The crew has packed up. The parking garage has been swept. The steel moment frames are behind drywall and the anchor bolts are under the topping slab. The construction phase of your soft-story retrofit is complete — and if you're like most property owners, your instinct is to close the file. Don't close the file. […]

Most apartment owners in Los Angeles have received the City's retrofit compliance notice. Most have gotten at least one bid. And most have approved a scope of work that describes, in technical language, what is going to happen to their building. What very few owners have ever seen is what that work actually looks like […]

Every property owner in Los Angeles who is considering a construction project in 2025 and 2026 is asking the same question before they pick up the phone: what is this actually going to cost me right now, and is now even the right time to build? It is a reasonable question. The construction cost environment […]

The work is done. The crew is gone. The invoice is paid. And somewhere in a drawer, or in an email thread you can't quite find, or possibly nowhere at all — is the documentation that determines whether the work you just paid for actually protects you. Most property owners in Los Angeles evaluate their […]

Every house moves. In Los Angeles, with its expansive soils, seismic activity, and dramatic seasonal moisture swings, a small amount of movement in an older structure is normal. Experienced homeowners know this. They see a hairline crack in the drywall, a door that sticks slightly in winter, a tile that has shifted near the back […]

The electrical content that circulates among property owners in Los Angeles is almost entirely written for two audiences: single-family homeowners upgrading a 100-amp panel to 200 amps, and large commercial building operators managing campus-scale electrical infrastructure. The owners of 8 to 20-unit multifamily buildings — the backbone of LA's rental housing market — are underserved […]

There are hundreds of thousands of unpermitted dwelling units in Los Angeles. Garage conversions built without permits in the 1980s. Basement apartments that have been rented for decades. Backyard cottages constructed by a previous owner who never pulled a single document. Converted storage rooms that show up on no city record but have had tenants […]

Most apartment owners in Los Angeles approach their SB 721 inspection the same way they approach a routine maintenance call. Schedule it. Get the report. File it away. What they haven't planned for is what happens when the inspector finds something. And inspectors are finding things. Consistently, predictably, and at a rate that the industry […]

You've owned the building for twenty years. You've managed it, maintained it, and now you're ready to sell — or roll the proceeds into a 1031 exchange and move up. The market is right. The timing is right. The buyer is ready. Then the due diligence period opens, and the buyer's inspector pulls the soft-story […]

Every general contractor in Los Angeles will tell you they know how to pull permits. Most of them are telling you about their expediters. There is a difference — a significant one — between a firm that navigates the permit process and a firm that understands it from the inside. That difference determines whether your […]