I didn't begrudge folks who were in a better financial position than me for driving up RE costs.

So for January, while we might only have $20k from rental income and a $55k property tax bill, we were still cash flow positive because we used the reserves to pay for the property tax.

Think the government is hoping the investors will be a net positive to the economy and help with the recover... time will tell if that works or not.

I'm trying to asses what financial impact this change will have.

Even the LADWP is a pain to deal with and anything electric can linger for months if not years in this cityFor that reason, i would recommend to absolutely avoid any interaction with the city unless you do really heavy work that would have significant impact on the appraisal like maybe adding bedrooms and bathrooms or adding lots of square feetThe current system doesn't reward doing the things by the book; you actually will be way ahead doing things on your own and just comply if you get an order to comply one day (very unlikely anyway).

Otherwise, you can get a conventional loan as low as 3% down, but 5% is easy to get with decent credit.If you are in a position where you won't qualify for FHA or owner occupy, I would recommend looking into private money loans.

A much better position to be asking for money from people.

Nothing impresses like high positive cash flow but don't let them know you are actually buying your cash flow as opposed to your property generating it.

You don't want to be in a position where you have all your cash tied up in a property and then a furnace goes out and you don't have the cash to repair.

They typically don't make repairs unless it will somehow impact their bottom line (code violations for example).