All Forum Posts by: Jerry Murphy

Will they pay rent? That seems like the first question you should ask. Will they sign a new lease? Do they just need a week or two to sort out the family affairs? 

I had one property in LA and one in Hawaii. I lived near Pago Pago. My wife managed the one in LA while we lived in Pago Pago. Now we are back living in the LA property and we still have the Hawaii property with a property manager. 

This looks like a nice little win for STRs. In the long run STRs will win. Uber and Lyft fought the taxi cab industry and up-ended that industry. AirBnB and HomeAway will do the same to the Hotel industry. There will be a few cities like Disney's Anaheim and a few other places where the hotel lobby is super powerful and you won't be able to run a STR property. But 99% of the country will be STR friendly in a few years. STRs just offer consumers and property owners too much advantages. It is just a better way to travel for consumers. It is a decent source of income for an owner. And it is super easy for both owner and consumer.

So in the mean time these battles will be fought in courts and legislatures but eventually STRs will win. 

I am not licensed to practice in New Mexico but Nolo.com generally has reliable advice. 

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/new-mexico-laws-on-service-dogs-and-emotional-support-animals.html

"In addition, the federal Fair Housing Act says that housing facilities must allow service dogs and emotional support animals, if necessary for a person with a disability to have an equal opportunity to use and enjoy the home. To fall under this provision, you must have a disability and you must have a disability-related need for the animal. In other words, the animal must work, perform tasks or services, or alleviate the emotional effects of your disability in order to qualify.

New Mexico’s Human Rights Act prohibits housing discrimination based on disability, as long as the person’s disability is not related to his or her ability to rent or maintain the housing under consideration. This law doesn’t mention service animals. New Mexico landlords are still subject to the federal Fair Housing Act, however."

In my experience about 1/3 of the people staffing open houses are not even the real estate agent. They are just some friend of the agent that gets paid $50 to sit there and make sure everyone signs in and no one trashes the place.  They sometimes do not even get off their.  I prefer that to having the agent walk around and show me every detail. 

The best way to deal with your frustration with pushy sales people is to go to a lot of these things. If you kind of know what you are looking for and can answer the agents first two or three questions then they will leave you alone. 

Student loan interest is tax deductible up to $2500 if you make $80,000 or less. Consider that when you prioritize which debts to pay off.  Also go to the Department of Education website and spend some time there.  There are at least a dozen ways to get forbearance, deferrals, and modifications. You may qualify for one. 

During law school I worked with a zoning / building code enforcement agency. The zoning laws and building codes are sold to the people on the premise that they will protect us from having a toxic waste dump next to our elementary schools. The reality is that they are just tools for the government to go after unpopular people.  On my first day with the group I was told that every building in the district is in violation of either a zoning law or a building code. It was their job to find the violation when an owner or building was targeted.  

At the time they targeted Asian massage parlors, cigarette sellers, night clubs that had customers deemed criminal (read: minorities), medical marijuana clinics and (post 2008) bank owned properties that had been foreclosed.  Now they target people who use their properties for short term rentals. 

The zoning laws/building code enforcement is a scam.  The accused have none of the rights of a criminal. The code enforcement people can search the outside of properties without a warrant and because they are doing non-criminal investigations they can search inside with reasonable suspicion instead of the higher 'probable cause' standard. The owners can get huge fines that accumulate daily. 

In many cases it was even worse because businesses complained about their competition.  So the guy that enforced the building code against medical marijuana clinics got tips from other medical marijuana clinics.  Massage parlors ratted out nearby parlors.  Businesses use the zoning laws to have the government harass competing businesses. It is a total scam.  

So AirBnB rentals are the target these days in places where they are unpopular. People who want to control what their neighbors do have a great tool to harass neighbors into conforming with their wishes. Well established short term vacation landlords can also cripple newcomers in the market.  In the long run it won't work.   People will eventually find something else to be busybodies about (immigrants, gun owners, who knows who is next?).  In the meantime small business owners will just have to suffer. 

I am planning on buying a condo at an auction in three weeks.  It is in the building in which I live.  No one has lived in the condo for at least 8 years.  So I know the building is OK but the unit might be a mess. 

I am interested in buying here in Cali.  But I haven't found any screaming bargains. 

Hey Shawn, 

My wife and I are converting a balcony into a 3rd bedroom in our home. We first submitted our plans to the city in December. They kicked it back to us twice. Both times they wanted us to add language to the plans that they would conform with the regulations. Things like glazing % on the windows and such and such insulation in the walls. They finally approved it in early April.

I imagine a better contractor could have been prepared better. Ours (Green Remodeling) was not expecting the city to go through it with such a fine tooth comb. They used the opportunity to try and squeeze more money out of us so I ended up making the corrections myself. Once I got to talking to the folks at City Hall, they were very reasonable.