Taylor Avakian
I think I have emotional damage now hearing those
June 26, 2026 · 1 hr 3 min
Why LA Is Getting Worse (And They Won’t Fix It) with Landlord Lawyer - Niv Davidovich
With Niv V. Davidovich — Landlord Attorney, Davidovich Stone Law Group
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What this conversation gets into
Niv V. Davidovich, LA's go-to eviction attorney with 10,000+ cases, reveals why being a landlord in Los Angeles has become one of the toughest real estate plays in America.
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Episode show notes
Niv V. Davidovich, LA's go-to eviction attorney with 10,000+ cases, reveals why being a landlord in Los Angeles has become one of the toughest real estate plays in America. From 6-month eviction timelines and emotional distress lawsuits to aggressive tenant screening and the realities of funded legal aid, this is the raw, unfiltered truth about the current rental market and what property owners are actually facing in 2026. In this episode of No Vacancy, Taylor Avakian sits down with Niv V. Davidovich of Davidovich Stone Law Group. They break down the most common eviction drivers, how habitability claims and jury dynamics have shifted the landscape, why the process moves so slowly compared to neighboring counties, and practical steps owners can take to protect their assets without breaking the rules. Whether you own apartments in LA, invest in multifamily, manage properties, or want to understand California landlord-tenant law from the front lines, this conversation delivers the clarity most people only get after expensive mistakes. Sponsor - Loan Titan Upscale your experience with https://loantitan.com/ Sponsor - AI for CRE Collective AI for CRE Community: https://www.skool.com/ai-for-cre-collective/about?ref=3b3ff2c0ccce44ba8039fafd54bf291a Chapters: 00:00 - Shocking Jury Verdicts and Emotional Distress Damages 02:19 - Niv Davidovich's Career: Thousands of LA Evictions 03:37 - The Real Reasons Tenants Stop Paying Rent 06:02 - ULA Funding, Legal Aid Groups, and Tenant Advocacy 08:52 - Habitability Attorneys and Class Action Tactics 11:12 - Why Small Economic Damages Turn Into Massive Verdicts 13:07 - Trial vs. Settlement Rates in Current LA Evictions 14:07 - Inside One of the Longest and Most Complex Eviction Trials 17:20 - Pro Se Litigants, AI Tools, and Extreme Post-Judgment Demands 19:19 - Current Eviction Timeline in Los Angeles County 21:04 - Sheriff Shortages and Lockout Delays Explained 24:48 - How Evictions Compare in Orange County and Other Areas 26:29 - Tenant Screening: Saying No to Problem Tenants Early 29:30 - Tort Reform, Shifting Attorney Focus, and Insurance Realities 32:08 - Rent Control, Old Buildings, and Barriers to New Housing 35:27 - The "This Is My Home" Mindset vs. Legal Rental Reality 38:14 - Policy Challenges and Misaligned Incentives in Housing 40:42 - Common Myths LA Landlords Believe About the Process 43:14 - When Laws Change Mid-Case: Impacts on Owners 50:25 - Practical Protections and Strategies for Property Owners 58:57 - One Key Piece of Advice for LA Apartment Owners in 2026+ Niv V. Davidovich, Davidovich Stone Law Group, No Vacancy with Taylor Avakian. Niv Davidovich, Davidovich Stone Law Group, LA eviction attorney, Los Angeles landlord attorney, eviction process Los Angeles, LA rental market 2026, California tenant landlord law, habitability claims, emotional distress damages, vexatious litigants, tort reform real estate, multifamily investing Los Angeles, tenant screening best practices, No Vacancy podcast, Taylor Avakian, California eviction timeline, rent control LA, sheriff lockouts, LA apartment owners, real estate law Southern California Subscribe and Stay Ahead! Stay informed and empowered in the multifamily real estate market. Subscribe to the channel for exclusive insights, rental updates, and expert analyses on the Los Angeles market. 🔔 Don’t miss out on the latest trends and tips to maximize your property's potential: https://www.youtube.com/c/TaylorAvakian 📈 Connect with me: Website: https://www.thegroupcre.com/ Email: taylor@thegroupcre.com X: https://x.com/TAYVAY_ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tayloravakian/#LosAngelesRealEstate #MultifamilyBroker #LandlordTips #RealEstateInvesting #PropertyManagement #TenantScreening #RentalMarket #LosAngelesApartments #RealEstateStrategy #TaylorAvakian #ApartmentOwner
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Episode transcript
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0:00–10:00
Niv V. Davidovich
numbers. There was a case that went to trial in Sacramento. The actual hard economic damages averaged out to be $1,500 to $2,000 a person. But, the jury verdict was 14 something million dollars. Niv Davidovich is the managing partner of Davidovitch Stone Law Group, a California-based law firm representing landlords, owners, developers, and contractors in complex real estate disputes. We also have just regular old pro per civil cases where people are representing themselves going on ChatGPT and Claude and thinking, "Well, now because my robot slave has access to all of the judicial information of the entire universe, I am now the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court." Mandani is telling everyone what he's planning to do. When someone tells you they're going to steal all your [bleep] listen, they're going to steal all your [bleep] I think there's this fundamental misunderstanding that people are entitled to stay where they are.
Niv V. Davidovich
This is my apartment even though I rent it. And the definition of rent is I'm borrowing it. Even Beth said it. She says, "A lot of the times these homeless companies are trying to keep people homeless because if you got everyone to stop being homeless, they would go out of business." You think you're helping, you're not, you're actually hurting. But, the people who are passing these laws don't care. They just want to be perceived as helping so that they can keep their
Taylor Avakian
jobs. If you could give every LA apartment owner one piece of advice for 2026 and beyond, what would it be?
Niv V. Davidovich
I usually joke and just say sell your building and buy something else. I don't think that everyone giving up on the city and just selling all their stuff is the answer.
Taylor Avakian
I don't want LA to become Gotham City. We've got in the studio the notorious NIV. The Nevictinator. It's Nevo'clock somewhere. Niv, we're going to give you up, never going to let you down, Niv Davidovich. And I spent a little bit of time. Those were quick, man. Those are good. Those are good, right? good. those ones. Thank you. Thank you for being here. This is um this is a long-awaited conversation we've been having. Yes. And um we've been friends for many years now and I think in most cases we interact because I have a client who has a troublesome tenant and they need someone who can help them out and they need to do an eviction. And so you are one of the leading eviction attorneys here in Los Angeles. I've said you've probably done thousands if not so I mean let's start it off. You're a landlord attorney.
Taylor Avakian
How many evictions have you done in your career?
Niv V. Davidovich
My office we've probably filed I really lost count but if I just you know add it up it's probably in excess of 10 or 15,000. Jeez.
Taylor Avakian
Yeah. And and how many of those deserved evictions? All of them.
Niv V. Davidovich
All of them. Yeah, we don't file evictions that aren't legitimate.
Taylor Avakian
Yeah. Yeah. How many evictions do you get that are unlegitimate? Like how many landlords are trying to skirt the system versus actual legal Oh, you mean requests?
Niv V. Davidovich
Yes, correct. Not really that many. We have people who in a regular system we could evict
Taylor Avakian
them.
