Peter Lohmann covers three property-management stories: a New York court ruled Section 8 voucher requirements unconstitutional, the median age of U.S. rental units hit 45 years, and CRANE, a community for owners with 150+ doors, is reopening applications with a launch event April 2.
In this week's news for property managers, a court just ruled that a Section 8 law in New York State was unconstitutional. The median age of a rental unit is now 45 years old, the oldest on record. And I have a special announcement for property management business owners. If you don't know who I am, my name's Peter Lohmann. I write a twice-weekly newsletter for 20,000 property managers. I also host a podcast and operate a 750-door management company in Columbus, Ohio. Let's jump into the news. So last week, an appellate court overruled a decision in New York State relating to requiring landlords to accept Section 8 vouchers. They basically said it was unconstitutional. This case involves a company called Ithaca Renting Company. They own something like 900 doors in Tompkins County. In 2019, the state, New York State, not New York City, passed what's called a source of income discrimination law. We actually have a similar law on the books in a couple cities near me in Columbus, Ohio. This type of law says that as a landlord or property manager, you can't discriminate against a prospective tenant just of the source of their income. So SOI, source of income discrimination. Mostly this is targeted at Section 8 vouchers. A lot of landlords and property managers don't accept Section 8 or try to not accept Section 8 vouchers. If you have a law like this on the books where you operate, you can't do that. You basically have to accept Section 8 vouchers. And if you don't know, this part of the Section 8 program is they come in and they inspect the unit and they physically enter, they have to physically enter the property and give you a list of things you have to fix and pay for. And there's a lot of back and forth discussion about, hey, are some of these things what's really required. Obviously for safety and habitability items, yes. But a lot of times they come in and they mark things that really are more like optional items or aesthetic type items. So some landlords make, just make the decision like, hey, I don't want to mess with it for one reason or another, payment delays or just administrative headaches. This law passed in 2019 and this company, Ithaca Renting Company, basically just ignored it and they just said, yeah, nice law, but we're still not going to accept Section 8 vouchers. So eventually the Attorney General got wind of this and in 2022 they went after this company aggressively, and then this company lost, and then they appealed it, and now what we're hearing is they just won the appeal. So quoting from the Ithaca Voice, a panel of 5 judges reached a unanimous decision published on March 5th that found the law unconstitutionally subjected landlords to violations of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government, by eliminating the ability to opt out of the Section 8 program. I like this hearing. I like this finding by this appellate court, and I look forward to following along and seeing how this affects not only other jurisdictions in New York State, but across the country as well. Next up, the median age of a rental unit is now 45 years old. That's older on average than the median age of a homeowner-occupied property. And that is up from, in 1993, the median age of a rental unit was just 29 years old. So we've got a significant increase in the median age of rental units. This is from Jay Parsons. He was discussing this finding on LinkedIn last week. It's a finding from a Harvard Joint Center for Housing study Citi's report that he was diving into and providing commentary on. And just speaking as a property management operator myself, we're in Columbus, Ohio. Our median age, I'm guessing, is even older than that. We have a very old housing stock here in Columbus, and it makes things challenging as a rental owner and as a property manager, especially because the homes and the apartments that we manage experience a lot of problems with the structures. The plumbing, the electrical, the roof, the siding, the windows all start to break down over time and fail. And of course, tenants get very upset about that. And so it puts a lot of stress on the property manager and then in turn the property owner to pay for all of these repairs. So I'll be really curious to see if this trend continues or if we start to see a wave of new construction, kind of out with the old, in with the new, that honestly I think would make things a lot easier for property managers selfishly and probably a better experience for tenants as well. So let's keep an eye on this. I thought it was a really good finding and interesting reporting by Jay. Last this week, wanted to let everybody know that we are reopening applications for CRANE. If you don't know about CRANE, it's a paid private community just for property management business owners who have at least 150 doors under management. I co-founded CRANE with Wolfgang Kroski a couple years ago. We've got several hundred property managers in the community already, but we only open up for new members twice a year and we only open up for a couple weeks. So we're opening up on April 2nd, and as part of that, we're doing a huge live launch event called Access Granted. we'll include information about how to register for that event. If you want to get kind of a behind-the-scenes look on what is CRANE, what's included, we've also saved up a bunch of announcements. We've got some special guests. It's going to be a fun time. I only do live shows like this once in a while. I try to, you know, make them really fun and exciting and save up announcements and it's going to be a good time. So if you want to mastermind and get to know other professional property managers like yourself who are on a growth path and looking for more time freedom, check out CRANE. We'd love to see your application come through. And in any case, I'd love to see you join me for Access Granted. I'll see you there.
