active and knows this pattern well.
The cost is asymmetric. Statutory damages plus attorney's fees on a multi-tenant claim can dwarf whatever the pressure was meant to accomplish, and a claim filed mid-escrow lands in the disclosure package at exactly the wrong moment. Buyers respond to open claims by discounting, holding back funds, or asking for indemnities.
Sellers sometimes overcorrect and assume they cannot communicate at all. That is not the rule.
Tell tenants the building is being sold. Straightforwardly and accurately. Tenancies transfer, leases continue, rents continue, protections continue.
Show the property with proper notice. Written notice in the required form and timeframe, at reasonable hours, for a legitimate purpose.
Keep operating the building normally. Repairs, maintenance, and services continue exactly as before. Continuing to maintain the building well during escrow is both the legal requirement and the smart commercial choice.
Negotiate a genuine, voluntary buyout following LA's process. Written disclosure first, 30-day rescission, filing with LAHD within 60 days. A compliant buyout conversation is not harassment; an uncompliant, pressuring one can be.
Brief everyone who touches tenants. The owner, the on-site manager, the property management company, and the listing team should be saying the same accurate thing. Most claims I see trace to an offhand remark by someone who was not thinking about liability.
Put the tenant communication in writing, once, accurately. A short written notice that the building is being marketed, that tenancies and rents are unaffected, and who to contact with questions removes the vacuum that rumors fill.
Route all showings through a scheduled, noticed process. No walkthroughs of occupied units without proper notice, ever, regardless of how accommodating a tenant seems.
Disclose any existing claim or complaint history. Open matters, prior filings, and LAHD complaint records are material. Concealing them converts a price adjustment into a post-close lawsuit.
Sell the building the ordinary way and the ordinance is a non-event. The risk comes from the shortcuts — pressure to accept a buyout, letting repairs slide before closing, or a manager telling tenants the new owner will clear them out. Those shortcuts do not meaningfully improve the sale price and they create a liability that follows the transaction. Brief your team, communicate once in writing, notice every entry properly, keep maintaining the building, and let the market price the rent roll you actually have.
Does simply selling the building count as harassment?
No. A sale is not an act against a tenant. Tenancies transfer to the new owner intact — same rent, same lease, same protections. Nothing about a change of ownership terminates a tenancy in LA City.
Can I ask tenants to move out so the building shows better vacant?
You can make a genuine, voluntary buyout offer following LA's buyout process. What you cannot do is pressure, repeat the ask after a refusal in a way that becomes coercive, or attach consequences to declining. The line between an offer and pressure is exactly where these claims live.
What if a tenant files a complaint during escrow?
Disclose it, get counsel involved immediately, and expect the buyer to want it addressed before closing. Buyers commonly ask for an indemnity, a holdback, or a price adjustment. Handling it openly is far cheaper than having the buyer discover it independently.
Michael Sterman is Senior Managing Director Investments at Marcus & Millichap.
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