Monterey · Santa Cruz · San Benito counties
Coastal Management is the property management side of Coastal Preferred Properties. When a tenancy goes wrong, the notice, the service of process, the lock change, the repair and — if it comes to that — the sale are all carried out by the same licensed company. Nothing sits in a vendor’s queue while the rent stays unpaid.
Forty years of California real estate, under a broker who has also held a general contractor’s licence since 1997 and runs the county’s eviction and process-serving side of the same business.
Licence record
What we manage
Most owners who come to us have one of these. Several have more than one, which is the point of keeping it all under a single brokerage rather than three vendors who each blame the other two.
Houses, condominiums, duplexes and small apartment buildings on annual or month‑to‑month tenancies — the core of the business.
Carmel is a vacation-rental market with a vacation-rental problem: in the city itself the short version is illegal. We run the version that is lawful where you actually own.
Office, retail and mixed-use buildings, and residential buildings large enough to need real books rather than a spreadsheet.
Property that is nobody’s daily problem until it is. This started as REO work for national lenders and is now mostly trusts, probate, and owners who live elsewhere.
Why it is all in house
Collecting rent from a tenant who pays is not the hard part, and every company on the Peninsula can do it. The difference shows up the month the rent stops — and at that point most managers become a switchboard, calling an eviction service, a process server, a locksmith and a contractor, each with their own queue and their own invoice.
| When this happens | A typical management company | Coastal Management |
|---|---|---|
| Rent is late | Sends a reminder, then refers the file to an eviction service or an attorney once it is badly overdue. | We are the eviction service. Registered Unlawful Detainer Assistant No. 0006 — the notice is prepared here, on the day you authorise it. |
| The notice has to be served | Hires an outside process server and waits for the proof of service to come back before anything else can start. | Registered Process Server No. PS0233, in house. Service happens on our schedule and the proof of service is signed here. |
| The tenant does not leave | Hands the file to counsel and drops out of the process; the owner deals with two companies from then on. | We prepare, serve and file the unlawful detainer papers and coordinate the sheriff’s lockout. One file, one company, one point of contact. |
| The locks need changing | Calls a locksmith, who charges an emergency rate to attend a property they have never seen. | CSLB 1070882, C‑61/D‑16 — hardware, locks and safes. Re‑key, lockout and lock replacement are our own trade, not a call-out. |
| The unit needs work before re-letting | Collects three bids, marks the job up, and the unit sits empty while the bids come in. | General building contractor, B classification, licensed since 1997. Paint, flooring, kitchens and baths are scheduled the week the tenant leaves. |
| You want the arrears back | Sends the balance to a collection agency on contingency, or writes it off. | Under a written management agreement an owner’s property agent may appear in small claims court on the owner’s behalf — CCP §116.540(h). You do not have to take the day off. |
| You decide to sell | Refers you to an agent and the management relationship ends there. | We are a licensed brokerage with forty years in this market. The manager who knows the roof, the tenancy and the deferred maintenance is the one who lists it. |
Short-term rentals on the Peninsula
Short-term rental rules here are set street by street, not county-wide, and the differences are severe. We would rather tell you the awkward version now than manage the consequences later.
The city has long prohibited renting a home in the residential district for fewer than 30 consecutive days, to keep residential streets from turning into tourist blocks. There is no permit that gets you around it.
Enforcement is complaint-driven, neighbours do complain, and the city has both sued owners and levied penalties running to $1,000 per violation, per day.
The lawful model is a furnished tenancy of thirty days or more — which is a real and profitable market here, and one we manage.
After roughly fourteen years of drafting, the Board of Supervisors adopted a short-term rental ordinance in 2024. It applies to the unincorporated county — Carmel Valley, Big Sur, Pebble Beach, Carmel Highlands and the rest.
It requires an annual licence and imposes a cap on the number of rentals allowed, so availability is finite and not guaranteed to a new buyer.
Coastal-zone parcels carry their own layer of review on top.
The county ordinance stops at the city limit. Pacific Grove, Monterey, Seaside, Marina, Salinas and the rest each set their own rules, and Pacific Grove’s programme is capped and has been repeatedly revised.
A rule that applied to your neighbour’s property may not apply to yours, and a rule that applied last year may not apply this year.
Transient occupancy tax registration is a separate obligation from the rental licence, and both are the owner’s.
Scope of service
Written out in full, because “full-service property management” means different things to different companies and the gaps are where owners get hurt.
