CA Landlords. What do you plan to do if the rent control initiative passes in November?

[Escoguy]

I have five rentals, if I leave the rents flat for all 5, then compared with 5 years ago, my income would be $19400/year less or 97K over 5 years.

I had to cut the rent on one foreign property by 45% but fortunately the four in SD county were able to make up for this and then some.

I’m almost 50 and if I live another 30 years, that would be almost 600K of lost rent even if I don’t increase any more going forward. So there may be cases were keeping the rent flat is justified but one needs to look at the big picture.

I didn’t raise the rent on 3 this year for different reasons. One is a widow, one truly has an excellent attitude, one is outside the country and I don’t want to deal with changing. One has an automatic escalation clause and will likely stay 3-4 more years. The one I did change didn’t accept it and it appears I won’t have any difficulty getting a new similar quality tenant at the higher rate.

[Hatfield]

Your math assumes that you’ll be able to dovetail one tenant’s move-in the day after the previous tenant leaves. In reality, you may have to patch and paint and do a bunch of other non-essential deferred maintenance that you wouldn’t have had to do otherwise, and collect zero rent and consume a lot of your time looking for a new tenant, who may or may not turn out to be be a pain in the ass. I do pretty extensive tenant screening. It’s time consuming.

I guess it all depends on what your time and sanity is worth. For me, I don’t see the point in chasing an extra 3 percent per annum if it means I have tenants turning over every year or two. I’m making a solid return as it is. I’m fine with that. I don’t need to chase every last penny.

[barnaby33]

What does, “fairly extensive tenant screening,” mean? I would love to learn about techniques.
Josh

[poorgradstudent]

I don’t think rent controls did much to help the housing markets in NYC, SF.

Really it comes down to getting pasty NIMBY, anti development people. Develop all the closed golf courses. Build high density housing, especially near the ocean. Develop mass transit to support housing without overloading the freeways.

When demand exceeds supply, you need to boost supply. Rent controls don’t really do that.

[flyer]

After 20+ years of having rentals, we’ve found that careful initial screening of all of our tenants has saved us a lot of time going forward, and then we evaluate rent increases on a case by case basis.

[Myriad]

Wow… city council just made refusing to consider renting to Section 8 illegal.
https://fox5sandiego.com/2018/07/31/city-considers-measure-to-prevent-housing-discrimination/

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=Myriad]Wow… city council just made refusing to consider renting to Section 8 illegal.
https://fox5sandiego.com/2018/07/31/city-considers-measure-to-prevent-housing-discrimination/
[/quote]

I think it’s fair. landlords should consider total income…. not source of funds.

But in this hot market, section 8 won’t fly because there is rent ceiling for them.

[Myriad]

well, it should almost be like getting a home loan. Assets, income, history.
So as a landlord, it’s not just total income, it’s quality of income and history of on-time payment. There’s also more paperwork to do, at least in the past – not sure what the city is doing to reduce that.

[Myriad]

well, it should almost be like getting a home loan. Assets, income, history.
So as a landlord, it’s not just total income, it’s quality of income and history of on-time payment. There’s also more paperwork to do, at least in the past – not sure what the city is doing to reduce that.

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=Myriad]well, it should almost be like getting a home loan. Assets, income, history.
So as a landlord, it’s not just total income, it’s quality of income and history of on-time payment. There’s also more paperwork to do, at least in the past – not sure what the city is doing to reduce that.[/quote]

Yes. Section 8 is 100% quality and on time.
What I worry about is quality of tenant. How clean and respectul.

A friend just rented his 3br house on a 2 year lease to a single lady. No husband and kids to destroy the house. He’s so happy.

[Author]

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