In 2026, the Los Angeles Housing Department will allow a maximum rent increase of just $8.67 per month on the lowest-rent unit at this property! Meanwhile, the cost to operate this and other buildings continues to rise at an exponentially faster rate than the rents owners are permitted to collect. Insurance premiums, repairs, labor, materials, water, sewer, trash have all become substantially more expensive! Many of these costs are imposed or directly influenced by the very same government restricting rental income. Owners have virtually no control over these expenses. The City is making it increasingly difficult for owners to operate their properties in a SAFE & HABITABLE manner, yet if an owner falls behind on maintenance, they can face criminal penalties, habitability lawsuits etc. At what point does this become an unconstitutional taking under the Fifth Amendment?

The lowest water usage across our apartment buildings is on a building where all the tenants are on RUBS, (Ratio Utility Billing System). RUBS allows landlords to pass utility costs on to tenants in buildings where there is one meter for the entire property. Of course, RUBS is now under pressure from LA politicians and the Housing Department because they claim it's unfair to tenants. IT IS THE REASON we do not have water wasted at that property, because tenants know if something is leaking or a toilet is constantly running they will get charged for that water waste. Now take another building we own with 21 RSO units where tenants don't pay for water. We recently had an enormous spike in water usage. We went into all 21 apartments and found one toilet continuously running and two showers dripping even when not in use. Not one of these tenants had reported the issues to us. Because they don't pay for water. It's not their problem and they have no responsibility for the cost of the waste. If you want to save water, which all these Politicians claim they do, they should be making it easier not harder to pass utility costs on those who actually use it.

Great ads! Pretty much what we are going to get with her.

So many crooks in the plumbing business! We had a tiny gas leak behind our dryer. Couldn't get the usual guys in quick to look at it. Get a recommendation from a chat for another plumber who comes and says straight faced it will be $2,100. Politely tell him to kiss my ass. Plumber I work with regularly comes next day and does it for $250. I can't imagine what old people deal with trades people on electrical and plumbing.

I really believe she will be a net negative to housing production in this city. Investors will not buy in :(

SB 1123 deal. Owners brother lived in the house for past five years. No written agreement. No rent collected. Will State consider this tenant occupied and disqualify the property from SB 1123?

What could possibly go wrong if she wins 🤔

We are replacing the roofs on these 3 structures. $36K, going to hurt on this one in the current state of the market. Got me thinking about why more and more apartment owners are punting on necessary capital expenditures. For one, LA froze rents for almost 5 years during the COVID nonsense. However insurance, utilities, labor, materials and every other expense went through the roof. Then you had mandatory soft-story earthquake retrofits, SB 721 balcony repairs, and now insurance companies telling owners to upgrade just about every electrical system or lose coverage. These are hundreds of thousands of dollars of expenses incoming in short order. Everyone seems to think if you own an apartment building you’re flush with cash. Some owners are. Plenty aren’t. When your entire building’s rent roll is frozen for nearly 5 years, expenses are exploding, you’re being forced to spend hundreds of thousands on mandatory upgrades, and then your loan comes due at twice the interest rate, what do you think happens? Owners start punting on necessary capital expenditures. Roofs, plumbing, etc. Eventually tenants feel it too. Roofs start leaking, plumbing fails etc Our politicians don’t seem to think about any of this. They just assume every owner has an endless supply of money to throw at these buildings. And now here comes your socialist mayoral candidate, whose next big idea is to create yet another city enforcement dept to go after landlords and penalize them more. You can’t freeze revenue, explode expenses, mandate hundreds of thousands in improvements, and expect things not to start cracking. LA has an aging housing stock that requires more investment, not less. Yet somehow we’ve created an environment where the economics of maintaining these buildings is getting worse every year. There aren’t any great choices for Mayor right now, but one is clearly going to have to appease to her DSA base with policies that will break a ton of RSO housing.

This really sell for 7.7 X gross? Almost $2M off the asking price. Anyone know what happened here?

Reminder that @nithyavraman pushed for vacancy control in CA as recently as 2024, by openly supporting proposition 33! Pro housing bloc keeps saying Raman looks and studies the data, and isn't really that Socialist. The data has been pretty clear that this type of vacancy control has taken 60,000 apartments off the market in NY! Either Raman isn't following the data, or she's putting DSA ideology ahead of it. You can't keep calling her data-driven while ignoring the policies she actually supports.

One of the worst rent rolls you can see for a rent controlled LA building. Believe it or not this was listed for $4M at the peak and even got into escrow. Would love to see the buyout negotiation for the 3BR unit paying $289.

If you solve housing affordability and homelessness the current batch of LA politicians and their allies go out of business. They are not going to allow that to happen.

As of now the ULA tax is responsible for bringing less then 1,500 apartment units to market.

Was looking at a deal recently where the seller and broker were advertising a vacant unit. When we toured the property, that unit was occupied. They told us not to worry. It was a family member of the seller who would move out at close of escrow. Turns out, the seller had allowed this family member, who was less well off financially, to live there rent-free for over 10 years out of the goodness of their heart. No lease and no rent payments, just a verbal agreement that he would leave when the property was eventually sold. Well, now the family member is refusing to leave. Any buyer looking at this deal now has to underwrite an uncooperative occupant, a potentially drawn-out eviction process, and an uncertain outcome. Not sure what kind of rental amount if any you can place on this person after close under the RSO. If you're going to let family members live in rent-controlled housing in LA, strongly suggest putting the terms in writing and having an eviction attorney structure it so you don't get burned at sale. A person like this can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars on the sale.

Some good news for LA apartment building owners? What does this mean for rents in the next 12-18 months?

The most common question I get when building ADU's: Where will everyone park? 1. It's still rough renting apartments without parking. You get less rent for non parked units, it takes a lot longer to fill the vacancy, and the credit quality of the tenant is generally worse. It's all a matter of price though. 2. I do think we are 5-10 years away from most people having a car that will go find parking on the street and come back to get you when you need it. Go check out the show Knight Rider from the 80's!