All Forum Posts by: Seth Borman

You're trying to shift costs onto your tenants. Don't do that. They'll figure you out.

Rent control is always local. LA County doesn't have rent control. Los Angeles does.

It's not exempt. It's a completely different animal.

 Solar properties are far more sensitive to consumption because the equipment costs so damn much.

Yes, it makes sense, because W/Ds are the most maintenance intensive part of a rental home.

 Condos are very sensitive to price shifts. They ride the market like a roller coaster. In hard times they can be bought at steep discounts. I would recommend that you buy condos when they are cheap and sell them when they are not, and rent them in between.

Also, with a condo you need to do your due diligence on the condo association. If they experience unscheduled maintenance, high foreclosure rates, or start to enter the condo death spiral you need to know about it. 

They are very different, in the US at least.

A condo has a legal structure in which each condo can be sold separately. An apartment is designed to be owned and rented by one entity.

A condo doesn't have to take the same physical structure as an apartment. They can even be single family homes that sit on a common lot.

In practice, a multifamily condo development will be different on an operational level. The units are often larger. They are more likely to have a washer and dryer in the unit. Condo owners pay a fee for maintenance of the building, common area and amenities.

Depends on the neighborhood. If the people there are poor enough they will be grateful for a clean, healthy place to live, regardless of how close the neighbors are.

Disclaimer: My idea of a C neighborhood is probably most people's D neighborhood.

I'm no planner but I will give it a go.

Looks like you can have 50% lot coverage with a .4 FAR (2,000 SF of building). Your garage, if you have one, is required to be in the rear. So you can build a single family home and an ADU but they can't total more than 2,000 SF.

http://planning.lacity.org/ordinances/docs/R1VariationZones/Proposed%20New%20R1%20Variation%20Zones.pdf

 They won't be amle to make their lot smaller than what is required for what they have on the site.