Too it apart with a cutter.  

I’ve been looking at SFRs mainly (and multi-fams very lightly) in El sereno, montecito heights and Whittier (hills) for views; NoHo, Lake Balboa and Van Nuys for the pools (“southern” area hear freeways and Ventura Blvd, to be near or adjacent to energy/people and not too alone/isolated), signal hill (non-cookie cutter homes) a little, for views and ocean.

If a house is less of a cookie cutter or has a  location or layout that might be an issue for some people I think you are better off showing pre-application. 

I personally use wire cutters and twist my wrist against floor for leverage.

He decided my basement suite is unauthorised, as are about 98 percent in this city.. but if I wanted to keep it I had to get it authorized... this was a giant pain it the ***Improve this and that... some of which I'm glad I did like hardwired interconnected smoke and CO2 alarms, couple of fire egress windows..etc..But someone way back, probably in the 80's had rigged the electricity and bypassed the meter, and so my electric bill was half of what it should have been for years.The electrical inspector saw this and made me put a utility pole outside with meter on it.

@Fiona Layne and @Christopher Cutter, feel free to reach out to me. 

What types of properties are you looking for (e.g. cookie cutter SFH, duplexes, rural w/land, etc)?

I would limit myself to what cookie cutter homes were available.  

So many of MFR deals are off market and appraisers aren't always educated/slick enough to figure it out if it is outside their vanilla consumer cookie cutter neighborhood appraisals.

@Paul M.1 pipe cutter $62 shark bite tees $91 shark bite valve $181 piece pex pipe $3The job will take 15 minutes and they will have hot water again.