All Forum Posts by: Justin R.

Justin R. again, thank you for the information and explanation, that gives me more to go on. I'm just in the planning stages with this project and I need to lay some concrete on my from yard and wasn't sure if I should wait on the concrete in case I needed an extra gas line but that helps a lot. I can move forward with the concrete without having to cut into it later. I appreciate you. 

@Justin R.

Thanks for sharing. Great info there. Regarding the solar situation. What about getting a PPE/lease or $0 down purchase financing and then offering free electricity to your tenants (while upping the rents)?

I see the flip side of this too.. By getting additional electric meters it's a 1 time payment and then the electricity payment is out of sight out of mind after that. 

Justine R. wow, lots of good info, I really appreciate your knowledge and willingness to share. 

I was thinking if my current gas meter would be enough to feed all three units or would I need to add an extra meter to have good gas pressure. The current gas meter is original to our house. The house was built in 1950's and it was a SFR.

Hello BP family, 

I've finally finished my granny flat here in San Diego, Ca. and have a tenant in it at this time. 

I'm now planning on adding a couple of bedrooms and a couple of bathrooms to my primary home and adding a second ADU, my question is how do I know if I need a second gas meter to supply gas to that other ADU or can I just get a gas meter with a larger capacity for all three units/homes? This will be my second ADU but my first build from scratch so I'm new to this whole investing and building process.

Any advise or direction will be a huge help and greatly appreciated. 

Thank you.

Hello my name is Irving Garcia I have been a BP member since 2019, actively listening to the BP podcast and looking to network now that I have decided to finally leave the 9-5 job. I recently graduated from Architecture School and have 6 years of experience with construction project management and construction cost estimating. I'm mostly interested in Small Lot Developments, and Flipping houses In San Diego California. 

Hey everyone! First I'm new to this world and also the site so excuse me if I mess up anything. I've been reading everything and learning a ton but feel generally lost in the sauce when it comes to pulling the trigger. I currently have a SFH with about 200k in equity located in Oceanside, Ca that's on a 15 year VA loan. It has negative cash flow but is rising in equity tremendously every year and once it's converted to a 30 year it will break even. Now I want to use that money to get my investing journey started but am stuck on the details. I'm wanting to pull as much as possible while not being required to have PMI which should be around 120k at the end of the day. Seeing as I won't be able to purchase much in California I am looking at adding an ADU "pay with cash" which would generate around $1300 cash flow but tie the money up. If I did that and then refinanced I'm hoping to be able to pull out the majority of the 120k investment but have heard ADU's are so new in this area that it might not appraise and I would be out of luck. Is this a viable option? I'm mainly looking at a cash out refinance but if anyone suggests a HELOC or different financing options I'm open to that also if it makes sense. Or if I'm on the wrong track and should take my money out of state then that is also an option at this point. I appreciate everyone who read this far and look forward to hearing different perspectives.

 >Which means we'd agree on most things. And where we didn't, we could happily agree to disagree.

I suspect so.  I agree with virtually all of your posts and understand your fear of the tenant friendly policies which at this particular moment seems were extremely justified.

>the party is being taken over by far left woke morons

Ironically I have a similar belief in the Republican party moving more right.  I also feel that that much of the Republican party has become less moral.  I will admit that democrat policies that seemed at the 2016 election to be extreme are getting closer to mainstream democrat (such as forgive education debt, a net worth tax, etc.).  So there has been a profound shift in the democrat party in the last 5 years.  My belief is it is a reaction to the shift of the republican party to the right (maybe both are in reaction to each other) and if we had the republicans of Mitt Romney or McCain (both I considered moral men) that there would not have been the shift left (or it would not have been as extreme).  

I still believe this vote is beyond what most democrats believe to be fair/right.  I believe most democrats believe that the property owner should have the right to move into their property.  I believe most democrats believe that the terms of the lease should be followed and if the tenant is unwilling to follow those terms (terms the tenant agreed to) that the owner should be able to make them leave and for the tenant to find a home that permits what the tenant desires but is against their current lease. 

I will say that votes show that the voters are often not as extreme as the politicians.  I point to the voters voting down a rent control provision, but the politicians less than a year later enacting statewide rent control.  It shows the power of lobbyists. There are a lot more tenants than LL and if it is the power of either lobbying group, the LL will usually lose even if the tenant position is not the position of the majority of the constituents (such as was the case with the rent control as evidenced by the vote).

This moratorium, if placed to a vote, I believe would get clobbered, yet it got passed by our County supervisors.