Niv V. Davidovich
Mhm. So I don't really get that many people who are saying let's just get rid of these people you know for no reason. Yeah. That really doesn't happen. Sometimes we do get requests for things I can't do and the reason is because they want to raise the rent or Mhm. or I mean that's a legitimate reason. Sure. Because if they're not getting the rent that they're supposed to get it means they're not putting the the real estate to its best and highest use. Mhm. And that's what you're supposed to do with real estate or any asset. Yep. But in certain circumstances especially here in LA that's just not something we can do.
Taylor Avakian
If it's not a legitimate case we just won't file it. What is the makeup of the causes of the evictions? Like what's the most common reason why someone is getting evicted?
Niv V. Davidovich
Pay or quit.
Taylor Avakian
Pay or quit is the vast majority of them.
Niv V. Davidovich
They're just not paying their rent. They're not paying their rent. And most people who don't pay their rent it's it's very rare for it to be a a habitability protest. Mhm. Most of the time, the reason that people don't pay their rent is cuz they don't have the money. Either something happened in their family, something happened to their health, something happened to their business, something happened to their job. So, it's usually some kind of a really some something happened with their their head. Mhm. All of the tenants that we that we end up evicting are people who don't know how to handle a crisis situation in their lives. Every I call this the rule of NIF. It's a rule of the universe. If you and I are on the phone and we're talking about your tenant, your tenant is crazy. Period.
Niv V. Davidovich
Now, something might have driven them crazy or they might have come out crazy. And there's all sorts of different kinds of crazy. There's a little bit crazy. There's complete, you know, batshit crazy. And there's people in the middle. But everybody who comes across my desk is on the psycho spectrum. Period. Now, uh still a lot of those are our payer quits, but they don't know how to handle that problem. In other words, I I think I can safely say this for every single one of my clients. If if they have people who come to them and say, "Look, this happened in my family. This happened in my job. This happened in my business. I'm short this month. I want to stay here and I want to come current. Can you help me out and put me on a payment plan?"
Niv V. Davidovich
There is not a single one of my clients who would say, "No, I'm going to evict you." Not a single one. If you come to them, they'll they'll be generous with you. They'll put you on generous payment plans. Nothing crazy, but they will work with every single tenant. The tenants who come across our desk are the ones who probably feel some level of shame that they can't pay the rent. They feel some level of shame that whatever has happened in their life has failed. There's some system in their life that has failed. And so, instead of dealing with it in the way I said, which really does require a great deal of humility and at the same time kind of just self-awareness and self-confidence. It requires a great deal of psychological health, really mental health. Instead of doing that, they retreat into I can either blame myself or I can
Niv V. Davidovich
blame the landlord.
Taylor Avakian
I'm going to blame the landlord. Interesting. So, are you saying because obviously ULA has been a big talking point. I think a lot of people think it's a bad idea. A lot of those funds were used to hire public or private attorneys to fight eviction cases, right?
Niv V. Davidovich
Yeah, $48 million to legal aid, which they then shared with the other Batman villains. Well, who are the other Batman villains? BASTA, EDN. I call them Batman villains. No matter No matter how many times you bat them down, they always come back in the future
Taylor Avakian
episodes. Explain what So, what are those What are those companies What What are they?
Niv V. Davidovich
BASTA There are 16 different agencies in LA County. Okay. By the way, this is an LA County problem only. And they are staffed with people who are true believers for the most part. They're true believers. They really believe in the cause of tenants to the detriment of landlords. And a lot of them even believe that if you're a landlord, you are an evil person. You shouldn't be charging anybody for the human right of housing.
Taylor Avakian
No one should be charged for that.
Niv V. Davidovich
100%. Wow. look at the DSA platform. DSA, LA Tenants Union, that whole group of people think that landlording in itself is an evil profession cuz it's a human right, of
Taylor Avakian
course. So, their whole job is to effectively do whatever they can to make that
Niv V. Davidovich
a reality. Correct. Well, and they're trying to stave off evictions. They're trying to punish landlords. And there's also some money to be made in the process. So, every time every time that they get us to pay their tenant to leave, they take a piece. They also use that platform as as a way of generating clients for affirmative have claims, which generates more money for their
Taylor Avakian
organizations. So, let's dive into that because this is something that I've heard from many landlords and it's the horror stories of being a landlord in LA Los Angeles and what what makes a lot of people who've dealt with this not want to be an LA landlord ever again. So, example of what I've seen is um these attorneys or BAS or whoever these people are, they're going to go to an apartment building, let's say it's 50 units in Koreatown. They're going to knock on a tenant's door, unit number one. They're going to say, "Hey, um do you have any issues with your
Niv V. Davidovich
unit?" So, this is a different group of people. Oh, this is different. BAS, EDN, LAFLA, Inner City Public Counsel, all of those are 501c3 organizations. So, those are the people that are doing a lot of eviction defense and a little bit of the have claims. They are the ones that are publicly funded with the ULA money. Got it. All right. Then, there's a whole different group of people who are just the habitability lawyers. They are not true believers. They're in it for the money. They're they're just like PI attorneys. They're just like employment attorneys. They're contingency fee based and it's a very good business. And essentially, the way the reason that all of our clients are seeing a large influx of these cases is very simple. When you graduate law school and you say, "I want to be a wealthy attorney."
Niv V. Davidovich
The fastest way to do that in their minds is to be a contingency-based attorney. And it's true, you can make a lot of money being a plaintiff's attorney. Try to break into PI now. It's impossible. Because the guys who are doing PI are spending millions of dollars, not a million, millions of dollars every single month just to try and keep up and get all the really good cases. So, that doesn't work. So, then they started to go into employment law, but now employment law is getting saturated with people who are spending hundreds of thousands, if not a million dollars, every single month to try and get the employment cases. So, well, that's too expensive to break into, so they went over to the next thing, which is habitability claims. So, habitability claims, you're not you're generally not going to get the kind
Niv V. Davidovich
of settlements you would get in a wrongful death claim. Now, you do a wrongful death claim or a very serious injury,
10:00–20:00
Niv V. Davidovich
you can get 15, 20, 30 million dollars. Hab claim for 30 million dollars really doesn't exist. Yeah. But, you can do hab claims that are million dollars, two million dollars, get a bunch of plaintiffs together. So, those are the guys that go knocking on the doors in the
Taylor Avakian
building. And you got 50 in a buildings, 50 units times a million dollars is a lot of
Niv V. Davidovich
money. They almost never get the entire building. This is the thing that people don't understand.
Taylor Avakian
95% of tenants are very nice people. I've No, I I I see that and I I experience that, 100%.
Niv V. Davidovich
They don't They want to pay their rent. Yeah. They want to just be left alone. And they don't want to participate in the lawsuits. And even if they have a toilet that broke or saw cockroach, you know, once a year, they're just not interested in being involved in these lawsuits. Mhm. Where you get half the building buying into the lawsuit is if there's really problems. And to be honest with you, I've seen some buildings that really do have problems. Things you can't fake. [snorts] They probably deserve some sort of remediation. Correct. Not the amount that they're asking for. Yeah. And not the amount that they get from juries. So, a case in point, there was a case that went to trial in Sacramento, not my case. Something like 28 28, 30 plaintiffs, something like that. And the the actual hard economic damages, in other words, what
Niv V. Davidovich
property did you lose, anything like that, averaged out to about 1,500, 2,000 dollars a person. But, the jury verdict was 14 something million dollars. Ended up being about 333,000, something like that, per plaintiff, the vast majority of which is simply emotional distress.
