All Forum Posts by: Brendon Woirhaye

This is only county area, areas not covered by Los Angeles or any other incorporated city.  That said, if it is seen as successful, there will be pressure on cities to follow.

This rent freeze is reported to be within the Costa-Hawkins restrictions, and only applies to apartments built before 1995.  It would not include single family homes, newer apartments, and condos.  You can bet what will be the next step if Costa-Hawkins is repealed, though.

One other piece of the proposed law would be to require just cause for evictions, presumably doing away with the 60 day notice method.

Watch it carefully.

The motion passed yesterday, there will be a 2 month period during which the actual ordinance will be drafted, so full details aren't available yet.

My inclination would be to dig in my heels and take the "there was grass, it was destroyed on your watch", but the advice of "let them out of the lease and move on" may be the best.  The tenants have shown their true colors, and it isn't worth your pain and suffering to keep them.  

I suggest not trying to time the market unless you are really good at it.  Figure out specifically what you want to achieve and try to find a property that will meet that goal.  Lots of "experts" were calling the peak in 2015 or 2016 - if you'd taken the advice then and waited for the inevitable crash, you'd still be waiting.  

What's for sure is that there will be a downturn.  When it will be, and how large it will be, nobody really knows.  Don't expect fire sale prices like we had in 2009-2011 though.

Yes.  We charge both a nonrefundable fee and a refundable deposit.  The former covers the more routine added "wear and tear" from the dog, whereas the deposit covers excessive damage.  

We recently had to do repairs in the backyard of one property where the dog gnawed at the post for a pergola and knocked loose boards from the fence.  We covered the fence repairs (the fence was admittedly fairly old), but charged the tenant for the post replacement.

I don't see why not.  Keep in mind that 6 units would be a commercial loan, and usually more expensive than a 1-4 unit.  Some commercial loans also have prepayment penalties, so factor all of your short term financing costs.

We've had property managers call us for referrals on a tenant we were evicting once.  The answer we came up with is "our lawyer has advised us to not discuss this particular tenant".  We didn't badmouth them, but let the new PM draw their own conclusion.

Proposition 10 repeals the Costa-Hawkins act, which places limits on rent control at the city and county level.  If it passes, cities and counties can then a lot more about rent control, including imposing vacancy control which would prevent landlords raising the rent to market price on a vacancy.  As far as I know, the city of LA would need to modify its rent control rules to include vacancy control.

I've very aggressively paid down my "short term" balances (pledged asset loan), but make no attempt to pay my RE-backed loans (fannie/freddie or commercial) which are all between 3.75% and 4.875%.  If rates start to climb significantly, I'll start directing free cash flow towards paying down the variable loans.  

That's a new one for me.  Please do let us know how the story unfolds.