California
Real Estate Attorney
Whether you are buying a building, signing a lease, untangling co-ownership, or fighting over a construction defect, a California real estate attorney turns property problems into managed transactions and, when needed, into winnable cases. VK Law handles real estate transactions and real estate litigation across California, for owners, buyers, sellers, businesses, developers, and contractors. This page maps what we do and where to go deeper.
Leasing
Commercial, multi-tenant, and industrial lease review, negotiation, drafting, and enforcement for landlords and business tenants across California.
Landlord / Tenant
Commercial and industrial landlord-tenant work: leases and transactions on the front end, defaults, CAM fights, and commercial evictions when it turns. Nothing residential.
TIC Agreements
Tenant in common agreements drafted and reviewed: shares, occupancy, exits, and what happens when an owner dies or wants out.
Construction Defect Litigation
Construction defect claims and defense for homeowners, developers, contractors, and subcontractors, under the Right to Repair Act and beyond.
Purchase and Sale
Residential, commercial, and industrial purchase and sale transactions: contracts, disclosures, title, and broker-less deals run end to end.
Land Use
Zoning, permits and entitlements, easements, title clearance, and CEQA review for California owners, developers, and neighbors.
Deeds
Grant, quitclaim, interspousal, trust transfer, and TOD deeds: prepared, reviewed, recorded, and fixed, in step with your estate plan.
- We work both sides of California real estate: transactions (purchases, sales, leases, deeds, co-ownership) and disputes (construction defects, commercial landlord-tenant conflicts, land use fights).
- California closings usually run through escrow, which protects the process, not your legal position. The contract terms are yours to negotiate.
- How you hold title is an estate-planning decision as much as a real estate one; the wrong choice can send a home through probate.
- To talk with VK Law about a property matter, call 877-780-4727.
Real Estate Transactions
Most of California’s residential deal flow closes through escrow companies without any lawyer in the room. That works until something unusual appears: a high-dollar or broker-less deal, a disclosure problem, a title defect, an easement, or contract terms that quietly shift risk. We handle purchase and sale transactions for residential, commercial, and industrial property, and in broker-less deals we have saved clients real money by running the transaction directly.
On the leasing side, we review, negotiate, draft, and enforce leases for landlords and business tenants: see our California commercial lease attorney page, which covers the state’s disability-access disclosure rules and the 2025 protections for small commercial tenants.
Co-Ownership and Title
How you take title (joint tenancy, tenancy in common, community property, or through a trust) decides what happens when an owner dies, divorces, or wants out. Our guide to how to hold title in California walks through the options. When unrelated parties buy property together, a tenant in common agreement puts the exit rules in writing before there is a fight. The deed itself deserves the same care. Our California deed lawyer page covers grant, quitclaim, trust transfer, and transfer on death deeds.
Title choices are also estate-planning choices. Holding a home in a revocable living trust is often the difference between a family transfer and a probate case. Our property title and estate planning page explains how the pieces fit, and our California trust and estate practice prepares the deeds and trust transfers that make it real.
Real Estate Disputes and Litigation
When property turns contentious, we litigate. Our construction defect attorney page covers defect claims and defense under California’s Right to Repair Act: we represent owners on one side and developers, contractors, and subcontractors on the other. For commercial and industrial rental property, we handle landlord-tenant work (leases and transactions as well as disputes and commercial evictions), and we advise on land use issues like zoning, easements, and development approvals. We do not take residential landlord-tenant matters. Larger commercial fights draw on our California civil litigation practice.
One Firm Across Property, Business, and Family
Real estate problems rarely stay in their lane. A building purchase becomes an entity question; a lease default becomes a litigation budget; a title decision becomes an estate plan. Because the firm practices business law, civil litigation, and trusts and estates alongside real estate, the handoffs happen inside one firm: the lease, the LLC, the lawsuit, and the trust transfer deed all drafted by people who talk to each other.
How We Help
We scope the problem, tell you honestly whether it needs a lawyer at all, and staff it from the right side of the practice: transactional when a clean contract prevents the fight, litigation when the fight has already arrived. Property owned by businesses often overlaps with our California business law work; property owned by families overlaps with estate planning. One firm covering all three means fewer seams.
To talk with VK Law about a California property matter, call 877-780-4727. The consultation is free.
Reviewed by Alan Khalfin, Managing Partner (California). Last reviewed: July 8, 2026.
This page is general information, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
Frequently Asked Questions
Usually not for a routine escrow-run sale. California practice does not put attorneys at most residential closings. A lawyer earns their place when the deal is unusual: no broker, seller-financing, disclosure or title problems, co-ownership, commercial property, or anything where the standard forms do not fit the reality.
Yes. The practice covers transactions (purchases and sales, leasing, co-ownership agreements, title questions) and litigation, including construction defect cases, commercial landlord-tenant disputes, and commercial evictions across California.
Buyers and sellers in transactions; owners and builders in construction defect cases; landlords and business tenants in commercial and industrial leasing and disputes. The deliberate exception: nothing residential on the landlord-tenant side. We do not take residential rental matters for either side.
It depends on who owns it and what should happen when an owner dies. Joint tenancy, tenancy in common, community property, and trust ownership each carry different survivorship, tax, and probate consequences. For many families, holding the home in a revocable living trust avoids probate entirely, which is why we treat title as an estate-planning decision too.
A written contract among co-owners of a property held as tenants in common. It sets each owner’s share and spells out the rules for expenses, occupancy, selling, and what happens when one owner wants out or passes away. Those are the questions that otherwise end up in court.
Yes: zoning analysis, permits and variances, easement and boundary disputes, environmental review, and challenges or defenses of project approvals. Land use deadlines are short, often measured in weeks, so the earlier the call, the more options survive.
Document it and get it evaluated promptly. California sets outside deadlines of roughly four years for visible defects and ten for hidden ones, with much shorter periods for some components, and for newer homes a mandatory notice-and-repair process usually comes before any lawsuit.