The End of Rent Control, the Catastrophe in Capitola and the Great Santa Cruz Land Swindle – by George Drysdale

As we learn in economics classes, just about the worse form of price control is price fixing land rents (rent control). Property rights at first and then financial damage to the community are enormous. In the U.S.A., rent controls are relatively rare. Virtually all the history of rent controls is in Europe. Hundreds – even…

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Something to Think About #14- Measures of Value – By Klarise Yahya, Commercial Loan Broker, DRE: 00957107 MLO: 249261

Value means different things to different people. To a banker, loan value is determined by whether or not the building is likely to generate enough income to pay its expenses and meet debt coverage ratio (DCR) guidelines. It meets value or it doesn’t. An investor might have additional perspectives. While any mortgaged investment must first…

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Gauging Your Liability in Case of Tenant Injury or Death in an Earthquake – By Peter Reitz and Lee Kanon Alpert, Attorney at Law

On April 9, 2013, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance making it mandatory to seismically retrofit approximately 2,800 soft-story buildings, those defined as wood-frame residential structures with five or more units and three or more stories with weak first stories. There are roughly 4,300 such buildings. Owners are required to pay a…

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