I know, right? I got the Performance Improvement Report from the Grand Poobah…
You needed to spend lots of time on the Oakland property before?
Well, over the course of 25 years it just wears at you. I am busy already with work and elderly mom, so while I have a handy contractor nearby to take care of most things recently it still was just another thing to manage. Four units is four separate rental homes technically. Yeah, I know, you RE longholders are shaking your collective heads, going why sell now with rents being where they are? Again, for all those reasons I cited before. And remember, Oakland is rent control, so it was not like I could just jack up the rents at any given moment. If I had kids, for sure, I wouldn’t have sold. The worst thing to do would have been to sell and just pay Uncle Sam his cut right? No way, I didn’t work all those years on this place to just give Uncle Sam a few hundred grand.
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Did Oakland have rent control 25 years ago?
That is a good question, but probably didn’t matter because Oakland’s economy and the Bay Area rental market just was not like today. Remember, $1,000 - $1,200 for a small 2 bedroom apartment in an ok part of Oakland was actually decent for the longest time.
Did you consider to covert to 4 condos and then sell at a much better price? Is it feasible?
Isn’t wait list for condo conversion like years long? Maybe if dragonboy had started 15 years ago.
Coulda woulda. How about dragon bought in Sunnyvale instead of Oakland? Imagine how many multiples he could have made in those 25 years? 
Sunnyvale multiples in last 5 yrs would have outpaced the years before. Sunnyvale had a huge last few yrs.
Yes feasible and I would think the new owner might consider it. It would require some money because you probably have to fully sound proof each unit and for convenience sake separate out the water meter. The building is not in the areas of Oakland that if you did convert to condo you literally have to replace the units taken off the rental market with new rental units so itself is perfect. For now, I think the owners will just continue to rent them out for now and try to raise the rents by making one or two of the tenants move out.
I said good bye to the tenants this morning and cleared out the laundry machines for the last time. All keys have been transferred to RE agent.
Next chapter…
Guys, remember, we didn’t come from a family with a lot of money where making multiplier investments using leverage would have been easy. We were lucky enough to own the roof over our heads (with the aid of tenants). It is always easy to play Monday morning quarterback. I am just happy the investments that I did make turned out to be decent ones that should continue to appreciate in the future. San Francisco and south in San Bruno should be fine and we know all about Fremont.
Fremont tenants better start worrying, your cheap rent is about to expire…