All Forum Posts by: Neil Ginty

@Natalie Johnstone
We just got into contract on a deal in Martinez and we have invested in Sac.
The landlord laws aren't as bad as made out (we feel, at least!) - except for the rent controlled cities ie. avoid Oakland and SF!

Key for us is finding something we can add value to. This one is a duplex with 2x 1-beds that pretty easily convert to 2x 2-beds. And we just saw one in Sac that we could make hit 1% without doing toooo much!!

Bay Area and Sac can work - just need to be creative!

Investment Info:

Single-family residence buy & hold investment.

Purchase price: $1,425,000
Cash invested: $400,000

Value add and a house hack!
We added cheap square footage by filling in a breezeway which helped to turn an attached ADU from studio to 1-bed, and turn the Main Home from 2-bed, 1-bath into a 3-bed, 2-bath.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

I love seeing space others don't and turning that into equity

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

MLS and David Greene's own Bay Area team helped negotiate

How did you finance this deal?

Conventional Loan

How did you add value to the deal?

Added cheap square footage and improved features - ie. additional bedrooms, quality outside space, and upgrades throughout

Cheers @Osazee Edebiri

Hi @Matt A., I can help! Feel free to DM me with details and we can go from there

@Greg R.

The 2020 state ordinance that made them really easy to permit doesn't allow less than 30 days rental periods. Yours would have pre-dated that of course! I believe it is still possible to permit them that way in some jurisdictions, but it would likely come with all the old baggage they used to come with ie. hefty impact fees!

@Henrik Moya

I can help you out without needing that $3k survey!!

Likely, we can figure a lot of it out by the publicly available maps and taking a few quick measurements on site and seeing what is allowed at your property

For costs, 650-750sq.ft, construction could be around the $400-500k mark, and soft costs (design, permit fees, etc) another $20-30k or so.

As for future rentals, consider a furnished mid-term rental. Less work that typical Airbnb but better cashflow than typical long-term rental. My own ADU projects have been very successful here in the Bay Area with that strategy

Do DM me to see if I can help

Hi Brian,

Legally, this is really easy nowadays with the ADU laws in California. You would pretty much just submit for building permit, sometimes it needs to go to Planning Dept first, but depends on specific jurisdiction. Garage conversions are about as easy as it gets for ADUs, I am working on a 3-car garage conversion right now in South SF are we are looking at a construction budget of $270-315k. (I may be able to help find a GC who can be more competitive than that though)

Architects fees would be $6-10k, depending on how much design work we need to. Good news is you won't need structural.

DM me if you're interested in me helping you out

@Miguel Bueno

Did you have an inspection done when you closed on the home? That likely would've identified any structural issues? May be worth doing if not, that's likely your cheapest option to find out if there are any issues. Just make sure they can get into the crawl space.

Structural issues could well be possible to mitigate and might not be so bad once you have a GC onboard for the bigger project. Wondering why you reference the land rather than the structure? Is it known to be particularly soft soil in the area? Alameda has particularly soft soil and I know of people there who just did some underpinning work so you may well be able to avoid that tear down, but I'd say start with an inspection

@Alicia Marks

Had been ok but since I wrote that, I am don't think we will move forward with them any longer. Our contact led us to believe we could tweak the design but when it came to it, he said we couldn't and didn't explain why. That broke the trust and their layouts, in my opinion, are really poor, so we are going to explore our options again. If you only have 400sq.ft you need to use it as efficiently as possible which their layout just doesn't do.

@Bruce Woodruff - Such good comments! Love it. Some of those critiques are right on the nose and a large part of why I'm gonna do my own thing. Thanks so much!

And to everyone, these comments are so so good!! It's amazing what you can learn. Thank you and keep them coming

Great question Henrik, and speaks to a lot of what I want to achieve with my firm and breaking down that first steep hurdle in hiring an architect. It should be so much easier!
A lot of architects do ask for a site survey to start but really we shouldn't need it to find out if an ADU is possible. I'm adding a detached ADU for one client right now and even the City said they only ask for the survey if what's presented is not plausible, or we're pushing the setbacks too much. They know its a big expense for homeowners so only demand it if they have to. DM me for more info but we we typically use a combo of local assessors map, googlemaps, checking the relevant setbacks, and taking a few quick measurements to get that answer without spending much time/money on it!