The head of Santa Monica’s largest affordable-housing organization is leaving after five years for a similar post in Hollywood. The good news for her is it will lessen the weekday commute from Pasadena for Sarah Letts, executive director of the Community Corporation of Santa Monica. The bad news is the bleak picture of affordable housing […]

California’s system of seizing and spending “unclaimed” cash from banks, mutual funds and defunct businesses has survived a Supreme Court challenge. The state says it is now holding $8 billion in lost assets. And from this fund, it takes about $450 million a year to add to the state budget. After considering an appeal for […]

Craig Miller is chief executive of a Los Angeles office-leasing firm. He’s also a landlord, with seven houses for rent around the region. As Miller tells it, the tenants at one of his properties, a house in Calabasas that rents for $5,225 a month, stopped making payments last summer. Miller began eviction proceedings in August. […]

Evictions in New York City dropped last year to their lowest level in a decade, as the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio bolstered efforts to prevent more New Yorkers from becoming homeless. Evictions decreased by 18 percent last year, to 21,988 from 26,857 in 2014, even as the number of cases filed by landlords […]

Moreover, federal, state and local regulations (the qualified residential mortgage is a great example) often create such high degrees of uncertainty that even the experts are uncertain about what’s coming and what real estate professionals must do in order to comply. Now couple this with the normal day-to-day stresses such as family issues, money woes […]

If you have employees, it is almost inevitable you will have to fire someone someday. What do you do with the rest of the workforce after you have freed up the future of an employee who was not a good fit for your company? As soon as possible, gather all the employees. Tell them that […]

Trying to buy a house in Los Angeles probably feels a lot like taking crazy pills. Prices in Northeast LA are shooting up so much that median prices are now above $600,000 in the once reasonably priced area. Echo Park is now a full-on, rich-people enclave where the median is above $800,000. The staggering prices […]

“The next major bust, 18 years after the 1990 downturn, will be around 2008, if there is no major interruption such as a global war.” — Fred E. Foldvary (1997) The destructive wave that swept across the US economy in 2008 seemed to catch the world completely by surprise. The phrase so often used to describe […]

Be Opinionated People are most interested in those who have a point of view. If you try to please everyone, you usually appeal to none. Be clear about your beliefs or position on topics related to your thought-leadership. Integrate your point of view (POV) into your summary and experience where appropriate. Join groups where you […]

Be Promiscuous LinkedIn’s search algorithm favors those who are in your network. That means when people are looking for what you have to offer, the results of their searches are displayed with 1st level connections first, then 2nd level connections and so on.  So, when you get a connection request from a Walmart sales associate […]