Lily�s Diary

Staying in the Rental Business

by Lily

January 15
Ohmagod. I have a vacancy in No. 3 again. So I logged onto Craig’s List to see what the current prices were and there were (gasp) 600 listings added that day. Those in San Francisco are definitely lower than I’ve seen in years. The newer, Peninsula offerings would make you weep: “Free rent for first month,” “One-fourth off for first four months,” etc. Yes, I’m using Craig this time. See, I didn’t get any response from listing earlier on certain rental listing Web sites. Maybe in these hard times people looking for apartments don’t want to pay the fee they charge. Anyway, I figured, what can I lose? After three days, I got six hits. Three of them actually made appointments to see the unit. Although two were no-shows, the third one took—a nice American engineer with a Latvian wife.

January 22
I finished cleaning the empty unit yesterday. The bedroom and hall carpeting, there when I bought the building, still shows no sign of wear. But, boy, is it ever dirty. I figured maybe I’d have to spring for a replacement but my friend Robert insisted I try a non-water cleaning process he uses called Chem-Dry. It sounded better than renting the rug cleaner from Cole Hardware, so I decided to spend the money and try it. Well, all I can say is, I wish I owned stock in the company. The guy was in and out in an hour. There was no smell, very little dampness and afterward the carpet looked immaculate. He said he’d come back and catch any spots that appeared after it dried (which was only a few hours later) but it wasn’t necessary. Cost was $135.

February 3
Had lunch with my friend Maggie at Zazie’s on Cole Street today. She’s up to her ears in city politics—not only reads the Chron, Exam and Independent (quotes Samson Wong like she was dating him), but she ventures to the pages of the Guardian, a bridge too far for moi. She says that Supervisor McGoldrick, the darling of the Tenants Union, actually owns a house in Alameda that he rents out. Conveniently, there’s no rent control in Alameda. Unlike the rest of us, McGoldrick benefits from receiving market-rate rent for the house he owns while living in a rent-controlled unit here in San Francisco. We should be so smart?

February 5 Thank the good Lord that in its final version, the state’s anti-mold legislation is what I would call…weak. Don’t get me wrong. That toxic mold found in the Bayview units was shocking. As usual our stalwart reps tried to spin it into political gold, and anti-mold legislation hit Sacramento like a convention balloon drop. If you have an old building, as I do, you know that the bathroom ceilings and medicine cabinets are highly susceptible to mildew, and that the tenant is really in charge there. You can get in there and clean, but unless they are willing to change their habits in certain ways the mold comes back in a few weeks. Here’s how I handle it. After I scrub the ceiling, medicine cabinet, lower walls and any other place that shows signs of mildew (using 1 tsp. Clorox to 1 qt. water), I supply them with a forced-air portable heater and tell them to put it on whenever they take a shower or bath. I also ask that they leave the window and/or door open after bathing and to leave the cabinet door open when they go away for any length of time. The new law has several provisions, including the requirement for owners to supply tenants with a consumer-oriented booklet on mold and for owners to disclose to prospective and current tenants that mold exists in their units. However, section of the law won’t take effect for some time. My advice in the meantime is to put something in your lease to protect yourself.

February 12
Just as I was working my way up in the condo lottery, I find out that it won’t do me any good to convert unless I sell my property outright—in other words, go out of the rental business. In the past if you could get two-thirds of your tenants to indicate they would be interested in buying their apartment, you could convert the building to a condo. Then, a year later, you could raise the rent to market rate for those tenants who didn’t purchase units. (These units were still subject to the Rent Ordinance’s many rules but not those pertaining to raising the rent.) Well, not anymore. State Senator Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) has been at it again and passed a bill that says a condo only goes out of rent control when it is sold—in other words, after you no longer own it. She calls it “plugging a loophole,” and I guess it was, and I guess she did, but (sigh) it was a possibility I was hanging onto.

February 15
You probably read the news story last year about a young woman who became paralyzed because of falling from a back porch that gave way. My heart went out to her. This incident also brought up a pet peeve of mine, which is the lack of professionalism among many small property owners. How in hell was this allowed to happen? Of course, the sheer fact you are reading this column reveals you are not likely to be slipshod in your building management. However if you’re like me, you probably have friends who treat their property as a hobby. During the holidays especially, I encountered old friends who clearly believed I was taking this whole landlord thing much too seriously. There’s the attitude that “Well, when I retire and it becomes my main source of income, then I can devote some time to finding out what the Rent Ordinance is all about.” These are the kind of landlords who get themselves into a heap of trouble because they never inspect their properties, are unsure about the current status of their tenants’ roommates and do not know who owns the bike stored on the back stairs. The deck accident probably could have been prevented. I’m not talking about the city inspection that was apparently overdue, but about a property owner who should know if a deck is weak. If there was ever an object lesson for rental property owners, this tragic accident is it.

A long time rental property owner who reserves the right to remain anonymous on the grounds that her tenants might gang up on her writes Lily’s Diary. The opinions are hers and do not necessarily represent those of the SFAA or the SF Apartment Magazine. . © Copyright 2002.