Landlords

The public again was excluded Wednesday from the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission's monthly deliberations over a proposed lease that would cede control of the taxpayer-owned stadium to USC. Government transparency advocates have contended that the scandal-plagued commission's secret negotiations on the Coliseum pact violate the state's open-meeting law. The panel's attorney has said the commission is entitled to hold the talks behind...

Office landlords can expect to see gradual improvement in tenant demand for space this year, but employers will continue to be cautious about expanding, a real estate brokerage said. The office sector of real estate will be bolstered by the improving economy, which should drive more purchases of buildings by investors, Marcus & Millichap reported. Based on its research, the brokerage expects office-using employers to create about 720,000 jobs in the U.S in 2012, a 30% increase over last year.

Three days after listing a house for sale, real estate agents Richard and Jean Murphy of Portland, Maine, began receiving a surprising number of calls — not from buyers but from would-be tenants. It turns out the callers were answering an ad that said the place was for rent, "and at a really low price," the agents for Harborview Properties recall. Worse, the "owner" was not the Murphys' client. It was someone living in another state who told callers that if they sent $1,500, the place would be theirs.

Los Angeles office landlord MPG Office Trust Inc. said Friday it had consented to put its downtown skyscraper Two California Plaza into receivership. The move was the first step in MPG's plan to quit ownership of the 52-story tower at 350 S. Grand Ave., which is encumbered with $470 million of mortgage debt. “Two California Plaza is an asset that is significantly over-leveraged,” Chief Executive David L. Weinstein said. “While we are disappointed that the company was unable to retain this asset, we were unable to restructure the loan on terms that were in the best interests of our stockholders.” MPG determined that it was more prudent to use its cash to support its remaining downtown office portfolio, he said.

Tenants and a state senator are battling a requirement by a Los Angeles landlord that residents pay their rent online, alleging that a "green" initiative introduced by the company is actually a pretense to evict low-income, elderly renters benefiting from rent-stabilization provisions. Elderly renters living in the Woodlake Manor Apartment building in South Los Angeles have sued their landlord, Jones & Jones Management Group Inc., alleging that their digital shortcomings could leave them vulnerable to eviction under the Woodland Hills company's new requirement that they make all their payments online.

Question: For more than five years, I have lived in a rental house. Throughout this time, I have been forced to go into my own pocket to pay for the most basic repairs, such as emergency plumber calls. I have paid for repairs myself because my landlord always takes too long to respond. I have been very careful to keep copies of all the repair bills I paid, and they total more than a month's rent. I have found a new place to live that is newer and in better condition. I would like to skip payment of the last month's rent on my current home as a way to make sure I am compensated for at least some of the bills I had to pay. Will I be able to do that?

Among new Internet-based real estate ventures to pop up in recent months is one that enables house hunters to simultaneously search for just about every lifestyle criteria imaginable. Another protects would-be tenants from unwittingly renting from a struggling owner in the midst of a foreclosure. SpatialMatch.com, an overlay technology that can be embedded on an agent's website or perhaps on an entire multiple listing service, enables buyers to pursue properties using any number of lifestyle criteria.

Question: I own a four-plex in an area where rental rates have recently begun to increase. I had not raised the rents on my property in several years, so I recently gave a 30-day notice of an 8% increase to my tenants. One told me he could not afford the increase and gave me a written 30-day notice that he was vacating. About a week later he told me he changed his mind and decided to stay and accept the increase. This tenant has been occasionally late paying his rent in the past, and I am worried that he really won't be able to afford the additional rental rate.

One of the country's largest office landlords has completed a $355-million recapitalization of its Universal City office building and said it intends to buy more property in Southern California. Normandy Real Estate Partners owns 10 Universal City Plaza, the tallest building in the San Fernando Valley at 36 stories, in which NBCUniversal is the largest tenant. Morristown, N.J.-based Normandy became the owner of the tower in mid-2009 when the previous owner defaulted on debt owed to Normandy.

Question: When I moved into my apartment, I knew the refrigerator was old. One weekend I filled it with food for a family barbecue and it broke down. I was at work all day and didn't realize this until a number of hours later. I called my property manager but it was the weekend and a new unit wasn't installed for two more days. By then, the food was ruined. I have asked the manager to pay the cost of the lost food, but she has refused. I was thinking about deducting the cost from next month's rent, but I don't want to get into trouble.