One thing we can do is to hunt down the alligators that are gobbling up our existing housing stock, disrupting our neighborhoods and pitting neighbor against neighbor.
A big shout out to Max Bergstrom and his podcast Elite Zone!
We need to decide what kind of community we want to live in.
Jim LaMattery, Alligator Hunter
San Diego, California, 2025
In one fell swoop, the State of California took away all single family homeowners property rights. What rights did they take away? The right to remain single-family neighborhoods, along with the right to the quiet enjoyment of their property.
That was Senate Bill 9, the “Home Act.”
It was adopted by the City of San Diego in April 2022. It was ruled unconstitutional by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge in April of 2024 but it is now under appeal. But by 2022, the alligators had been let loose.
When the Mayor and City Council adopted SB 9 they coupled it with their aggressive housing policy regarding ADUs (accessory dwelling units). The new rule favored investors who are now on a building spree to turn our single-family neighborhoods into multi-family apartment complexes. Some of those investors are alligators.
Instead of aquiring raw land to build new units, investors are taking advantage of the new laws to build apartments in our older single-family neighborhoods. The practice is spiraling the cost of home-ownership as new buyers are being shut out of the market and current homeowners are “locked in place.”
Our older neighborhoods, Bay Park, La Mesa, College Area, Encanto,etc., were traditionally the entry point for first time homebuyers because of lower prices and available homes.
Under the new housing policy, first time homebuyers are being outbid by investors seeking to convert single-family homes into multiple unit properties.
Investors are paying cash prices higher than first-time homebuyers because of the returns available for the conversion into multi-units. Homebuyers can’t compete and the result is an artificial raising of home prices.
As investors out-bid, waive home inspections, and close escrows sooner than first-time homebuyers, these neccesary buyers are frustrated from losing enough bidding wars, their inability to close quick escrows due to the time it takes to process a new home loan, or being forced to waive home inspections, they soon disappear from the market.
Current homeowners in these older neighborhoods are faced with the same bidding wars when they want to move up, and as a result, they are locked-in to their homes with no adequate movement in the market. When they do move up to the few homes that are available due to job transfers, divorces, or death, they end up in bidding wars amongst themselves and the endless loop of rising prices continues.
Other homeowners who would like to move up can’t because of high interest rates and prefer to remain in their current property because of historic low refinance rates that they took advantage of in the past five to ten years. No one wants to trade their current 3% interest rate for a new 6.63% rate.
Without the normal market flow of the entry of first-time homebuyers and the willingness of current homeowners to move up, the normal real estate market slows to a halt. But we didn’t understand what the new housing law would do to prices. We know now.
Enter the investor.
California housing law threw gas on the fire of our housing crisis. It unleashed alligators (investors) into our neighborhoods who are eating up our existing housing stock. The worst of it? The units that they are building in our neighborhoods are not being resold to homebuyers. Instead, the investors are retaining the units they build for rentals.
Resident Californians, those of us who live and work here, are losing their chance at aquiring equity through purchases of the property.
After public outcry in the poorer neighborhoods, like Encanto, on March 4, 2025, the City Council was forced to review it’s ADU incentive program and ruled to remove it from some token zones (RS 1-1, RS 1-2, RS 1-3, RS 1-4, RS 1-8, RS 1-9, RS 1-10 and RS 1-11) but they refused to remove in from R 1-7 which the majority of our neighborhoods are zoned.
After fighting the last 10 years to preserve our 30 foot coastal height limit, I’m now jumping back into the fray over San Diego Housing policy gone wrong regarding the ADU rules and the elimination of planning control though neighborhood planning groups.
We need to get our housing market moving again in healthy ways that favor first-time buyers, move-up sellers, and all other residents over the LLCs and other entities that are depleting our housing stock and preventing home-ownership.
After witnessing the evolution of the housing law over the last 11 years, I see now that we got sold a pig in a poke.
I invite you to join us on March 29, 2025 for our Alligator Tour. It’s a first step toward finding real-time soultions to our housing catasrophe in San Diego County.
Jim LaMattery
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