Friday Trivia on addressing rent increment

[Vijay Jain]

I inherited tenants who are on month to month lease when are purchased multiple SFR in central valley CA about 6 months back and after purchase I pass on Sewer and water bill to them (old landlord was paying for that too )

I have two question :

1. They currently pay $650 as rent and going rent in area is $850 and rental demand is high and I checked there is no rent control in city, what is good way to increase rent and how much (I am planning to increase rent by $75 to 100 and indirectly I already increased by $50 in sewer and water bill as I mentioned above).
2. These is a lease clause where I need to maintain swamp cooler installed on roof , I want to remove that clause too, what best way to approach this, so I am in compliance.

Additional note : these tenants are on month to month lease but living for over 3 years and ent in that area is increasing consistently.

[Rajeev Kotyan]

@Vijay Jain: First and foremost a question would be did you have the tenants execute a new lease which names you/or your entity as the new owner of the property, if not, I would do that... which in your case it should be easy as your tenants are month to month. When you are doing that, you can make all the changes to the lease agreement as you please, including increase of rent as well as swamp cooler maintenance.

The question with regards to how much to increase, for that look at couple of factors: (1) how much would the tenants be able to bear (for which you would have to do a new background check on your tenants), (2) how much time would it take you to find a new tenant (if this tenant decides they do not want to pay the increased rent and would prefer to leave), (3) what does the state, county and city laws state as to the rent increase cap (if any).