Taylor Avakian
Non-economic damages. Emotional distress?
Niv V. Davidovich
That's That's what I'm saying. That is an outsized verdict that really should have been avoided by settling. That's the risk you take in taking these cases to trial. It's It's There's a lot to overcome when you walk into a jury trial as a landlord. You are not getting a jury of your peers. Remember that was the original design of the jury system. You should be judged by a jury of your peers. And in the 1700s, it probably worked okay. It probably was a jury of your peers. It doesn't work like that anymore. It's not 12 landlords that are on the jury. It's not even six landlords and six tenants. It's probably 10 tenants, maybe two homeowners. And of those 10 tenants, most of them probably don't like their landlord very much. And if you can show some pictures uh of a cockroach or as I've seen in my
Niv V. Davidovich
cases that I did not permit to go to trial, dead rats. I had I had a case like that. It was five dead rats around a mousetrap. And so I told the client, look at this. The The land- The tenant's attorney doesn't really have to do much. All they have to do is show up and say, "Look." And they won.
Taylor Avakian
That's it. I think I have emotional damage now hearing those numbers.
Niv V. Davidovich
Jesus Christ, that's crazy.
Taylor Avakian
got to settle the cases. So how many um of the cases are typically I I would say 99% settled for the eviction? For evictions? No, not anymore. No?
Niv V. Davidovich
It's about 90. 90%? We have a lot of cases go to trial now. A lot. Here's the funny thing. We actually win, I would say a a a pretty large majority of the cases that we
Taylor Avakian
take to trial. Because of the fact that people are just throwing straws cuz they've heard people settle and they're hoping that they get some money?
Niv V. Davidovich
A lot of the times, we just get again, it's just mentally unstable people. And the jury again, you still walk in when no one's opened their mouth yet, you still walk in a little bit handicapped. But it's usually 12 regular people. Yeah. And once the 12 regular people hear Mr. Crazy start talking, they quickly go to your
Taylor Avakian
side.
Niv V. Davidovich
Yeah, they realize what's going on here. Yeah, especially a lot of the nuisance cases that we take. Mhm. Um our our longest, most expensive case
Taylor Avakian
was was a nuisance case. I was going to ask ask you like what was the worst eviction case that you ever taken in LA and like how long did it take?
Niv V. Davidovich
So, the most expensive, longest case was one that we won. Um the defendant was himself an
Taylor Avakian
attorney.
Niv V. Davidovich
Okay. So, and he litigated the case, he represented himself and his girlfriend. And he litigated the case as if his own life was on the line. There were motion upon motion upon motion. He did There's motions that you can do to make sure certain evidence doesn't come in before trial, exclude certain evidence, called motions in limine. He filed 15 15 motions in limine in advance of the UD jury trial. He filed motions for summary judgment that were complete nonsense, but we had to oppose them. We had to oppose all the motions in limine. He sent discovery. I think we had three or four depositions in the case. Which is three or four more than should be in a UD. We had tenants who were scared to come testify because they didn't want to be in the same room as him and we had to convince them to come.
Niv V. Davidovich
In fact, we we had to One of them, we had to depose him and the defendant lawyer had to be on Zoom because the guy didn't want to be in the same room as him. He ended up coming to testify later anyway. But a lot of people just said, "No, I'm not going to come testify." because cuz scared of him. Oh my gosh. And it was a 10-day jury trial, 10 days. Holy crap. the longest. This is this is all completely outlier.
Taylor Avakian
Yeah.
Niv V. Davidovich
Yeah. You're asking me for the worst. It's not like the second worst was 9 days.
Taylor Avakian
The second worst is like five.
Niv V. Davidovich
This was above and beyond normal. above and beyond. It was in excess of six figures in terms of cost. It was a complete like just Ugh. And it's actually technically still going cuz then he appealed it. He left.
Taylor Avakian
He's still appealing it. That's crazy.
Niv V. Davidovich
Some people are just insane. We even We even told him we got a judgment against him, like a monetary judgment. We said, "Look, just drop the appeal and we'll drop the monetary judgment. You don't have to give us any money. Just stop fighting."
Taylor Avakian
He said, "No." Some people just like dig their heels in and they're just
Niv V. Davidovich
crazy. But he's insane. That's the problem. And this is the something landlords really don't get. When you run into one of these crazy people, there is nothing we can do about it. We also have just regular old pro per civil cases where people are representing themselves, going on ChatGPT and Claude and thinking, "Well, now because my robot slave has access to all of the judicial information of the entire universe, I am now the Chief Justice of the Supreme
Taylor Avakian
Court." This episode is sponsored by Loan Titan, a leading residential financing loan company specializing in both conforming and non-conforming mortgage solutions. Loan Titan offers Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, non-QM, and private money, hard money loan programs helping borrowers who need flexibility beyond traditional lending guidelines or speed-driven financing solutions. Whether you're purchasing, refinancing, or investing, Loan Titan is known for smart structuring, clear communication, and reliable execution. Visit loantitan.com and mention Taylor Avakian to get started. Thanks for Loan Titan for supporting the channel. How many How many of these ChatGPT Claude things have you seen nowadays?
Niv V. Davidovich
Oh man, Really? So many. We have one guy Oh my god. This guy we evicted. He then proceeded to file 17 motions for reconsideration. After 10, we told the judge, you need to declare him a vexatious litigant and that stops him from being able to file without permission from the court. They're like, no. He did it other seven times. Like now? Maybe 17 times? They said, okay, fine. And for some reason the court just never signed the order. So he was able to then immediately file a civil complaint. And his civil complaint is all cloud. It's all chat GBT. Everything he does. And he started sending discovery. He tried to take depositions. We We stopped it all because the court uh the court said, wait a minute. You've been declared a vexatious litigant. Like, why wasn't the order signed?
Niv V. Davidovich
And we tell the judge, that's a very good question.
Taylor Avakian
Can you please sign the order?
Niv V. Davidovich
It's a different judge now. So but he just keeps on continuing. What was his settlement demand?
Taylor Avakian
Guess. Um 50 grand. $6 million. Oh my gosh. $6 million. For an eviction?
Niv V. Davidovich
He He wants us to pay him $6 million for an eviction. We won. We won the judgment. He lost the case and he's still suing us for it. No nobody's really stopping him. The judge is maybe going to stop him but that's only because we already declared him a vexatious litigant. In other cases I have, nobody stops these tenants from suing and they all think they can do it. They all lose at the end. Or they take pennies on the dollar. But to get them to that point, it requires so much money and
Taylor Avakian
time. And so all this is getting coming out of the landlord's pocket for just stuff that's literally just wasting time. Yep. So that that speaks to the the actual state of Los Angeles. Like as of right now, if you have a bad tenant, how long is a typical time to do an eviction from, you know, notice to the actual eviction? What is the typical timeline for this right now?
