All Forum Posts by: Chase Alison Matthews

@George W. if you don't know what you are talking about, why comment? Teslas aren't VIABLE?! what does that even mean? They don't have Superchargers everywhere?! Of course not, they are never needed by Tesla owners unless they are driving cross country. The range isn't anything crazy? They travel every bit as far as your old gas guzzling truck or your cheap used sedan on a tank of gas... probably farther.

"How green are they really? You're still using electricity that most likely is being made at a plant that burns natural gas or fossil fuel."  First of all she said she has solar, so if she spends ten cents on gas, that would be ten cents more than she has to spend because she can charge for free using her solar. Its also zero emissions. Do you have free fuel for your old truck or sedan? NO! you pay handsomely for that fuel for the rest of your life. Also, not to get too much in the weeds here, but its pure ignorance when you say your electricity comes from a power plant so its dirty fuel. Dirty fuel compared to WHAT? An electric car running off of electricity from a power plant is still infinitey cleaner than a gas guzzling car for many reasons, but lets start with the obvious. Electricity by any method in the US (coal, Natural gas...take your pick) is cleaner than burning gasoline. Power plants have many scrubbers and devices to recapture both the energy and the pollution to clean it further before emitting it. These devices are not possible on a mobile car because the weight would be too much to make it an actual benefit on the car. 

Be careful not to take advice from people that have never owned an electric car. I find in these comments as I do in most conversations about electric cars and solar that those who have never had them have NO IDEA what they are talking about. @FrankWong you don't wait to charge a Tesla... ever... unless you are on a road trip cross country. In that case the car charges to 80% in 20-30 minutes. Which is about the time it takes to get gas in Southern California by the time you wait in line for an available pump, wait in line to pay and wait to fuel. When you own an electric car, you never think about refueling at all. Ive never waited for my car to charge. You charge the car when you are home or at work. It takes about 5 seconds to plug the car in. You never have to go to a dirty gas station again and get hit up by countless homeless people for money. You never have to get an oil change again. If you have solar, like me and like you said you have... its a no-brainer. You have free fuel for life. Only an idiot would invest in solar and then buy a Lexus. Electric cars are huge time SAVERS! You can also use the carpool lane saving more time while driving. Another fact that many have left out while touting Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) cars is that the three largest automakers in the world have announced they will not make a single ICE car after 2025. So no major US automakers will even make cars that take gas within 5 years. Pretending we have a choice going forward does not make it so. All cars in the US will be electric faster than you can imagine. They have cheaper fuel (33% cheaper than gasoline on average) or free fuel if you have solar. They need almost NO maintenance... no oil changes. They don't use oil. They are also much safer, MUCH faster than ICE engines and more fun to drive. The Tesla Model 3 is the cheapest all electric car by range. I would like to say that you can buy a used Chevy Bolt that is all electric for $25k that has a huge range (238 miles). If you chose that car instead sounds like you wouldn't have a payment at all. 

I just closed on three duplexes, C-class, in East Bakersfield, CA and need a good property manager there. My goal is to rehab the units as people move out and get some better tenants in some of the units. Anyone have any recommendations of someone you really like? I found one property management company, but just want to do my due diligence and compare them against two other companies. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Investment Info:

Small multi-family (2-4 units) buy & hold investment.

Purchase price: $550,000
Cash invested: $185,000

Owner-occupied duplex. Would cash flow $1800-$2000/mo if we rented out the owner's unit. As is, rents cover 82% of the mortgage, limiting our cost of living expenses significantly.

Because we occupy one unit, we improved the property differently than if it were a straight up rental. We've added solar to the whole property, whole house water filtration system, drought tolerant landscaping and tankless water heaters.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

We are performers, and performers have very irregular income. We wanted to limit our cost of living expenses to mitigate this issue, and the best way we found to do that in LA was to buy a multi-family property and live in one of the units. Our ideal property was one with at least 1 vacant unit.

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

In 2017, South Central LA was only just starting to get hot. We found this property doing our own legwork and were able to make an offer that got accepted. Though we found the property on our own, we did have an agent negotiate the deal and were able to close in 30 days. This property had just been rehabbed by a flipper and was totally vacant, allowing us to occupy one side and find the perfect tenants at market rates for the other side.

How did you finance this deal?

30-year conventional financing.

How did you add value to the deal?

We improved the property as an owner-occupied, not a straight rental, so we did spend more. Total improvements were $80,000.

What was the outcome?

Our property just appraised for $770,000, more than $200k over what we bought it for 2 years ago.

Hello BP!

My fiance and I have owned an owner occupied duplex in Los Angeles for the past two years. It has appreciated about 36% in that short amount of time. We want to buy another 2-4 unit multifamily rental.  We were looking in Los Angeles, but nothing really cash flows enough. We started looking in Bakersfield and we like the cash flow and prices much better. What we don't know is how landlord tenant law/regulations in Bakersfield differ from that in Los Angeles. We are very familiar with the laws and regulations, etc. in Los Angeles, but are a little scared of the unknown when it comes to investing in the new market of Bakersfield. Does anyone know the key differences if any between these two markets? Just looking for broad strokes. We will have to get more specific as we start to close, etc.  We just wanted to get a basic idea of what to expect and see if any of the regulations in the Bakersfield market will effect our calculations we made on the properties.

Specific questions we have are:

1. Does Bakersfield have rent control?

2. Does the tenant usually pay utilities in this market? which ones? which utilities does the landlord generally pay? I know this is different on each property based on how many individual meters they have etc., but again just interested in what is typical for this area.  

3. Any other weird, unusual or unexpected regulations we should know about in the Bakersfield market?

Thank you! Any help is appreciated.

Chase Matthews and Alison Janes