Responsible use of the ecosystem for livelihood and recreation I can accept with a system of licensing that pays for care of the habitat (I've paid thousands in licensing for the care of wildlife habitat).

In my State, an owner-OCCUPIED person can pull their own permit and do their own work. 

Especially in California, where recent laws have vastly expedited permitting for subsidized housing, you will likely be getting an ROI years sooner by going the LIHTC route... that's even though the financing is way more complicated, since all that work is on them.

You need permits for things like roof/HVAC which have no value, and a contractor who prices his profit margins added in.

A zoning variance that we didn't think we would need resulted in a 151-day waiting period for building permits.

Why would a licensed general contractor ask a home owner to pull their own permits?

How is pulling permits, working with the City on construction, even building ADUs?

Below are the details.http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/521/topics/173...Please join us if your schedule permits.

BUT they allowed me to do ALL the work, no permits required but they were on top of me every week for updates & meetings. 

From the pool of inquiries, there would have been much more applicants except I let people know that there were already too many applicants AND that they MUST meet my criteria of over 700 Credit Score, 45 times monthly rent AND have a healthy savings account to weather the lockdown.I chose the best applicant who made $200k per year and had $200k in savings as well as over 700 FICO.Apts like mine in buildings like mine are incredibly desireable now.Basically, there's a huge problem with skyrises and Pandemics.People are afraid that if they get into an elevator that they could be trapped in a small space with someone that has the virus, which will then transmit it to them.Also, the management for the skyrise buildings are not permitting IN PERSON showings AND many are not allowing moving in or out of the building because of the risk of increasing the transmission to vulnerable tenants within their buildings.That narrows down the amount of available apts.Buildings like mine, non-Elevator walk up buildings which are low density and separate Garden Apts, are now the most desireable buildings to own in a Pandemic in NYC, as I am seeing anedotally.However, this is only true if you are in the right kind of City, where most of the buildings will be very large skyrise elevator buildings where there are huge amount of renters.Adding to the attractiveness of low density buildings is the fact that NYC is the EPICENTER of the COVID-19 pandemic.Yes, this is one single datapoint.