First of all, the argument that all it takes is hard work and determination to be successful has been shown to be complete bs most of the time. Yeah sure that might have been how it worked in the past but today the people who do the hardest work and work the longest hours get paid the least while people who sit in an office looking at emails make six figures.

Prices for everything have skyrocketed and the price of a home whether in rent or for a mortgage have skyrocketed and yet wages have stagnated. In 1975 a person could get a good job out of high school that would allow them to buy a house and raise a family on one income. Now, a person has to go to college and put themselves tens of thousands of dollars in debt just to get a degree that ends up being useless by the time they get it. Student loan debt is so high that it almost completely makes getting a mortgage for a house next to impossible for years and rents have been rising so much that most of us pay more in rent for a place we will never get to see any equity or benefit from only to have some stranger be in control of a basic aspect of our lives. We have to deal with the stress and uncertainty that forms from when you never know at what moment you may be kicked out of your home. A layoff, an unexpected illness, a death in the family—any of these things could end up being a complete life destroying catastrophe. Even something like a government shutdown or a pandemic can thrust you into a situation where you have to worry about potential homelessness because ultimately a stranger who is only concerned about their investment income is in control of whether you sleep on the street or not.

It’s really easy for someone to say “well they should have money saved up,” misses the point that it is increasingly difficult to do that. If a person is lucky they may be able to get a job making $40,000 right out of college. Or to make the math easier let’s say $36,000. That’s $3000 a month. Well they have to pay $1000 in rent usually plus another $300 in utilities, student loans may cost another $300, then they have to have food and gas and transportation costs and eventually it’s all gone. The only way many people can stay afloat is with a credit card but even that just becomes another expense. Raises are rare and almost always conditional, benefits are becoming less and less common or they are more expensive to obtain. Meanwhile “investors” are driving up the cost of housing everywhere and making it too expensive for all but the most wealthy people to afford a house or to rent. And then landlords and management companies have developed a toxic classist mindset that people are only poor because it’s their fault. Millions are being kicked out of their homes everywhere every year because the investors want to market to only the people with perfect credit and high income and they are being saddled with unmanageable and unnecessary debts by investors who take glee in ruining their credit and saddling them with this debt in the first place.

I mean who on earth really thinks it’s ok when a person is in the hospital for a few weeks to still charge a fee for everyday the rent is late. It almost begins to look like the goal is make the weight so crushing that they can’t ever get it off of them. A late rent of $1000 can easily turn into almost double that with late fees and additional charges that get passed onto the renter who is already trying to work their way out of the problems the emergency is causing.

People also like to use the excuse that “landlords have bills too. Mortgage, property tax,” and that is true. But you don’t get foreclosed on and lose everything for being a few days late. Banks don’t even charge a late fee until the 15th, and you’re allowed to pay whatever you can—they don’t insist on all or nothing the way landlords do. Property taxes are paid once per year and it can take over a year before a person loses their home because of property tax arrears. Usually it’s 6 months or more for a mortgage to go into foreclosure. And the entire time, payment plans and relief options exist. Renters get no such benefit. Some of you here brag about filing with the court on the third. In some places, the fact that the eviction was filed is a part of a persons record and can get them denied for a rental. So even when they pay and someone dismisses it, it can still hurt them for years.

So maybe the solution is government take over. I mean social housing works very well in Austria and much of Scandinavia. Because the current system is not working and is causing a host of social problems here. Many of our most pressing social problems can be traced to landlords and the entire real estate investing industry.

Homelessness? A natural consequence of evicting people over being three days late, which ruins their credit and places a scarlet E on them. Then, rental screening that is designed to shut out anyone less than perfect makes it difficult for them to live anywhere other than slums which leads to increased risk of illness, which is the next issue.

Going after evicted renters with judgements and garnishment and collection agencies ensures that if they even find someone to rent to them, they don’t be able to afford it because someone else is coming in and taking half of their money. Often, this looks so bad to an employer that the person ends up losing their job, if they haven’t already because or the instability no longer having a home can cause. Kids get ripped from their schools and their friends and have to adjust to somewhere new. Pets get abandoned or sent to shelters where they are euthanized.

The line has to be drawn somewhere eventually. There are more renters and former renters than landlords so ultimately no matter what you all do, you’ll be the minority. Even those of us who may previously have been more understanding or at least more tolerant of this broken exploitative system are now just sick of it. People are getting fed up with seeing millions on the streets while people who own more homes than they can live in complain about not being able to throw people out when they can’t pay. Or bragging about leaving homes vacant and driving up the cost of living everywhere.

