All Forum Posts by: Mark Hu

Our local superior court is always encouraging people to use mediation and arbitration as an alternative to clogging their overcrowded schedules. It sounds like a good thing to do, but I can't see any situation where it would be practical.
Has anyone here found mediation/arbitration to be useful? My location is in Orange County, CA

I've been informed by the post office that they no longer provide skip trace services. Is there a legal way to get that info from the post office? Tenant owes us 1 months rent plus damages, of course left no forwarding address.

We are considering resorting to collection agency to collect some 2.5k owed to us from a previous tenant. Do we need a money judgement before we can hire a collection agency? I think that would be the case.

I can see the seller's point of view, and I am not trying to change the system. But it does make things very inconvenient. You never know for sure what's really going down at the property until after the contract is signed and good money spent. Ugh! Might as well not even look at the property before buying it.

I am planning to us the 'Landlord-Tenant Agreement to Terminate Lease' form. I frequently have situations coming up, like a chronically late paying tenant who wants to leave voluntarily to avoid eviction, and roomates who are leaving or getting kicked out by their other roomates.

I am getting this form from a landlord legal guide. Is this form valid in California, and will hold up in court?

Thanks

I won't worry then, about discovering something very nasty on inspection. It sounds like I won't have a problem backing out if, lets say, I find massive water damage in a building.

I just dislike the idea of signing a contract before I am sure of what's going on inside the building. Yes the purchase agreement covers inspections, but I was wondering if there were 'creative' ways for a seller to get around those sections. I guess there aren't any.

I do not like the fact that I can only do a close inspection of a property I am buying after signing the purchase agreement. This seems to open a can of worms, if I find serious problems, and the seller wants to be difficult.

I'm looking at 3-4 unit buildings. I've been told that up to 17 days after the start of escrow it is easy to withdraw from the contract if I find serious problems in the building. Is this true?

I plan to be conservative, having only a small amount of experience in buying and selling. However I do appreciate the comments.

We've been talking to some brokers about a 1031 exhange. They explained to us that it is almost impossible to arrange a direct property to property exchange, that we would have to sell and buy within the allotted time period only.
Also they said it is practically impossible to arrange a contingency sale. Needless to say I was greatly disappointed.
Is it true that 99% of 1031 exchanges are done indirectly, not through a direct exchange one property for another? That seems like a risky way to do things.

behr brand from home depo, flat and semi gloss. I had them make a custom formula to try to match the original paint in one of our apartments, and I've used that formula for all our units ever since.

I've heard that expensive brand names like Dunn are better paints. But I've not had any problem with behr. Also I don't want to pay premium price when some of our units turnover every 1 or 2 years!