In this weekly news recap, property‑management newsletter author Peter Lohmann outlines three developments that affect rental owners and managers. First, the Senate passed a bipartisan housing bill that, in its current version, forces build‑to‑rent operators to sell properties to homeowners after seven years and gives renters a 30‑day right of first refusal – a provision Lohmann argues harms both developers and renters and hopes will be removed. Second, the Federal Trade Commission issued a 38‑page request for comment aimed at regulating undisclosed, mandatory rental‑housing fees such as pet rent, application fees, and other add‑on charges that tenants cannot opt out of; Lohmann urges industry participants to submit comments, noting the real costs and risk mitigation that justify these fees. Third, the National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM) launched a new legal hotline staffed by outside counsel Monica Gilroy, offering members a web‑based way to get legal advice in an industry he describes as highly litigious. Lohmann closes by encouraging listeners to stay tuned for deeper analysis of the housing bill and to engage with the FTC comment process.
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The Senate just passed the most significant bipartisan housing legislation in decades. The FTC just released a 38-page PDF explaining their desire to regulate rental housing fees. And NARPM just launched a brand new legal hotline. My name is Peter Lohmann. I write a property management newsletter for 20,000 property management owners across the country, and I'm here to bring you this week's news. So yeah, the Senate just passed some new bipartisan legislation. I haven't had a chance to dig into the latest version of this legislation. What jumps out out to me is the restriction on build-to-rent housing. So the Senate version of this bill, which has been, you know, this bill has been batted back and forth quite a bit. The Senate version, which was just passed, so now it's over in the House, says that if you are a build-to-rent operator and you build new housing for rent, after 7 years you have to sell it to a homeowner and you have to give the renter right of first refusal and 30-day, a 30-day opportunity to do that essentially. So that's not great. It doesn't make a lot of sense. There's been a lot of discussion about getting it removed from the final version. I hope it is removed from the final version because it's not a great situation for the folks building homes, which we need them to do that in order to increase supply, nor is it a great situation for the renters who might not want to buy a home and may be perfectly happy to continue renting there indefinitely. So that little tweak definitely needs to be fixed. I plan to do more of a deeper dive and figure out some of the other stuff as far as what's in this bill exactly and how it affects property managers and rental owners., so stay tuned for that. The FTC just released a 38-page PDF and I did read it. Basically it's a request for comment, and if you read through what they put out, they are gung-ho on bringing some federal regulation to rental housing fees. Specifically, it looks like they're targeting undisclosed mandatory fees that are part of the lease. Things like, I don't know, pet rent or application fees or various like add-on charges and upcharges. Charges that the tenant doesn't have the option to opt out of and may not be disclosed at the time of viewing the rental listing or time of application. Even if, even if, you know, in theory these fees are disclosed on the lease, it seems like that may not be enough. So I highly encourage anyone who's a housing professional to comment and provide input on this. I know NARPA mentioned that they're going to be submitting an extensive and lengthy comment, which we certainly support. But I think the more people we can get, you know, explaining to the FTC the nuances here, and there are a lot of nuances. If you're in the industry, you understand how nuanced this can be. And you also understand that we have real costs associated with providing these services. These are not junk fees that are just made up and are pure profit, far from it. There's a lot of time and effort involved in screening a rental application, and we have not only hard costs, but soft costs as well in the form of time. And we have to pay people for their time in order to take care of those tasks. And there's also risk. You know, we have to defend ourself from lawsuits, from, you know, discrimination lawsuits or other nuisance lawsuits. That's just part of the cost of being a rental housing provider. And the cost to defend those cases has to be paid for. So I hope you'll take the time to review that document and provide comment. Lastly, NARPM just launched a brand new legal hotline. I'm pretty excited about this. They just brought on Monica Gilroy as their outside legal counsel and have made her available to NARPM members through this new NARPM legal hotline. You have to be a member, but if you do, you can click on the link below and submit basically your question or concern or issue, and it will be reviewed by Monica. Presumably she'll reach out to you. I logged in and just checked out the form just to see what it looks like. It's a pretty straightforward web form. So it's not technically a hotline because you can't just call and get her on, you know, on your cell phone right then and there. But it functions the same way. And I think this is a great step forward. As I was mentioning earlier, property managers are under a lot of legal heat We are in a highly litigious society and we're in a highly litigious industry. Anyone who's in business, been in business for more than a couple years has almost certainly been sued. It's essentially a rite of passage. It's basically a joke that at this point at the conferences. And so the more help we can get, especially from someone as experienced as Monica Gilroy, the better and the more we can collaborate and just kind of move the industry forward. So I applaud NARPM for that and congratulate Monica. That's all the news for this week. We'll see you next week.
