All Forum Posts by: Joel A.

While it makes sense to fix and sell to recoup, that appreciation in 2021 does make one consider holding.  CA appreciation does continue to be crazy, even in the boonies like Mo Val lol.

We did apply for Covid rent assistance, but unfortunately in this area it requires input from the tenant. The tenant has not been compliant and so this is off the list, although at the very least it will show that we at least tried to apply on our end. 

 They would've been out by now in a more landlord friendly state.

Agreed @Bruce Woodruff it is sad to see the state I grew up in become a farce. I also get the feeling the powers that be here will double down on their draconian measures for years to come, with more cities adding rent control and more regulations to housing providers. I can see why Bruce Norris sold most of his CA holdings. In the city of LA there’s been a rent freeze since the pandemic started, with no end in sight. They say for a year after the state of emergency is lifted, but who knows how long this ‘state of emergency’ will last as long as covid is around.

I also heard of the net migration number out of Cali, NY, and Illinois. It’s just the beginning IMHO, so I’ll be skating elsewhere to where i think the puck is going. That is of course, unless a good deal falls into my lap!

Appreciate the insight into your area @Bob Okenwa I’ll consider visiting the area on my next visit to AZ.

Thanks for the well wishes, hope you crush your RE goals in the new year!

@Franco Montano 

Agreed, the current climate in California is very anti-landlord and anti-business… which has me also looking to other states for my next rentals, possibly AZ, TX, or FL. Like you said, I’m planning to also pursue other damages to the property but I won’t be able to tell until he actually gets out. So i’ll have to file two cases, one now since I know where to find him and can serve him, and perhaps another later. If I wait till he’s out to file the small claims case the attorney said there’s a chance he’ll disappear and therefore lose our chance to serve him. Zero chance of payment on the judgement sounds about right, at this point I'm not expecting much of anything. Crazy world we live in when you can cause substantial financial loss to someone and not be held accountable for it. Too many people like this get away scott free. In California down is up, and up is down, but I digress... Thanks for the suggestion with the write off, I’ll keep that in mind when talking to my cpa. 

@Bob Okenwa 

We thought about cash for keys early in the process, but knowing how dishonest and unethical this tenant has proven to be just decided to go with the eviction, thinking that he likely wouldn’t follow through anyway. This tenant had a track record of saying one thing and not following through time and time again so I thought why bother. He actually offered to buy the house and really wanted to stay. The eviction was the only foolproof way of getting him out for good.

I’ll look into your idea of selling the judgement and weigh the options when the time comes. Thanks for throwing that out. Hopefully he’ll be out by January so I can start fixing it up to sell. I see that you're in Peoria. I heard there's been more development in the area, how do you like it as a rental market?

So I've been dealing with one of those ‘tenant from hell' types for the last couple years in my SFR in Moreno Valley, CA.

He’s been violating city codes by illegally operating an auto repair business on the premises.

He’s been notified to stop several times by the city, myself and my property management company. He was several months behind on rent and continued to defy the city’s demands to comply. I served him a 60 day notice to vacate last January and proceeded to file for eviction in March 2021.

Since then it’s been a long ordeal of waiting, attorney fees, lost rent, city citation fees, and going back and forth with the city, management company, and the tenant. The tenant was being advised by an attorney throughout this process by delaying responses and filing bogus motions to prolong the eviction. Below is a summary of what happened, so that other landlords can get an idea of what an eviction in California might look like… particularly in Riverside County.

January 2021- Served 60 day notice to vacate

March-2021 eviction filing, tenant given x amount of time to respond and waited until the very last day to respond.

May- tenant files for motion to quash, hearing set for June 11

June 2021- tenant files for covid19 related financial distress

June 28- Covid hearing

July 22 - trial set for August

August 11 trial- tenant claims habitability issues and claims $7k of work done on the property. Our lawyers agree on a settlement amount with the tenant agreeing to a payment plan, as long as we seal the eviction from his record. We get a judgement stating tenant is to leave within 60 days. We were supposed to have the writ of possession sent to the sheriff by October.

Sixty days pass, and no writ from the court, and the tenant doesn’t follow through with the payment plan. The courts are reportedly way behind due to Covid.

October passes, November passes, then finally in December the court says they sent the writ of possession to my attorney’s office. Unfortunately my attorney says he never received it. So they wait a bit, and three weeks go by and it looks like the writ got ‘lost in the mail.’ So now my attorney had to file for a lost writ of possession and request a new one. So I’m back to playing the waiting game for who knows how long.

While I wait for the new writ it looks like the tenant will have lived in the property a year for free without paying rent. My loss on the property is approaching $30k including lost rent, attorney fees, city citation fees, not to mention a lot of wasted time. I plan to file a small claims case to try to recoup some of this, but unfortunately my property manager says in his experience it’s very hard to actually recover money in a judgement. He says to expect no more than 5-10% recovery, if anything at all.

My question is what % of judgements are landlords actually collecting/recovering in cases like these? Curious to see what other landlords have been experiencing in similar situations.

Looking forward to the presentation @Sammy Lyon

Thanks @Will Barnard for the clarification. I wanted to add an adu to a fourplex with the hopes of getting a valuation based on the income approach vs the comparable sales approach since technically it would be 5 units. But it seems from reading the other posts about ADUs on here that this would not be the case since an SFR with an ADU is not considered a duplex, a duplex with an ADU is not a triplex, etc. Have you had any luck adding an ADU to a multi and how was it viewed/valued by the lender/appraiser?