The county is safe. I’m in king county. All the laws are state or city level. Bellevue is nice. I looked there quite a bit along 520. If you need to use 405 to commute, it’s 101 bad. If you commute 520, then you pay the toll to cross the lake. If you’re working in Seattle, you can shop on the Seattle side of the lake and get a larger house, easier commute, and better schools than most of Bellevue. I was surprised Bellevue schools are only good in the most expensive areas.
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“ Lawmakers on Thursday announced a package of rental housing legislation that would cap rent increases statewide and allow local governments to apply rent control to single-family homes and 10-year-old construction.
CAA’S RESPONSE
Click here for a PDF of the news release CAA issued in response to Thursday’s announcement of rent control bills.
The housing package also will include a “just cause” for eviction measure, as well as a statewide rental registry, the legislators said during a press conference and through a news release.
Although lacking detail at present, AB 1482by Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, will cap annual rent increases based on the rate of inflation plus a yet-to-be-determined figure, the press release says, and would not supersede existing local rent control laws.
AB 36 by Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, also is light on detail, however, the press release says it would allow local governments to cap rents on single-family residences and on construction that’s at least 10 years old, while exempting landlords with one or two units.”
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Some bad politicians are pushing for statewide rent control.
5% plus inflation is the limit.
And this does not prevent harsher city or county rent controls. Also the existing harsh rent control will remain.
It’s getting dangerous for everyone, including Cupertino single family houses.
The effective date is retroactive to last month.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB1482
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Fight the statewide rent control now, or your trouble will start soon
The new rent-control initiative, dubbed the Rental Affordability Act, is backed by AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization which donated about $23 million to support last year’s Proposition 10. In all, more than $100 million got spent on Proposition 10, with opponents outspending backers of the proposition.
Is this really a charity doing AIDS work? Why is it spending tax-free charity money on one rent control measure after another?
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Statewide rent control is bad, but I feel that it may likely pass and become a law this year, maybe in 3-4 months.
@Elt1, @manch, your South Lake Tahoe, Sacramento and Santa Rosa will be under rent control this year. What you can do now is to call your representative to vote against these in order to soften you blow
How is that possible? I thought it takes a ballot initiative to reverse the prior restrictions on rent control. The state legislature can stomp their feet all they want. They can’t do anything unless voters make the decision.
I believe the legislature can reverse a ballot initiative if they desire to do that but it would be political suicide if they go against the will of the voters.
They will do it this year.
@wuqijun, @hanera, your Cupertino single family house will be under rent control in 4 months.
@Jane, @Jil , you will be under rent control as well.
Think what you can do to help yourself. In my mind, statewide rent control will pass, no doubt about it. My question is how we can make it less harsh.
Governor Newsom signals that he will sign it
Stop mentioning my name and dragging me into this crap. No interested.
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If rent control bites too hard, just liquidate. Put money to work elsewhere. Maybe @hanera can organize a tour of Austin for forum members.
Once rent control passes in a few months, you can’t let tenant go so you will have to sell the house with tenant. The new buyer will have to buy as a rental property and hope to be able to evict tenant as owner move-in afterwards. Tenant occupied house will need to sell at a discount.
The law will take effect retroactively to 3/15/2019, so now it’s already too late to evict tenant for sale.
No need to evict. Keep your rent current and tenants will naturally go someday. I had two vacancies so far this year.
how long from previous tenant’s last day to new tenant’s first day?
One is pretty short. Less than a month. The other is taking longer as I need to rehab it first.
Evasive 
, would interpret as longer than as expected or previous years.
In any case, for long term return and cashflow computation, prudent to use 1 month vacancy even though it might not happen for many years or yet.
Rent? Stay, up or down?
I usually go $100 below Zillow rent estimate. So far Zillow’s estimates are still up from last year.
By the way more rent control is one of the structural long term trends I have been predicting. That would be a big, decisive factor to push me out of CA rental markets. Maybe time to look into Seattle and Austin.
Evasive again. Rent has resumed uptrend from the weird low in Jul-Dec 2017.
AFAIK, prices in Seattle is about 60-80% of SFBA prices. Austin and Atlanta is about 25%.
Demographics: Many Chinese in Seattle. Austin is diversified.
Is Austin price similar to Atlanta? How much difference in price?