Failed Attempt At Evading Local Rent Control Law By Booting Tenants Paying Below-Market Rates Leaves Bay-Area Landlord's Empire On Thin Ice

In San Francisco, California, the San Francisco Bay Guardian reports:

• Nearly four years after City Attorney Dennis Herrera filed suit against Frank and Walter Lembi and their dizzying array of companies affiliated with CitiApartments for "an outrageous pattern of corporate lawlessness," the powerful and notorious San Francisco landlords have watched their empire crumble.

• The Lembi empire consisted of more 300 apartment buildings in San Francisco at its peak. Four Lembi subsidiaries that owned 16 buildings filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February. Twenty Lembi properties were taken over by Lennar spin-off LNR in late May; another 24 buildings are slated to be foreclosed in early June; 51 were deeded back to UBS bank in lieu of foreclosure early last year; and still others are now held by court-appointed receivers and managed by Laramar, an unaffiliated property-management company.

For more, see Triumph of tenacity (The Lembi empire teeters after tenants resisted a business plan based on forcing them out).