1. You don’t like confrontation. Inevitably, you are going to have tenants who screw things up and need to leave your building. No one is going to care about it as much as you do, so you’re the one with whom the buck is going to stop. If you can’t stick up for yourself / … Continue reading “Don’t buy apartment buildings if…”
Category: Development
Bad miss
Rookie mistake today. Saw a deal on the MLS priced at $299,000. Looked pretty good, so, without waiting to talk to the listing broker, I threw together an all-cash offer for $260,000 and sent it over, figuring we’d settle at $280,000 or something. Got the following email back from the broker: “Sold for 340k just … Continue reading “Bad miss”
Done and done
Just finished leasing up a 5 unit Echo Park project we did with some partners. Leased all units between Wednesday and Sunday night of last week at rents ranging from $100-250 above forecasts. Read that again. On this deal, after paying us our fee, our partners own a brand-new, renovated apartment building for under 9x … Continue reading “Done and done”
Wading through crap
Regular readers know I deal mainly in apartment buildings between 2-20 units. In doing so, I run across all kinds of issues, including missing financial records, bad leases, lack of estoppels, un-permitted construction, city violations, etc. Many of these problems just don’t exist when you deal with larger assets. That’s because larger assets tend to … Continue reading “Wading through crap”
Everyone is stealing
If you ever think what we do is sit behind the desk and jockey spreadsheets, you’re wrong. Recently, we’ve been dealing with a rash of thefts by low-lifes. Heres a partial list of things that have been stolen from our projects over the past month or so: New copper plumbing and new electrical wires from one … Continue reading “Everyone is stealing”
My current inspiration
David Walentas of Two Trees Management. Who’s that? Walentas was in the business as small-time owner / developer in NY in the 1970s. Then, in the early 1980s, he made a deal to buy a bunch of warehouses in a then-ignored part of Brooklyn called DUMBO (“Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass”) for something like … Continue reading “My current inspiration”
Lessons from the bust
We finished selling the Better Dwellings portfolio in December. I have been dealing with getting all of the cash out to the investors, closing the entities, providing a final accounting, etc. This has, of course, occasioned some thinking about our strategy during 2008-2010, when the world was falling apart. Here are some of the lessons … Continue reading “Lessons from the bust”
How to get more affordable apartments in LA
In my opinion, the only way to bring LA rents down is to get more apartments onto the market. Given the city’s byzantine entitlement process, the fastest way to get apartments onto the market is through the adaptive reuse ordinance, which allows developers to convert old buildings downtown (and a few other places) into apartments … Continue reading “How to get more affordable apartments in LA”
It’s starting again…
Sacramento learning
Am writing this from the airport in Sacto, waiting to head back to LA to see Lucy and K-Man and then get back to work. Spent a lot of time today touring a very large apartment complex for some clients interested in buying it. We did a very thorough walk-through, which will, I think, result … Continue reading “Sacramento learning”