All Forum Posts by: Mel Selvidge

I've wondered the same for my place. 

Often when I write a review, I feel I'm communicating with the owner more than future customers.  Almost every guest at our VR has left us a lovely note/review in our guest book.  I wonder if they feel they've said their bit and see no point in the review.  Asking them for their feedback in person might result in the same thing?

I have a hunch who the landlord might be with that many units.  

Here's a link to some of the free tenant resources which you may have already seen:  http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/Rent_Stabilization_Bo...

Good luck to her.  

http://www.stearealtygroup.com/regions/Berkeley-re...  This brokerage in Berkeley is run by lawyers.  They can probably point you in the right direction.

San Francisco has way more TICs than Berkeley. All of my friends who live there have TIC flats. Tossing Oakland out there too to trigger some more local keyword alerts for you. Good luck!

Berkeley has rent control and a strong market for transient/vacation rental in pretty much every neighborhood.  The students are also a pretty captive renter pool.  The result is a small number (compared to demand) of units coming on the market for lease with sky-high rents.  

Rent control has turned into a bit of a golden cage for some of my friends.  Their fortunate on the one hand, but there's no way they can move with these rents.  Good news for the people who got in early, got in at the bottom, or the gamblers who bought places with negative cash flow banking on this happening.

The premise, as I understand it, is that everyone and her uncle is claiming that they need their pets as emotional support animals already, so why not make it fair for the folks who haven't figured out that loophole and grant all pets the right to housing in Berkeley.  I thought it was an Onion headline.

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Berkeley-con...

Happy Monday!  The rent control ordinances in your market could be worse!

Sorry…I forgot to post the craigslist link above:  http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sfc/apa?query=studio

I agree with what @K. Marie Poe is saying.  I wouldn't be interested in a tiny home in Iowa (except maybe as a vacation rental/private "house" instead of a hotel). 

When I moved to SF for grad school we used to marvel at how our counterparts in the midwest could by homes while we were still sharing bedrooms to get by.

This was my query just now for studios in SF.  So that we're comparing apples to apples, part of the appeal of tiny is that you get to have NEW as well as your very own, but in SF, new studios are essentially always in a multifamily.  A new 433 sq ft downtown can be yours for $2950.  For a primo Pac Heights address, you can have fine 0 BR for $3784, square footage not mentioned.  No pets.

I'm being a little hyperbolic with my examples, but seriously, $2K for basement studio in the avenues ("low rent") would be expected right now.  And that's monthly rent.  Say you get $125/night on AirBnB, that's $3750.  That's why people in SF rent out their own places by the night for part of the month and couch surf to pay the bills.  $60K per unit would cash flow no problem.  And it would probably appreciate too.

I've been having fun thinking about these and looking at some of the prefab options around.  (@J. Martin , this outfit is having a 2-day design/building workshop in Sonoma in a couple of weeks.)

My bestie just downsized to a 1 BR house and built a studio in her back yard with a 1/2 bath and outdoor shower (next to the hot tub). The studio is not a dwelling, so she was able to get an OTC permit in Oakland. I suspect that if she rented it, she'd be courting trouble. On the other hand, if she rents out her house, it's just a regular VRBO rental of a legal SFR.

Is there a city ordinance against camping in your own back yard?  I see that you can rent RVs for the purpose on AirBnB which is almost certainly illegal, but is it illegal if you stay there?  Maybe the "play" is to stay in the tiny house and rent the merely small one?

It's all fun and games until your guest gets busted for vagrancy at 3 a.m.  ;-) 

Although getting building permits in Berkeley is a glacially paced, NIMBY-centric nightmare, there is probably a way to do something tiny up to code and get a lot of positive free publicity for it too.  Just about everyone agrees that density in town is good, but there are a lot of people that are really anti-tall-building, so tiny is really the only way to get density without height.

This shipping container commercial "village" is slated to be created near my house.  A more recent article said that permits were being reviewed this month.  It will be interesting to see how it goes.