All Forum Posts by: Justin R.

Note that "Infinite Banking" works by borrowing off of any asset, not just a life insurance policy.  You can solve for the same goal by, for example, buying a conservative bond portfolio and borrowing against it.  Different assets work best in different situations.  I'll leave the details for people to research themselves.

If my sister asked me, I'd point her towards a municipal bond portfolio with margin borrowing.  It's what I do with inactive capital.  YMMV. 

@Brock Dowis If you're in the city limits of San Diego, there's not much you can do to expedite things.  They are backed up and it just takes time.

If you're actually in San Diego County, use the pre-designed ADU plans they've got. It's hit or miss in the other cities around town.

Yeah.  The market doesn't really care how big the lot is -- it's almost always a good financial move (for the seller, at least) to do the division and sell one of the existing properties.  

I would say, as a general opinion/political/policy statement, that while it's good for us individual investors, it's generally not best for the public at large.

The answer is likely yes, though would need to know the address for zoning specifics.  The only potential issue I hear in your description is the parking -- when you split (in this case, via the SLSD), the resulting parcels need to be conformant with base zoning.  I don't know how the City would treat your non-conformant parking or, if the parcel is in a transit parking overlay, whether they'd let an existing building qualify for zero parking under that ordinance during a discretionary action.  It's something pretty odd you'd have to dig into with them.

Regardless, it's a long, arduous, expensive process.  Expect to spend somewhere around $60k in fees + whatever physical work you'll need to do both to your buildings/site and to the road, sidewalk, and alley fronting it.  I've done 3 divisions similar to this in the past 4 years in San Diego and it's not a friendly process.

AB9 and 10, while allowing *more* parcels to be split, do nothing to make the process easier.  That's the main reason they are likely to fairly insignificant overall in splitting existing home parcels.

@Peter Eberhardt Right on - I'm stoked to hear you found something and made it work for you!  It is, of course, just the beginning of the journey to actually turn that property into an asset ... but, I know you know that.  :-). I admire how you put yourself out there to learn in the real world and talk about specifics instead of trying to do it all in Excel -- I think that's what many people miss.

Siempre adelante!

@Cathy S. Dan gave you spot on advice and basically stole everything I was going to say.  Haha.

In 90% of situations I've encountered where a tenant is using some space (whether entitled to or not), and it's understood they need to move their stuff, it doesn't happen until the day before or the day of the actual work.  I have literally shown up with 7 guys to grade a backyard for construction and spent the first 2 hours of work moving the tenants stuff since they didn't actually believe me when I told them we were coming.  Until a date is set and you have leverage to make it happen, don't expect the stuff to move.

You need to get that leverage, and that's going to come with either your next lease agreement or a separate agreement because you incentivized them.

Personally, I'd just tell them what's going on, offer to pay for a year of storage (instead of buying a storage shed), and try to get them to vacate the garage.  If they don't, change lease terms at renewal.  You are owner occupied, so you've got more options.  But, you should have cleaned this up earlier this year so you'd be ready.

As a sidebar, I would highly encourage anyone planning to do a construction (such as a garage conversion for ADU) to switch to a month-to-month lease with existing tenants leading up to construction. It gives leverage to make sure you can get your project done, which is what the focus should be on.

Without trying to comment on population density in general, I meant "probably a good thing" as in it's a good thing that it would impact newly built neighborhoods more than it will impact existing neighborhoods.  When the residents move into the new neighborhood, they know exactly what they're buying into and are more likely to be happy with it. 

I'd be curious to see how many of those permitted ADUs were existing housing units, just legalized. 

Yes. I'll put my prediction in writing: this will have no meaningful impact on *existing* neighborhoods.  Builders of new subdivisions will have the option to build at 2x density (which is probably a good thing).  But existing housing stock?  Nothing.  Sure, a few owners or investors will do something on the edges ... or a few odd parcels will be split up.  But it's not going to change existing neighborhoods in mass.  In general (at least in urban San Diego) it is infeasible to evenly split existing urban lots (as required by these bills) and it makes NO FINANCIAL SENSE to mass tear down existing SFRs to split the land and build more units.  The cost to build onesies and twosies is too high for that.

In short, lots of smoke, no fire.

USPS has a Growth Manager who is responsible for dealing with newly created living spaces and mail delivery for them.  Don't expect warm and fuzzy customer service.  Lookup the contact for your area and reach out to them -- generally, they will ask you to show where the mailbox for the new unit will be located ... then tell you why you can't have it there.  :-). Once they approve the location (and potentially field verify it's set as approved), they'll officially add your address to the system.

Sometimes it's be trivially easy.  Sometimes it's been painfully detailed.  I haven't yet figured out what the variable is.