All Forum Posts by: Amy T.

@Caroline Yu

@Arlen Chou

@Ned Carey

Your posts were packed with good info. Taking notes. Thank you!

@Ned Carey - yes, I have read about constructive eviction. And that was the basis of my question. I do feel like we did everything in our power to remedy the situation (and the new tenant knows this). We responded quickly to both issues - the smoke and the hostility. As confident as I am that we couldn't have done more in those circumstances, I don't have any confidence in our court systems as a landlord.

Oh my gosh, I woke up to so much GREAT advice! Thank you all for chiming in. Especially those familar with renting in California - it really is it's own beast. 

I don't have time to reply to everyone's individual comments right now, but I am reading them all and taking notes. 

I do want to respond to the question about the smoke. At the initial showing of the middle unit there was no detection of second hand smoke. The new tenant was not guaranteed a smoke-free premise although her lease told her she couldn't smoke in or out of her unit. Funny enough on the first night new tenant lived there, Smokey came over to introduce herself and asked if she could light up on the new tenants patio and was told yes. Smokey proceeded to hang out for a couple hours and the new tenant said she was "chain smoking", but never asked her to stop or say it was too much. I understand not wanting to be rude on your first night in a new place, but she clearly was ok with some smoke. Personally I hate smoke (it makes me feel ill) and would never let anyone smoke in my surroundings if asked. 

@Mike Easton  the ONLY thing I can come up with that might explain the smoke infiltrating the unit when the new tenant moved in is that the new tenant brought with her and set up some sort of bedroom window A/C unit that vented air outside. Could the suction/draft/venting somehow caused the smoky air to get pulled into the unit? I'm not sure, but my husband thinks that was the cause. There is an adjoining set of doorways between the 2 units, like a hotel room. They are 2 exterior doors with weather stripping, and styrofoam in between them (long story of why it's like that). Anyhow, I believe that is where the smoke is coming in. It has been like that for at least a year with no smoke seeping in, but I wonder if that A/C unit had somehow created just enough of a draft between the 2 units to pull it in. Now that the new tenant is out (along with her A/C unit) will see if there is a change. 

To add more clarity to the situation, everything went down very quickly. We went from finding out about the smoke and sending the initial letter 2 weeks ago today, to being called that Smokey was being hostile this last Monday, to giving Smokey the 60 day letter and trying to find smoke entry on Tuesday, to tenant saying she was going to move out on Wednesday, to her moving out on Thursday and doing the walkthrough on Friday/yesterday. Everything unravelled very fast. 

The good news is that Smokey emailed this morning saying she would be out by the end of the month. Fingers crossed that she really is. 

 2 years later and they still haven’t added the feature to refund security deposits. Come on Cozy!

They did finally add the feature to automatically add a late charge to late payments. It is so much better than having to do it manually. 

We used a vinyl plank click together flooring from Costco. It has been in 1 year and didn’t hold up well. We put it over an underlayment (the directions said you could place it directly on floor or use underlayment) and the edges have flexed and broken away in many places. We were in a time crunch and paid floor guys to install instead of doing it ourselves. 

We will be replacing a different floor very soon and want to do better this time. If anyone is able to share links of specific products they have used it would be much appreciated. 

@Frank Jiang great points.  I am a little concerned about that too. Although I should say we “suspected” she started smoking in the unit a while ago but that is the tricky thing about smoking, it’s very difficult to prove. During the last week we have spent enough time over there to be 100% confident that she is, but she was still denying it to our faces. She finally cracked when we told her we had been right next door for several hours. Then she admitted to smoking inside, BUT ONLY THAT NIGHT. It was the first time 🙄😂.

As for the dog, she always had an excuse- it was just visiting, or her mom was sick so she was watching it, then her mom died and she was finding it a new home, etc (which her mom did die and I think was the catalyst in her tailspin...very sad).  We absolutely made a mistake by not dropping the hammer at the first site of the dog. And by “we” I mean my husband. By the time I knew anything about the dog it had been going on for quite some time. It should have been dealt with firmly the first time. 

I’m afraid to mention it here for fear of getting clobbered, but we want her out NOW. It’s going to be very difficult to rent the middle unit until she is out. So we made her a Cash for Keys offer to avoid the 60 day wait and to avoid going through the eviction process. But it doesn’t look like she is going to take us up on it 😩. 

@Chris Purcell     👍🏻

@Mike V. thank you!!! Finally someone who understands where I am coming from!  This tenant was asking for $200 for the BABYSITTER she says she hired while she moved. She didn’t hire a babysitter when she moved in. She wanted money for her moving truck, yet she moved in with her own vehicle. There was no specific date she needed to move out by. She could have utilized parents, friends, etc. But because I know that CA favors tenants I wanted to make sure I wasn’t wrong in denying that request. That’s it! 

Didn’t realize I was opening myself up to such scrutiny here...

Next time I will preface my question, “please only reply if you are a LANDLORD in CALIFORNIA.”

 @stacey why are you hell bent on being rude? You completely missed the boat on what I was asking for. Thankfully some people here didn’t ✌🏽 

@Daniel Akerman yep, I was starting to feel defensive and even admitted to that early on. I appreciate your response. You have some really good ideas, but to get into all the cans and cants I would have to put our whole financial situation out there and I’m not comfortable with that for obvious reasons. Let’s just say we are talking almost 2 million dollars between our primary residence and this rental property.  Debt to income ratios are hard to maintain. 

Small world, our rental is actually in Livermore. So you are probably somewhat familiar with the CA market. Our plan is for this property to serve as a huge chunk of our retirement. While there isn’t much cash flow now, that should be changing soon, as we are going to be able to get more for Smokey’s unit after we gut it and update it. It’s a studio so it won’t  take much $, and my husband is a contractor so we will do it all ourselves. Also, the rental market is strong right now and we had really high dual income applicants. I expect to get some quality tenants this time around 🤞🏻

The long term goal is to have it paid off early by putting cash flow into principal payments  so that we can have a retirement income.  

Having rental property in the SF Bay Area isn’t easy. Properties are expensive, Property Management is expensive, property taxes are high and laws favor renters. We aren’t “investors” per se, we are a blue collared family trying to do what needs to be done so my husband can retire someday.