Niv V. Davidovich
The average in LA, I say average is bold, italics, underline, 6 months. Now, let me [clears throat] explain why. But from you give the notice, you have to wait for it to expire. Then it takes a few days to file the complaint. Then we have to serve the complaint. Dodging service of a complaint is as simple as don't answer the door. It's not complicated. So then you have to get a posting order. Posting order permits you to serve it by post and mail. Now remember, in California, you used to have five calendar days to respond to a
20:00–30:00
Niv V. Davidovich
UD complaint because it's supposed to be a summary procedure. Then they made it five business days, which just adds 2 days. Then they made it 10 business days. 10 business days is really 2 weeks. Whenever you serve by post and mail or sub service, now you have to add 10 calendar days. So really, it's 24 days if there's no holiday thrown in. And if there is a holiday, it's 25 days. In a civil case, you get 30 calendar days. Here you're getting the equivalent of 24 or 25. It's almost the same. So Insane. that that 1 month almost month is just lost time after we actually can get service. So if you have to do all of that stuff, it's like 2 months before you can get the judgment. Right? Now you would think, okay, fine, I got the judgment. Let's go lock them out. Doesn't work like that.
Niv V. Davidovich
I still have clients who call me and say, um can we just call the police and
Taylor Avakian
have them locked out?
Niv V. Davidovich
Like, no. No, you can't do that. You have to take all that information, give it to the sheriff. And the sheriff says, thank you. We'll see you in 8 to 12 weeks. That's how long it takes to schedule a lockout.
Taylor Avakian
Why?
Niv V. Davidovich
Because the sheriff is missing 1,400 deputies. Wow. The sheriff cannot hire and either for budgetary reasons or because people just do not want to be uh police and sheriffs anymore, but
Taylor Avakian
he's missing 1,400 people. So, one of the compounding reasons why it takes so long is because we have a deficit in those law enforcement, which has been a big talking point, you know, for the the mayor race right now.
Niv V. Davidovich
People are saying This is not the city. This is the county. Oh. Yeah, so this is the sh- this is the LA sh- sheriff, the LA county sheriff. And he's missing for I mean, forget the LAPD is missing many thousands of I I think someone told me I can't remember the numbers, but like for example, NYPD has something like 36,000
Taylor Avakian
officers.
Niv V. Davidovich
We're like 7,500. Or 10 or 12, 12,000, something like that. For a city of almost the same number of people. It's beyond ridiculous. And when you go to New York, you can see it. Yeah. Like you see a police officer on every almost it feels like it's on every
Taylor Avakian
corner. 100%.
Niv V. Davidovich
Yeah. And you come here and they're few and far between.
Taylor Avakian
Goodness gracious. It's yeah. It's a 6 months So, then how much work like I guess this is the landscape that we're dealing with, right?
Niv V. Davidovich
Remember remember the the the calendar I just gave you was for a default. That means they didn't do anything. They sat there for 4 or 5 months without picking up a like they didn't even lift a finger. Oh my gosh. If they actually do lift a finger, then it could take longer.
Taylor Avakian
Sometimes it actually takes shorter. What has to happen for this to change? You'd have to have a sea change in in our elected officials. And it's it's just purely the bureaucracy that causes it to be this long?
Niv V. Davidovich
Yeah, I mean, sheriff lockouts used to take 2 weeks. Evictions in LA used to take a month. That was a thing. You do not need a jury trial for a UD. That's preposterous. Just like you don't need one for a small claims case. Especially when a lot of the times the amount of money we're going in for is a small claims
Taylor Avakian
number.
Niv V. Davidovich
Yeah. So, in other words, if I'm trying to evict you cuz you didn't pay $6,000 in rent, you get a full-blown jury trial, discovery, depositions, the whole deal. If I'm trying to sue you for $6,000, you get a small claims case. What what what
Taylor Avakian
Why? Why?
Niv V. Davidovich
Because they view it as they're taking your you're taking away this property right. But No, I'm not. Forfeited your property right by not paying for it.
Taylor Avakian
[sighs and gasps] So, that's why everyone redlines Los Angeles because this is what you're going up against.
Niv V. Davidovich
You're going Against you could still make money if you if you get these properties that are so mismanaged that you know how to revitalize them. Yeah. But, the problem is you run into one of these situations, just one, just the wrong crazy guy can cost you a lot of money and really take a big hit on your pro forma.
Taylor Avakian
Yeah, it really can. Yeah, people are underwriting. I mean, we have people buyers calling us being like, "I'm underwriting a freaking, you know, lawsuits." Like they're including that in their reserve money because it's so often. If you own more than a few buildings or certain number of units, you're most likely going to come in contact with some sort of lawsuit, which is just crazy. It's crazy that this is the new normal. This is the reality of being a landlord, which I mean, makes sense as to why you wouldn't want to deal with this. If you go down to Orange County or Ventura or any county. anywhere else besides LA County besides the Bay Area. Or the Bay Area. Okay. So, like, let's say Orange County. Yeah. How long does it take to do an eviction in Orange County?
Niv V. Davidovich
Yeah, a month, two at the most.
Taylor Avakian
San Bernardino's real quick. They they they they get you out in and out, huh?
Niv V. Davidovich
Yeah, San Bernardino's quick, Riverside is fairly quick. They have maybe one legal aid over in San Bernardino, but they actually help you resolve cases. Uh there's something like that in Riverside. There's one legal aid in San Diego. They never ask for jury trials. Everything's all bench trials. And other places just haven't figured out, but when you're dumping $50 into legal aid, of course you're going to have this problem.
Taylor Avakian
Who thought that was a good idea? Is it Is it these these companies that you mentioned earlier who are who are basically lobbying for this?
Niv V. Davidovich
line with the DSA, and the DSA has their people on the council and embedded within the city's politics. And they make a lot of money off of this. And And remember, the idea is to put the landlords out of business, to eventually take the buildings and give them to land trusts and tenants. I am not making this up. Go listen to uh Mondani. Puh. [snorts] Call him Donny. Mondani is telling everyone what he's what he's planning to do. Y- Y- You know, when when someone tells you they're going to steal all your [bleep] listen. They're going to steal all your
Taylor Avakian
[bleep] This is absurd. This is crazy. What um what can the landlord do? Obviously, the best case scenario is this doesn't happen. Is there anything that someone can do on the front end to protect themselves from the likelihood of this happening? Like, what is the best protection mechanism to stop yourself from having to deal with this kind of stuff?
Niv V. Davidovich
Number one, you cannot control inherited tenants. But what you can control are the tenants that you let in. And so, screening and being extremely uh not illegally, but discriminating in terms of who you are letting in as a tenant. I always tell people sometimes there'll be someone that we have to say no to. Maybe their credit is fine um and their income looks okay on paper, but we know that they're going to be a problem tenant. Because before they're even in the unit, they're saying, "Before I sign this lease, I want to have this all looked over by my attorney." And they come back and they have all these red lines and then they go into the unit and they say, "Before I come, I need you to fix these 17 things." No. You just say no to that person.
Niv V. Davidovich
Now, when you say no to that person, then they start screaming discrimination and uh harassment and all of this other stuff. I say it's very simple. If you don't think that guy's going to sue you on day one, you got another thing coming. Mhm. What you'd rather have the lawsuit of them outside the building screaming to get in rather than them being in and now suing you from within. Because they're going to be a a troublemaker.
Taylor Avakian
Better to have the outside lawsuit. So, what it is effectively doing is all these laws are making it even harder for people who potentially need to have units because the landlord has to landlord has to be extremely cautious about who they let in. Right? Which like the it seems like it's people lining pockets for their own thing for their own benefit. Like this is just money being moved around and laws being changed to pay the right people. At the the end of the day the surface it's like um with housing, right? People I say, you know, the solution to cheaper housing is more housing and that's been proven over the historic history of time. In any case, today, 20 years ago, 100 years ago, 1,000 years ago, it's the same story. Supply and demand works pretty well. It works pretty damn well.
