Real estate disputes in California are decided by doctrines with narrow elements and by deadlines that are shorter than most people expect. ROMO Law Group is a boutique litigation firm in Encino handling seven core areas of real estate and civil litigation — with the attorney who evaluates your matter being the attorney who handles it.
Practice areas
Seller Nondisclosure & Real Estate Fraud
California sellers and their agents must disclose what they know. Claims arising from concealed water intrusion, structural problems, unpermitted work, prior repairs, and off-site conditions — including transactions exempt from the statutory disclosure form, where the common law duty still applies.
Read more →Construction Defect
Homeowner and association claims under SB 800 and the Right to Repair Act, and under common law for properties the Act does not cover. Builder notice practice, component deadlines that can run in as little as one year, and the Calderon process for community associations.
Read more →Boundary, Easement & Encroachment
Quiet title actions, adverse possession and prescriptive easement defense, the agreed-boundary doctrine, encroachment removal and equitable easements, and California tree and shared fence law.
Read more →Purchase & Sale Disputes
Specific performance when a seller refuses to close, lis pendens practice, deposit and liquidated damages fights, escrow disputes, and the mediation requirement that determines whether attorney fees are recoverable at all.
Read more →Quiet Title & Partition Actions
Ending a co-ownership that no longer works, and defending against a forced sale. California rewrote its partition statutes in 2023 — the cotenant buyout right at full appraised value is now the central tool, along with quiet title actions to clear defective title.
Read more →Zoning & Land Use
Permit, variance, and conditional use denials; CEQA challenges; code enforcement and abatement; Housing Accountability Act claims; vested rights and nonconforming uses. Deadlines here run in 30 to 90 days.
Read more →Contract & Business Disputes
Breach of commercial agreements, fraud and misrepresentation, partnership and LLC deadlock, dissolution and buyout proceedings, and non-compete disputes under the 2024 amendments to Business and Professions Code section 16600.
Read more →How a boutique practice changes the work
Real estate cases are won early, on documents. The permit file, the prior listing photographs, the insurance claim history, the contractor invoices, the survey, the escrow file — these determine outcomes far more often than anything that happens at trial. That work benefits from an attorney who has read the whole file rather than a summary of it.
ROMO Law Group is structured for that: direct attorney contact, no layered staffing, and a practice deliberately limited to areas where the firm does substantial work.
The deadline question comes first
In most California real estate matters the limitations period is the threshold issue, and several of the relevant periods are short. Claims against a real estate agent for breach of the statutory inspection duty are capped at two years from the earliest of recordation, close of escrow, or occupancy (Civil Code section 2079.4). Several construction defect standards run in one year from close of escrow. And for fraud, the clock starts when a buyer should have suspected wrongdoing — not when they became certain.
If you think a deadline may be close, say so when you call. Our reference guide to California real estate litigation deadlines sets out the periods that come up most often.