All Forum Posts by: Trudy Pachon

What would help, in my view, if my government tells me i have to stay home, then I should get compensated for doing that. A government is there to make life better for its citizens. I have to pay bills, food etc. I need money for these things.

SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that causes COVID-19. It is wreaking havoc in our economy, this is a fact. However, there are other facts to contend with. 

Death rate:likely between .5% and 10%, but we don't know. Testing not widely available.

Hospitalization rates appear high for severe cases. 

Hospitals can't handle influx of patients AND deal with all of the other hospitalization needs. Poor infrastructure, not designed to handle emergencies.

Decreasing COVID-19 burden (flattening the curve) allows access to hospitals for everyone, not just COVID-19 cases. 

Probability high that if no measures taken, deaths from COVID-19 AND all other any other illness/accident which requires hospitalization will increase. Auto accidents, heart attacks, strokes, infections, etc.

Clearly, COVID-19 is dangerous from the little we know about it. So why do I have to choose to risk my life to work, or stay home and starve? 

As a San Diegan who has been watching my local market very closely, I am starting to see small price reductions on homes in my micro-area of Oak Park/Redwood Village. I also have seen a few rent reductions as well. If you love the property and want to live there, then that's one thing and a fourplex is a great way to go. But if the primary goal is really an investment, why not wait for a good deal? 

I think prices are going to go down in my neighborhood and I would be wary of purchasing something full price right now unless there was some kind of opportunity to add value or it was a good deal. Why not wait it out for a minute and utilize your loan on a property at a discount? You may be able to negotiate better terms/deals with sellers here in the near future. 

In my view, this was an event that could have been predicted. We have long known that diseases, especially viruses, can pop up from animal sources. We know what happens when a new disease occurs that humans haven't been exposed to. Why don't we have systems in place to handle these things is what I'm wondering. It's not moral to just say "open it back up because... the economy". That's crazy. You can't have hundreds of thousands (or more) die due to exposure, lack of hospital space, and no government response. People will be pissed off and revolt to that as well. It's a lose-lose situation when you don't have systems in place for the inevitable. I would also hazard a guess that this could happen again. It's just a matter of increasing population, globalization, increased habitat destruction, climate change, and exposure to disease vectors. We need to have a way to deal with these things that doesn't put everyone out of work and business. 

We have been hit with 20% reduced pay and my husband's possible job loss, and loss of a tenant in our Mexico property. There is no way we can rent out that property now. We're just hoping we don't have no-pay tenants in our other properties.  But I'm staying at home because we don't have any other option. If I bring the disease home, I could unintentionally kill my husband who is immune compromised due to chemotherapy. It's just a ****** situation all around. 

@Tim G. 

Agree with you 100%. Blaming poverty on "laziness" etc. is so depressing. 

@Lillian Burke Thanks for sharing your informative articles and the movie.  I hope you are able to come up with some ideas on how to "do good while doing good"! It will be a challenge though. 

I would be very interested in what you learn. I am curious about this too and would love to see some good ideas here. But I am afraid this may not be the right place for that. 

Just as an aside, I recently heard podcast 333 about a guy who buys commercial property and then puts in laundromats. He includes positive TV there and also runs money management courses at the laundromat! It was really cool. He is doing quite well. 

https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/biggerpockets-podcast-333

I would not let anything slide, ever. If a tenant is late on rent, they get charged a late fee automatically. If they are more than 15 days, we start eviction. We do no accept partial payments. We should be first on the list to get paid since it's housing. 

We use TenantCloud and have it auto set up, so it takes a bit of the personal feel out of it. In your situation, since it's been going on a while, it would be hard to start implementing strict rental policies, but in the future, I would strongly suggest.

For now, I would get the person out as nicely, but as quickly as possible, if you don't trust them, which it sounds like. If you fear they are going to trash the place, you might even offer an incentive to move out.  If you really like the people, you could maybe try to work with them, but be clear, there are consequences for not paying rent on time. 

Good luck! 

Welcome Brenden! 

Thanks for sharing your plan. I love your long term plan of giving back and helping to conserve our oceans. I find that having my plan for the future and making it about my morals and values is incredibly motivating. 

I would strongly suggest attending any REI meet ups you can find and meeting folks who are doing what you want to do.

Best of luck in putting your plan into action!

@Dennis M.

It's not communism! It's more like a stupid non-data driven emotional decision for a complex social problem. Almost all economists agree rent control does nothing to solve this problem, which is a supply problem and wages/economic problem. But it's a real issue. Tenants getting out the pitchforks is not going to help any of us. We've got to fix this.

Oh wow! These make mine look like my property is on Easy Street! 

I inherited a tenant from hell in a two on one I bought here in San Diego. She lived in the front unit, and I lived in the back. They were separate houses. She seemed weird, but I thought I could deal. Soon, I discovered that her cat was preggers, and she had picked up a couple more. She wanted to keep all of the kittens, and wasn't too keen on spaying. I also discovered she liked meth. 

I decided to evict her when she refused to rehome at least some of the 12 cats she had. She wouldn't pay rent by this point, and she had weird guys coming over all hours. Her behavior became worse and worse, and she started threatening me and would scream at me when she was in the back yard. It made my life really painful for a while. 

I had to find a lawyer to help me get her out. Luckily, the guy I found was Harley riding biker lawyer who was willing to serve her paperwork himself. He was my hero! He was pretty intimidating.

So, when she left, the floors and the walls were full of cat urine, I had to remove the underfloors and part of the walls. Of course, it was a tweaker house, so you know, dump truck removal of the crap that was left and loads of damage. 

However, I consider myself really lucky that neither she nor her "friends" actually did me any physical harm. 

We are in College Area/La Mesa. I work in Clairemont. 

We're interested. Let us know when and where.