Taylor Avakian
And all these people start to put these plans and these laws and regulations that only make those things harder. And you would imagine, "Wow, when it becomes harder to build and have more supply, then naturally your rents are going to go up. Like that is But they they they talk out of both sides of their mouth. And it seems like this is the same sort of situation. It's like if you want less evictions, then make it easier for tenants to come
Niv V. Davidovich
in and come out. Or instead of giving $50 to LAFLA, why don't you give $50 to the landlords to pay off those people's rent? Yeah, like what? If you're going to do that every single year, just make a make a fund. You got $50? Do it.
Taylor Avakian
Spend it on that. I mean, Jesus. Do you think um so I heard this from um the Uber case. So, you're familiar with the Uber case that's going on right now, right? The Uber law? The Uber the Uber's like suing um the state of California or something like that over something with PI.
Niv V. Davidovich
If it's affecting PI, it's a Oh, you see it's it's a it's a it's a law that they want passed to put caps on PI claims and a cap on how much attorneys are allowed to take.
Taylor Avakian
Yes. Correct. And so, if that passes, I was told that all the PI attorneys who are going after the car crashes and stuff are going to have to pivot somewhere, right? And the next
30:00–40:00
Taylor Avakian
logical, if it's not the workplace enforcement, if that gets crazy busy, the next one down the line is real estate. Do you see that continuing? Is it going to get worse?
Niv V. Davidovich
Sort of. The reason the PI works so well is because everyone has insurance. And you you have to have insurance in order to drive. And sometimes even when you don't have insurance, you have underinsured motorist on your own insurance policy. So, the likelihood of running into someone who has coverage for a PI claim in a car accident case is very, very high. There's And there's no Uber driver that doesn't have insurance, because you have to show them your insurance when you apply to have the job. And I I've never been an Uber driver, so I don't know, but I imagine they don't let you drive if all you have is the 15/30. Yeah. But for the viewers at home, 15/30 is actually used to be the minimum. I think it's 20/40 now. But 15/30 means $15,000 per incident is the most that
Niv V. Davidovich
the insurance pays versus and 30 30,000 dollars aggregate for an entire incident. 15,000 is per person. Got it. So if there's two people in an accident, you can get up to $30,000. If it's just one person, it's $15,000. Okay. So uh the likelihood of running into someone who has insurance is almost 100%. So that's not true with tenant habitability claims. It's also not true with employment claims, but in employment claims, people just kind of don't care. They'll they'll say, "Give me my money." And if you don't have six figures, we'll just put you out of business. And in the hab claims, it's like a little bit of a mix of the two. I think everyone used to have habitability insurance. And now, because of all the insurance companies that pulled out and how expensive it is and doing habitability exclusions, now a lot less people have insurance.
Niv V. Davidovich
On top of which, even the landlords who have that insurance are sometimes not tendering claims to their insurance company. They say, "It's not worth it to lose my entire insurance policy over this one claim.
Taylor Avakian
So I'll just pay for this out of pocket." Jesus Christ. Well, okay, so then what's the the big thing that I hear from attorneys and and landlords and people is like this word called tort reform. Yeah. What does that mean?
Niv V. Davidovich
Tort reform is again, it's exactly what you're talking about. It's putting caps on what you can sue for, how much money you can ask for, how much attorneys are allowed to make off of these cases in such a way where it discourages more and more claims from being filed. And again, it's not going to happen unless you change the makeup of the actual lawmakers. Or I mean, in California, you can you can do by vote referendums, you know, so public referendums. But again, that's just a bunch of theater. Because everyone everyone portrays
Taylor Avakian
their side as being best for the little guy. Yeah. Holier than holier than I thou or whatever that they're saying is right. We're the We're the ones in the
Niv V. Davidovich
We're the good guys. We're the ones looking out for you. And I mean, theoretically, I guess to a degree, they're sometimes both right. If you're in a really horrific accident and you're an independent contractor, you're going to need money to live. On the other hand, there's a lot of fake accidents and a lot of people blowing up their claims far more than they than they're really worth. And the more and more that that happens and the more that's encouraged the more you are going to see, you know, premiums go up because insurance companies say, "I'm paying for this." So, if if it costs me more to assess this risk I have to increase my premium over here to make this risk worth it, but I'm not going to have this much risk and this much income. That's not an insurance company.
Taylor Avakian
It's not even a good casino. Doesn't make economical sense. Why would you which is why a lot of these insurance companies have pulled out of California Right. altogether.
Niv V. Davidovich
Some of it is the habitability. I think a lot of it is the fires.
Taylor Avakian
Oh. Yeah.
Niv V. Davidovich
Interesting. Because I I I think the January fires, a lot of them got really
Taylor Avakian
killed. Yeah. Just beat down. Yeah. And Cali Yeah.
Niv V. Davidovich
Just It's absolutely just Again, here's another problem. I don't think this necessarily would help the fires, but it would help with the with the storms. The buildings in LA are old. Mhm. Most of them are super old. They were not designed to last this long. When they built them, they were designed to last for 50 years. 75 years, maybe. And then you demolish them build something bigger and newer and better. The problem is they make it so difficult to do that and they disincentivize that cuz they want to keep everyone who's living in those units in those units. They're mostly rent-controlled units. Mhm. They don't want to kick those people out. So, you're you're messing with the system. You're sticking your finger in the gears and that's why it's not working. You need to demolish all of these old buildings and build new ones.
Niv V. Davidovich
Well, and then they say, "Where are those people going to live?" Somewhere else. Not in the middle of the city. They're going to drive to work Mhm. like everybody else. Yeah. Sorry, you're going to have to commute. You do not get to live in Mid-Wilshire Yeah. if you make $20,000 a year.
Taylor Avakian
No.
Niv V. Davidovich
Yeah. I I I think there's a there's this fundamental misunderstanding that people are entitled to stay where they are. Mhm. They think of these apartments that they are renting as their homes, meaning they belong to me. The fact that you as the landlord have your name on the title is a legal technicality. In reality, this is my apartment even though I rent it. And the definition of rent is I'm borrowing it.
Taylor Avakian
And then you would say, "Okay. All right. Cool. So, the government wants to provide housing. Awesome. Let's go buy a bunch of properties and you can provide housing." Then we look at what that actually means for the actual tenant, right? If you look at New York City Yeah. and you look at the government-owned housing The projects. The projects. Yeah. Why are they called the projects?
Niv V. Davidovich
Yeah.
Taylor Avakian
They're not fun places to live. does not run these buildings efficiently. It's not a place where the average person wants to live. And so, what choice do you have?
Niv V. Davidovich
It's It's That's again, it's not even the problem. One of the big problems is cuz I I deal with some of these buildings. Like I I do some work with Hackler. It's It's not even their fault. It's just the people that they're the people that end up living in these buildings, most of them are not well. Yeah, so even for government agencies trying to provide subsidized housing, they have these eviction cases. They would at least be in a position to do a better job Yeah. if you didn't have Probably don't know about this called prevailing wage. You know prevailing wages? Mhm. There's regular market rates, there's union costs, and then there's prevailing wage, which means electricians get paid $250 an hour. The crazy stuff. I'm making up that number. Yeah. But prevailing wage is applicable whenever you're building a building for uh for the government. So, the government is actually
Niv V. Davidovich
prohibited from building things in an economical way. They actually can't because of their own rules. Because their labor costs are so high, and the contractor's not going to pay for it. So, if you tell the contractor, you must pay all of your people prevailing wage when you're building the apartment building for us, he's going to say, "Fine, here's my bid, two times more than it would cost me to build for ABC Development
Taylor Avakian
Company."
