All Forum Posts by: Max Gradowitz

Gas and electric? On your typical property absolutely 10000000% the tenant pays that. I would never offer to pay that as part of the rent, it's not a "fixed cost". If they run up that bill absurdly high, you as a landlord can be losing money fast if you offered to pay that. No way, I would never consider it unless circumstances were such that I absolutely had to.

Now, there are rare exceptions. One property I've seen was a duplex but not separately metered. I think it was unpermitted. Anyway, 2 units, 1 bill each month for both unit's use. So if one tenant uses a ton of power, and the other uses very little, it's not fair to have them split it 50/50 each month. The person I knew that owned that property paid the power bill and just charged higher rent, but they didn't have any other option that was fair to both tenants.

The way I look at it is if any cost is based on how much the tenant uses, they pay it. Most water bills are metered just like power, but I had a property in an area with a mutual water company that charged a fixed monthly fee for water no matter how much water you use (yeah, shocking, but its true!). I rented one place where the landlord paid for the fixed water bill, wifi, and satellite tv for me. All included in the rent. It was awesome. I still paid the PG&E though lol.

It will likely have to go through probate, since the owner is deceased and therefore cannot sign off on selling it right now. Once it's in probate, the court oversees the sale or transfer of the property. If all heirs are on board with selling it, the court will oversee the sale so that it goes on the open market in order to get the highest price possible. So, I think the only way to buy it would literally be to keep track of it until it gets listed for sale. In my area, probate sales are listed on the MLS like regular sales.

But, if you do buy it, then yeah you just evict the squatter. It's a bit of a headache, but likely worth it if you get a good deal on the property.

What I used to do (I'm also in California) is look up the tax records, which are usually publicly available in every county I've checked with, to see what the property is described as. Now that I'm an MLS member, this part is really easy, but I think I used to just search on the county tax assessor website in the past. Does it say duplex, triplex, two homes on one lot, etc.? That helps a lot because if it's permitted, it usually is reflected in these records. Not always, but it's a good sign.

The best thing to do is pull the permits from the county. That's really the only real way to know.

Lawyer up and evict.

You know what they say, you gotta spend money to make money!

I wrote a detailed post on Reddit about how I passed the CA brokers exam without paying for any course (only used free study sources in other words). Check it out here. Hopefully this helps. Good luck!

Don't know of any specific to multifamily, but virtually every major SoCal city has a regular REI meetup. I suggest looking at that city's thread here on BP. In my area, at the REI meetups there are plenty of investors/pros with multi-family experience willing to chat.

I used to find this information on the County Recorder's website of whatever County the property is in. I'm not sure if they still post that information. Now, my MLS access allows me to find this information very easily (only properties in my area though), but this might not be helpful if you are not a member of that area's MLS.

There are a lot of reasons why I would not want or allow the buyer to enter multiple times during escrow. In my experience, the most common reason for denying random access while in escrow is if the condo is still occupied by the seller or tenants. Especially tenants. You can't just ask for 10 accesses during escrow on a tenant-occupied property for several reasons. But even seller-occupied, there are multiple reasons why they wouldn't want you accessing the property just for a mundane reason like measuring. In these instances, during escrow I try my best to schedule only ONE time to access the property with the home inspector and for you to measure, look around yourself, bring mom and dad and friends to see it, etc. That's it. Don't disturb the occupants with multiple accesses for mundane reasons, come on.

That being said, on a vacant property, I can't think of a good reason to deny an additional access to the property to take measurements. It's empty, just let them see it again. That would not make sense, unless I'm missing something.

My understanding is that the statewide eviction moratorium in CA is still effective until the end of this month. This states tenants can submit a declaration of loss of income due to COVID and pay at least 25% of the rent amount, and cannot be evicted for not paying the full rent amount. Word is that it will likely not be extended past Sept 30. But, the last time it was set to expire they announced it would be extended just days before it was set to expire, so we shall see what happens.