Blame laws and regulations all you like but those are the only things keeping you all from being complete monsters. I know a large majority of you are just decent hardworking people who either inherited or saved and worked to buy your properties but there are some who would exploit their renters in a heartbeat.

I don’t know if a total takeover is best but we definitely need federal laws that protect people’s right to housing. Limits on tenant screening, source of income and financial profile protections, eviction record sealing, mandated mediation and payment plans for people who fell behind and making eviction literally the last possible option except in cases where the renter is putting the lives of others in danger. Nationwide rent and home price control, more social housing built but with better standards and more oversight. Just cause protections and a nationwide rent assistance program that will help anyone who makes less than $100,000 for up to six months when they lose a job or have an emergency that affects their ability to pay rent. And a nationwide right to council for anyone facing eviction.

What you are describing makes sense on the surface.  However, it is very much the socialistic mindset of many people from California (which is can say because I lived there for 5 years).  It's the idea that things aren't fair so the government should step in and help solve this problem.  

House affordability doesn't create homelessness.  Just ask yourself if you were renting in the home that you live in and the rent were to suddenly double, would you be homeless and living on the streets because you couldn't afford a home?  No, you would move out of the area, move in with relatives, or find a smaller home to live in.  Why?  Because you are able to problem solve and you likely have resources that you can lean on.  

What if you were to lose your job?  Would you become homeless?  No.  You would find another job.  Even if it made less money.  You would do what you need to do in order to not live on the streets.  So why are there people living on the streets?  It is primarily because of addiction and mental illness.  We have a drive to survive.  And people who end up on the streets and remain on the streets, either don't have a support system or they have burned so many bridges with their support system through their behaviors that their support system won't allow them to stay with them anymore.  Or they have mental illness or impairments that get in the way of them being able to be responsible enough to take care of themselves and hold a job.  Not only is my background in social work and I have studied extensively about social programs mental health, but I also own over 100 units of low income housing/trailer parks.  Some of our rents are as low as $400.  We some times have evictions in those parks.  The reason for the eviction comes down to their behaviors towards the other tenant in the park when they are high or drunk.  Or when they have other behaviors that stem from mental illness such as one tenant with dementia who has started undressing outside of his trailer in the middle of the street. We have evicted people from our properties for non-payment as well, but most of the time that is due to them lacking the problem solving skills to communicate with us about their situation so we can help them find a solution in order to avoid the eviction.  We just evicted a woman who was in our property for 11 months without paying because she used the CDC covid excuse to try to stay in our property as long as possible. After hiring an attorney and going to court 3 times, the judge finally did grant the eviction and her dad ultimately had her and her kids come stay with him.  She was surprised when the judge evicted her and the constable came to remove her from the property.  She had what's called magical thinking which is a cognitive distortion and asymptom of mental illness.  

Rent control or other government interventions don't solve the problem of drug and alcohol addiction or mental illness.

The other problem with socialist beliefs is, if you try to make it so that everyone can have equal outcome, which is what the left would like to see according to Kamala Harris' video on Equality, then we all suffer.  Are you familiar with the Pareto Principle?  Basically the principle states that there is a top 20% in many areas of life that produce 80% of the results.  For example 20% of the people have 80% of the wealth, 20% of athletes make 80% of the money in sports and so on and so forth (you can search the Pareto Principle on YouTube and find a ton more examples of this principle).  But my point is that if you were to take from the 20% that make the biggest contributions in every field and make sure that the bottom 80% got paid relatively the same or had the same benefits, it would likely diminish the drive of the top 20% and they would produce a lot less and it would not motivate the bottom 80% to do any more than what the do currently. Thus bringing down the production of the entire group or field.

So, whereas I agree with you that we as individuals and communities can and should do more to help those in need in our communities, I don't agree that the government is the answer.  The government was not created to do this.  The government was created to protect our rights to life, liberty, and property.  It was not created to make sure that everything is "fair." and when it doesn't appear to be fair, to remove the property from the top 20% and to distribute it to the lower 80%.  And when the government gets more and more involved in that arena, the outcome is that the government gets more power and the wealthy get more wealthy and the poor get poorer and more dependent upon the government because the government presents itself as a savior that will save the people from their oppressed situation (for a vote) rather than help them change their own situation and shift from the mindset of entitlements to the mindset of personal responsibility and progress.