Niv V. Davidovich
Just bureaucracy, man. It's stupid, right? So, fine, have the developers build it, and then you buy it. But they're going out and and paying a million dollars plus for a unit that they then go put a homeless person in. And Tracy Park said it best. She said, "How are you going to go out and pay a million, million three to buy a condo for a homeless person and put a homeless person in a unit that you're not paying the fireman enough to live in or buy? This guy's working for you. This guy's risking his life for you. You're not paying him enough to go buy this condo. So, instead, you're going to buy it and give it to a homeless person. That's preposterous. That is preposterous. And I I got all of these I got these flyers in the mail from the anti-Spencer Pratt people,
Niv V. Davidovich
and it was pissing me off so much because it it his message is like, "Get help or get out. Get yourself right and function in society or get out of society. Those are your choices, and that's rational. That's the answer. It may not be lovey-dovey and nice and sympathetic and empathetic. It might not be, but running a society is not running a puppy pound. You have to make tough calls. We cannot spend all of our money and all of our time to deal with 50,000 people, the majority of whom don't know they're sick or don't want help or cannot accept help. I'm sorry. That's not a functioning society. You need to help all the people who are actually contributing to the society.
Niv V. Davidovich
100%. And they're like, "This guy is a, you know, abandoning our unhoused communities." I Can you have a community if you're unhoused? Don't Don't you need to be housed to be in a community? I don't understand that. I'm not trying to be mean to these people. I realize it's not all of their fault, but at some point you have to make difficult choices. You can't make everybody happy. On top of which there is the whole homeless industrial complex, where all of these different companies are making tons and tons of money Ridiculous amounts of money. Right. on continuing the problem. I mean, it's just like the pharmaceutical companies. Everyone is mad at the pharmaceutical companies. They they think there's some secret cure to cancer, but they're hiding it
40:00–50:00
Niv V. Davidovich
in some lab so that they can keep on selling you the treatments. I don't believe that for a second. Yeah. But, let's just say that that was true.
Taylor Avakian
What do you think these guys are doing?
Niv V. Davidovich
They're even even Beth said it. She says a lot of the times these homeless companies are trying to keep people homeless because if you got everyone to stop being homeless, they would go
Taylor Avakian
out of business. And they don't want to go out of business. 36 billion dollars, which is poof.
Niv V. Davidovich
Gone.
Taylor Avakian
Where did it go?
Niv V. Davidovich
Into their pockets.
Taylor Avakian
Into their pockets. It is absolutely insane. Which what do you believe right now is like the biggest lie LA landlords tell themselves or they believe about the eviction process and about the current landscape of of tenant
Niv V. Davidovich
tenant landlord relations. So there's there's two misconceptions on on both extremes. One one extreme is that landlords say you cannot evict somebody in LA. That is not true. We do it every single day. Whether through settlement or winning cases or default judgments. Every single day we're evicting people. The other misconception and misplaced expectation that they have is they really don't understand just how difficult and expensive it could be. So on the one hand they have just a complete hopelessness, which is not warranted. And on the other hand they suffer from a disease I call landlord optimism. Every time a landlord calls me they say you know, what if he just doesn't answer? Like well, you have about [clears throat] 10 15% chance of that. But in the back of their mind I know what they're thinking.
Niv V. Davidovich
They're relying on it. Like he's not going to answer. Landlords always tell me this. He's not going to find it. He's not he's not going to answer. He's just he's going to leave. They ask me, what happens if I give him the three-day notice and they just leave? I'm like if that happens, I mean, I don't know, the Messiah will
Taylor Avakian
come. Yeah. The lotto? You you have a better chance of winning the lotto.
Niv V. Davidovich
Yeah, I mean like the go go sell all your stuff. That's the end of the world. That's the apocalypse coming. If that actually happens. I I mean I I think I think that's actually happened maybe once or twice that I can remember. Oh my gosh. No, I mean people pay
Taylor Avakian
Yeah. a lot.
Niv V. Davidovich
Yeah. But to give them a 3-day notice and actually have them leave?
Taylor Avakian
No.
Niv V. Davidovich
Yeah. I've had people leave. My shortest is 6 days. Okay.
Taylor Avakian
Yeah.
Niv V. Davidovich
Pretty good. Yeah. Again, very, very rare and very rare weird situation. Yeah. Um but I've never had someone get a 3-day notice and be like, "Well, time to go."
Taylor Avakian
It just doesn't happen. We have a sponsor for today's episode and that is AI for CRE Collective. 25 listings at the moment. We're closing four or five deals a month. It's been incredible. So, if you want to learn, if you're in commercial real estate, how to use AI in your business, whether you're a property manager, a broker, an investor, really anyone, we have a huge group. We're 400 people in this community and the website, if you want to go check it out, is AIforcrecollective.com. So, appreciate you guys. Now back to the episode. Tell me about a time um that a tenant like beat the system or the craziest the craziest story that they had to win a case. Like what what was that scenario?
Niv V. Davidovich
The Earlier you said the one that bothers me the most. Yes. Okay. In LA, we used to have Well, we still have a JCO, just cause eviction ordinance, which is what you're in if you're not RSO.
Taylor Avakian
Rent stabilization or Yeah, built after 1978 or Correct.
Niv V. Davidovich
different areas, but effectively. if you're not RSO, by definition, everything in the city is JCO with some very minor exceptions that don't apply to most private people. Into the JCO, there used to be a no fault basis where you could do substantial renovation. I'm sure you remember that from back in, you know, 3 years ago where everyone wanted to take like the 1980 building, kick everyone out, do substantial renovation, and rent it out, and it was a good plan. And in fact, you could still do that in a lot of places. And in fact, even still in the county of LA, there are there are 88 cities and a lot of them other than city of LA and West Hollywood and Santa Monica and the other communist republics that have those laws, uh they you could still do that cuz substantial renovation is still part of AB 1482.
Niv V. Davidovich
Anyway, one of my clients had a five-unit building they were trying to do substantial renovation on. And they were fighting it tooth and nail and saying the notice was no good and you didn't provide enough details and you didn't tell us why we would have to leave for more than 30 days. We're gutting your unit. Why do you Why How in the world do you not understand that that's going to take more than 30 days? What What sort of magic Harry Potter construction team do you think we're working with? [Laughter] But anyway, it was the first time that anybody had litigated this law. It was brand new. So, no one really knew how much detail you're supposed to put in. And so, the judge took advantage of that said, "No, you have to give them notices again." We gave them notices again.
Niv V. Davidovich
We gave them six-page notice about everything we were going to do. Uh we were really on the cusp of winning the case. The whole time these five tenants from one building are working with uh Comrade Hugo to change the law and get rid of the substantial renovation. I think a week or two before our trial he finally gets gets it up to the city council.
Taylor Avakian
How does he do this?
