In what must have been one of the low points of her day, a young woman recently knocked on my door to tell me that she was from the San Francisco Tenants Union and wanted to invite me to a “Town Hall” to listen to Dean Preston, a supervisorial candidate talk to tenants about how…
Apartment Owners, Business Owners and Community Leaders Are Fighting Back to Protect Your Rights and Your Wallets! In 2014 the Los Angeles City Council and Mayor, working with Labor Based Organizations passed an Ordinance impacting all commercial business, including apartment owners, in Los Angeles. While the city picks up trash from residential and some smaller…
As I advised AOA members in this column five years ago, the biggest pitfall in any arbitration or litigation, including unlawful detainers, brought or defended by a family living trust is the failure of the pleadings to properly identify the trustees of the trust as parties to the proceeding.
As real estate investors retire, many choose to reposition their assets out of management-intensive investments (such as apartments, office buildings, storage, and mobile home parks) and into lower maintenance single-tenant NNN investments.
Having a written criteria list for your rental applicants is pertinent in your rental business and serves several purposes. By attaching a copy of your rental criteria to each blank application form, you are informing your applicant of a list of conditions that must be met for them to be considered as a future tenant…
The bad news for landlords is that BASTA is still going strong and appears to be growing. Recently, I was in the Downtown L.A. courthouse in Department 94, where all evictions are heard. There was a calendar of 54 unlawful detainer cases and of those 54 cases, BASTA represented 15 of the defendants. That means…
Red Flag if Rental Applicant is Not on a Current Lease! When screening and verifying prospective residents, the general consensus among landlords is to consider it a red flag if a rental applicant is neither on the lease nor paying rent at their current residence in which they are vacating. For example, if the applicant…
The End of Rent Control: The Epiphany in Silicon Valley – By George Drysdale Mostly because of Prop 13, rent controls got stuck in California. The financial and moral damage to the state has been enormous. This is best evidenced in the San Francisco Bay Area (now almost all part of Silicon Valley). Because of…
Question One: I have a tenant in Los Angeles, under rent control, who is a hoarder. She has stacks of boxes, newspapers, clothing and other items throughout her unit. Some of the rooms are so filled with items, that the room literally cannot be accessed. I have previously written to her demanding that this must…
For a variety of reasons, widespread negative interest rates probably won’t happen in America, at least in the near future. Below zero interest rates are hugely stimulative and wouldn’t be appropriate when government figures indicate growth over the last 12 months is somewhere above zero, depending on who is