Compliance
None of these is obscure and all of them are recent. Every one of them is a rule we run your tenancy to by default — and each is a place where a self-managing owner, or a manager who has not updated their forms, loses money they were otherwise owed.
For most landlords the deposit may no longer exceed one month’s rent, furnished or unfurnished. A natural-person owner of no more than two residential properties totalling no more than four units may still take two months.
The trap: the old “two months because it is furnished” habit is now unlawful for most owners, and a corporate or LLC owner never qualifies for the small-landlord exception.
To deduct from a deposit you now need photographs taken before move-in, at move-out, and after the repair or cleaning is done, delivered to the tenant with the itemised statement.
The trap: a perfectly justified deduction is indefensible without the photographs, and the tenant can challenge it in small claims. We photograph every unit at every move-in and move-out as a matter of routine.
The itemised statement and any balance are due within 21 days of the tenant giving up possession. The tenant must also be told in writing of the right to request a pre‑move‑out inspection and to be present at it.
The trap: missing the 21 days can expose an owner to statutory damages of up to twice the deposit on top of returning it. Owners who self-manage from out of the area miss this one most.
For covered units, annual increases are limited to 5% plus regional CPI, capped at 10%, and terminating a tenancy of more than a year requires a stated just cause, with relocation payable on a no-fault termination.
The trap: single-family homes and condominiums are exempt only if the owner is not a corporation and the specific statutory notice has been given to the tenant. Generic lease boilerplate does not count. Owners routinely believe they are exempt and are not.
Questions owners ask
It is quoted per property, because an honest number depends on the property. What moves it: whether it is a single house or a building, how many units, the condition it is in today, whether it is a long-term tenancy or a furnished short-stay property (which is several times the work), how far it is from Carmel, and whether we are also doing the leasing.
We will give you a figure on the phone once we know those things, and we would rather do that than publish a headline rate that turns out not to apply to you.
Rent is collected into a brokerage trust account maintained under DRE corporation licence No. 02115667 — not a general business account. Trust funds are the money the Department of Real Estate cares most about, and they are accounted for accordingly.
You are paid on a fixed date each month with a statement showing every receipt and every disbursement against your property.
Same day, on your authorisation. We do not have to find an eviction service — we are a registered Unlawful Detainer Assistant, County of Monterey No. 0006, so the notice is prepared here, and a registered process server, No. PS0233, so it is served here.
You do not have to be a management client to use that side of the business. It runs separately as Coastal Evictions.
In the city’s residential district, no. Renting for fewer than 30 consecutive days is prohibited there, enforcement is active and complaint-driven, and the penalties are severe.
What does work is a furnished tenancy of thirty days or longer. There is real demand for it on the Peninsula — relocations, sabbaticals, people renovating, seasonal residents — and it is the model we run for Carmel owners. Outside the city limits the answer depends on the jurisdiction and the cap; see the rules above.
A single house is fine and is most of what we do. Much of the portfolio is one property belonging to one family — an inherited home, a house someone moved out of rather than sold, a condominium bought as an investment.
That is the normal case, not the exception. This side of the business grew out of REO work for national lenders and servicers — Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and others — who were never within two thousand miles of the property.
You get scheduled inspections with dated photographs, a monthly statement, and a single person on the telephone who has actually been inside the building.
Yes, and it is a large part of the work. Trustees and executors generally need three things at once: the property secured and maintained, some income while the estate is administered, and an honest opinion on whether to rent it or sell it.
We can hold it, let it, repair it, and list it when the time comes, and we will tell you which of those we think you should do.
Yes. Under California law source of income — including a Section 8 or other housing voucher — is a protected characteristic, and refusing an applicant for that reason is unlawful discrimination.
Voucher holders are screened against the same written criteria as every other applicant, which is also the correct way to run screening generally.
Yes. Coastal Management and Coastal Preferred Properties are both fictitious business names filed with and approved by the Department of Real Estate, operating under BLSH 20 Inc., DRE corporation licence No. 02115667. Coastal Preferred Properties is the sales side; Coastal Management is the management side.
The related companies — Coastal Evictions, Coastal Process Server, Coastal Real Estate Lock-Out and Coastal Construction — are the same corporation under their own licences. They are listed at blshinc.com.
Then we say so. Some properties should not be rented — the numbers do not work, the deferred maintenance is too far gone, or the owner simply does not want to be a landlord. We are a brokerage with forty years in this market and we would rather list it honestly than sign a management agreement that makes nobody any money.
Start here
Not a call centre and not an assistant — Ron Beutel, who will be the person managing your property. Tell us what you have and we will tell you what we would do with it and what it would cost.