Niv V. Davidovich
I have this on tape and I played it during the hearing. First, it has to go to the housing committee. So, the housing committee is deciding whether to put forward to the council the law to amend the JCO to take out substantial renovation as a basis. So, this is how the hearing goes. They invite LAHD, the staff member, to come testify at the hearing. They ask her "How many in the last 2 years, since the law has existed? How many substantial renovations have been filed, cuz you have to tell the city you're doing it, have been filed in the city in 2 years, 2 years? She says, 98, and 2/3 of them are single-family homes. So, about 30 for apartments, so that's about 15 per year in the entire city of Los Angeles.
Niv V. Davidovich
And she said, "Yeah, this is our lowest number of evictions compared to any other one." In other words, there's landlord occupancy, there's landlord family occupancy, there's take it off the market. The num- the one that we get the least noticed about substantial renovation. And when they heard this, the three council people who were on this committee, they they were like, "98?" They said it on record, "We thought it was hundreds." They were surprised it was so low. They were working on this expectation and assumption that everyone in the city was getting thrown out on their butts because of substantial renovations, which was just simply false. And they had the person from the department that calculates this telling them that in a hearing. Testifying. And so, at the end of that hearing, you know what they
Taylor Avakian
did?
Niv V. Davidovich
Put it to the city council anyway. And the city council voted on it, of course got it passed, and Hugo stood up and said, "Thank you to the people from the building for helping to get this passed." They changed the law. And then, they made it retroactive. And they said, "This applies to anybody who doesn't already have their judgment." So, then they went into court and said, "Hi, the law changed in the middle of our case. We already had the permits, we already gave the notices, the notices already expired, we were already in the middle of the of the case, it was 2 weeks from trial." They changed the rules in the middle of the game, and the judge said, "Sorry, hands are tied." I played and now, this is the worst part. In the law, they wrote the reason for the law. They said, "Because
Niv V. Davidovich
this law is causing an eruption in homelessness in the city, we need to pass this with great urgency." And they did an urgency clause in there. Straight-up lies that they knew were lies because it was testified to in the hearing. They wrote it anyway. They voted on it anyway, changed the rules, and we lost the cases.
Taylor Avakian
Oh my gosh. This is the exact reason why people do not want to invest in the city of LA. And I've I've talked about this multiple times, and I'll reiterate it again. Investing is playing a game. You're playing a game where you're deciding where to put your money that you've earned and invest to try to make a return. Hopefully, an outsized return compared to government bonds, right? Otherwise, you'd put all your money in government bonds. When you're playing a game, if you're playing football, right? And the rules are predefined of the game of football. And for whatever reason, at halftime, Yeah. the rules completely get changed of those those the game. Yeah. How are you expect expected to adapt when you had a game plan coming in and it gets changed halfway through the game? Right. Right? And again, football games are what, 90 minutes?
Taylor Avakian
How long does it take to actually execute a business plan in real estate? Years. Right. Years and years. And tons and tons of money. And you're expected to go make a above-market return, to risk your money, your capital, your time, your family's money, other people's money, to go and do this when the rules of the game change constantly? Like, how is that fair? It's not. It's not fair. It's not a game that people want to play anymore. And so, we're talking about, "Oh my gosh, housing is so unaffordable. Oh my gosh, you know, evictions are on the rise. Oh my gosh, landlords are evil. It's like, no. You're making the game, so the only way that people
50:00–1:00:00
Taylor Avakian
can make it work is to skirt the system. It's to figure out an alternative way because the right way and the optimal way you've basically shut the door on and you've changed it. And you're making and taking all the money that wants to come in and make the city great and they're going somewhere else. They're going to Orange County.
Niv V. Davidovich
They're going to Either that or you know, it's it's uh like let's say you want you asked me how to avoid all the tenant issues. Break the law. Discriminate illegally. Just don't tell anybody you're doing it. Those people, they it's really hard to file a lawsuit saying you were discriminated against. They make CRD complaints, which we have which are also blowing up. They usually can't prove it. It's kind of difficult to prove. Yeah. Uh and even the people at the CRD essentially know it. As long as you don't tell anybody what you're thinking, It's hearsay, right? It's not that it's hearsay. It's just it's kind of difficult to prove. So, I'm not telling anyone to break the law, but the people who discriminate illegally have a lot less problem tenants in their building. Sorry, that's the reality,
Niv V. Davidovich
folks. If you make it where you encourage people to be insane and file crazy lawsuits and and be fraudulent tenants, you're going to get an equal and opposite reaction of people not wanting that whole group of people. That's just the way it works. You think you're helping, you're not. You're actually hurting. But the people who are passing these laws don't care. They just want to be perceived as helping so that they can keep their
Taylor Avakian
jobs. It's absolutely absurd. It just blows my mind at some of this is who you're electing to make your life worse. Isn't that crazy?
Niv V. Davidovich
Yeah.
Taylor Avakian
Isn't that crazy? You're you're you're giving your short-term gain for long-term pain, and it is just like the marshmallow test on steroids. People see free rent, free living, whatever the the headline mansion tax. Like, it is just blatant lies because people want to appease to their voters. They want to climb up the the corporate bureaucratic ladder. Like, it's just freaking so obvious. And it I'm never been political. And I've never cuz I never I never really gave a [bleep] cuz I was focusing on myself. Yeah. And now that I have to deal with this every single day, it is so hard not to just be frustrated. Everyone's frustrated.
Niv V. Davidovich
Frustrated with the situation. I'm very frustrated because everyone takes frustrations out on me. Yeah. You're just dealing with fires all day long. I am the fireman. Yeah. That's all I deal with all day long. And it's I don't really think there's a choice to not be political anymore because I also not a particular fan of politics, but I I didn't go to politics. Politics are coming to us. Politics are in in you know infusing themselves, infecting our lives. And they have a this this these local elections are the ones that really affect our lives the most. The the state assembly and all that, you know. No one even knows who their state assembly person is. I barely know. But those guys are writing all the laws that have all of this junk in them and that that that make it very difficult and unattractive to do business, like
Niv V. Davidovich
you said, in the city, in the state. I see I see that it may have to get to like a breaking point before people decide enough is enough. And I mean unfortunately, that breaking point is very very low. If you look at If you look at what happened in you know, communist Russia. 72 years. 72 years. They were pusing all of this nonsense before everyone finally said, "You know what? You've had a good try. I think we're going to do something a little different."
Taylor Avakian
But I don't I don't want it to get there. Yeah.
Niv V. Davidovich
No one wants it to get there. I don't know. I think they do. I think they do. I was I was I just had an event and uh it was with Ashley Ashley Moody. She's the Republican junior Republican senator from Florida. And on a national scale, she is she's dealing with the squad people and the very far left people. And hearing what they have to say and I'm like, "What do they want?
Taylor Avakian
Can you just tell me?
Niv V. Davidovich
What is it that they're looking for?" And she said, "I think they're actually trying to change the nature of the country. They want it to be a different country. And the countries that they're trying to model are socialist communist countries. They are actively attempting to force a proven failed system on a country that has a proven working system. I mean, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. It it it And I'm not saying we have a perfect system. It's not perfect, but it's pretty darn good.
