Newbie wanting to house hack in San Diego, CA

[Paris Ambush]

I've been researching REI for several months and think I want to start off with a house hack for my first deal. After visiting San Diego, CA last year, I'm considering it as my choice location, but I don't know what areas of the city are good for this strategy. Can anyone here from the area who has house hacked provide insight from their experiences? Are people actually doing this strategy there successfully or shying away due to the current state of the market?

Thanks!
Paris

[Dan H.]

Originally posted by @Paris Ambush:

@Frank Hinck interesting, care to elaborate why?

 I suspect he has read it somewhere and never been a LL in San Diego.

I have been doing this a while in San Diego.  My experience is with the vacancy rate so low, good, screened tenants typically pay their rent and take care of the place.  This is because if they do not, it will be very difficult for them to rent a nice place.  It is the power of vacancy rates below 3%.  

Our tenant criteria does not allow an eviction.  If you have been evicted ever, you cannot rent our units.  If any of your LL in the last 5 years have anything negative to say about you, you cannot rent our units.  Basically, we only rent to ideal tenants.  

I have lost a total of less than one month of rent from non payment between all of our LTR units.  We have had rentals for over 2 decades.  

Screen well and San Diego is an easy place to be a LL.  It has one of the lowest eviction rates anywhere.  This is mostly due to the consequences to the tenant of being evicted.  

now for the bad, previous to a year ago I could get rid of any tenant simply by raising rents above market rent. It results in them giving notice and ensures no blow back. A year ago, state wide rent control was passed for multi unit. This makes the increase rent not an option to get rid of less than ideal tenants. The same rent control rules also make it so that it is much harder to get rid of an undesired tenant via other means. Prior to the rent control rule, a tenant on month to month the LL could provide notice at any time. This is no longer the case. This only applies to multi unit; it does not apply to SFH.

Set your bar high for tenants and there should not be any issues.  

Good luck