Taylor Avakian
It works pretty darn good. It works in history. And the United States has been the powerhouse of of the nation of the world for since
Niv V. Davidovich
we basically existed. Yeah. Does it Does it work for every single person all the time? No. But it's it's a far better track record than the USSR and Cuba and Vietnam and China. Let me tell you, we're killing a lot less people than they did. People say it's like, "Oh, you you you you you can't call people You can't call people Nazis. Nazis are so bad." And of course, they're very very bad. But then people go around with communist shirts on. Communists killed way more people than the Nazis. That's just as offensive. It's as bad, it's just as stupid. But you're actively saying you want to make it more like that? You want to make it more like the places that people risk their lives to leave? That's why you don't understand all the immigrant population. It's like, wait a minute, you left places that have these policies.
Niv V. Davidovich
Now you're coming here and trying to vote for people who are trying to make this place just like the place you left.
Taylor Avakian
You could have just stayed at home. You remember that story of that woman who was living in that mansion? I forget how much it was, maybe like 15 grand a month, 20 grand a month, and she stayed there for like 3 years. Do you remember that story? There's many stories like this. What So, how does that happen? How do those crazy ass stories actually happen?
Niv V. Davidovich
I think there's a lot of times where people hire a landlord-tenant attorney who doesn't know what they're doing and doesn't know all the little intricacies. So, I've seen people hire, for example, like an Orange County lawyer to do an eviction in LA. It works the other way. You can hire an LA lawyer to do a San Diego eviction. You can hire an LA lawyer to do an eviction anywhere else because anywhere else is going to be less uh complicated.
Taylor Avakian
They're battle-tested, man. Yeah. You guys are like the the the G-Force. You're the the Navy SEALs of eviction cases.
Niv V. Davidovich
Exactly. We've we've been on the front lines of you know, D-Day.
Taylor Avakian
The Navy SEAL. Exactly. The Navy SEAL. The Navy SEAL.
Niv V. Davidovich
I'm adding that one. I like that. I like that. But uh it doesn't work the opposite way. You you can't come from Orange County and try one here because you don't know about posting the notice of right to counsel. You don't know about posting the JCO notice. You don't know about posting the registration. You don't know about uh if it's RSO, giving the security deposit interest letter. I mean, there's so many things We have an intake form, and at this point cuz I try to make it on one page, it's an 8-point font because I have to ask so many different things.
Taylor Avakian
Are you Section 8? Did you give a Vawa notice? Did you Did you give the give it to the Section 8 advisor? Did you do the registration? Did you pay the registration?
Niv V. Davidovich
It's so many things. So, if you don't hire someone who knows all of that stuff, you are going to have to file many times. And you have to be willing to come to court and just demand things. So, a lot of the times they'll say continuance continuance continuance, we'll say no no. We do not want a continuance and the judge will at least, you know, split the baby and give us a shorter continuance, but you have to be very willing to be aggressive and and really push back and and fight. And so, if if you don't have familiarity with the rules, if you don't have a very aggressive nature, you're going to end up filing a bunch of times or getting involved in, you know, really bad cases. Also, keep in mind sometimes there are people who don't pay their bills, and then you're not going to have a
Niv V. Davidovich
very uh effective
Taylor Avakian
attorney. Yeah, I would say so. I would I would say especially in this when you own multi-million dollar property, pay the bill. Yes. Get it done, or else I'm going to have to sell it for you. Right, exactly. If uh the last thing I want to talk to you about is if you could give every LA apartment owner Yeah. one piece of advice for 2026 and beyond, what would it be?
Niv V. Davidovich
I I usually joke and just say sell your building and buy something else. I don't think that everyone giving up on the city and just selling all their stuff is the answer because then it's just going to turn into you know, Detroit like after all the auto people left. It's just going to turn into a hellscape and yeah, I don't want LA to become Gotham City. Mhm. Look, if you're going to do it, factor in that it's going to be expensive. Another thing is if this is a side hustle, first of all, don't do it as a side hustle. But, if you're really, really going to do this as a side hustle, do not manage the property yourself. Get a property manager. I have lots of property managers for my clients. I'm happy to share their contact information, and choose whichever personality you like. And whatever size you like.
Niv V. Davidovich
I have big property managers, little property managers, and everything in between. But, hire someone whose job it is to look out for your property, because chances are you don't know how to do it. It's really complicated. Somebody has to sit there and deal with all the tenant
1:00:00–1:10:00
Niv V. Davidovich
complaints. Somebody has to sit there and register the property, and deal with the city, and call me, and ask questions, and deal with reasonable accommodation requests, and all of this stuff, and you're just going to end up driving yourself crazy if you do it yourself. And you're going to end up making mistakes. It's going to be very, very frustrating. Uh The clients I have that are the most frustrated with the entire system are are really a lot of the mom-and-pop people who just can't understand that they signed up for this kangaroo court bureaucratic nonsense. They They just can't even believe it. And I understand that. I totally understand that. But, you got to face facts. You got to face reality. This is the system we
Niv V. Davidovich
have. And until there is a massive seed change in our elected officials, and then they change the laws, this is the way it's going to be. So, either suck it up, and understand that this is the way it is, or don't play the game. Because do do do do do those are the choices. And if you don't want to deal with all the issues, which I also wouldn't want to, hire a property manager. Yeah, they're going to charge you their 5, 6, 7%, whatever it is, well deserved. But, at least you're not going to have to sit there and talk to this tenant about his toilet and that tenant about the fact that the next toy next tenant is smoking cigarettes on the on the porch. And sometimes like a tenant will be like, "This guy is smoking weed on the street."
Taylor Avakian
What did you want me to do about that?
Niv V. Davidovich
I mean, that's legal. He's not in the apartment building. He's literally on the street, the public street. No. Deal with it. You know, or my favorite tenant complaint. It's too loud. Where do you live? Downtown. Well, yes, man. It's loud. You live in the second largest city in the United States of America and you chose to be in the center of it and you're complaining about the loudness. Well, if you wanted quiet, Chatsworth, baby.
Taylor Avakian
There's plenty of other places. All you're going to hear is horses clop clopping, okay? You know? Yeah. Yeah, it's it's
Niv V. Davidovich
And and a ghetto bird every now and then, but that's it. Yeah. It's it's there's just so much insanity. So, if you're an owner and you don't want to deal with all of this
Taylor Avakian
stuff, or sell your building with me.
Niv V. Davidovich
Or sell your building with the greatest agent in the city of LA.
Taylor Avakian
Absolutely. I love it. Nivr, this was incredible. Um
Niv V. Davidovich
Thank you for having me.
Taylor Avakian
It was fun. The next show that I want to do, you know, I I told you about this. I want to have a tenant lawyer attorney to have a three-way conversation and just hear from both sides cuz I hear it from both, obviously. Uh mostly from the landlords, but I think that would be really fun. And you're down for that, right?
Niv V. Davidovich
I'm totally down for that and I can actually tell you everything they're going to say. And I can I can predict it for you right now. They're going to come off as heroes and Robin Hood and I'm going to come off as Darth Vader, Skeletor, you know, name your cartoon villain.
Taylor Avakian
But some people are dealing with reality and some people are not. The facts are the facts, man. The facts are the facts. You can't No one can can take that
Niv V. Davidovich
away. Yeah, and you know, like like Ben says, facts don't care about
Taylor Avakian
feelings. Stay tuned for round two. That's going to be fun.
Niv V. Davidovich
Nif, thank you for being here, man. Thank you for having me. It's a lot of fun.