The Senate passed a bipartisan housing bill requiring build-to-rent operators to sell properties after seven years and give renters a 30-day right of first refusal. The FTC is seeking comment on regulating undisclosed rental fees, and the National Association of Residential Property Managers launched a legal hotline staffed by counsel Monica Gilroy.
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, and I'm here to bring you this week's news. So yeah, the Senate just passed some new bipartisan legislation, 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 rent right of first refusal and 30-day, a 30-day opportunity to do that. Essentially, 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. 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 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 in theory these fees are disclosed on the lease, it seems like that may not be enough. So, um, I highly encourage anyone who's a housing professional to comment and provide input on this. I know NARPA mentioned that they're gonna be submitting an extensive and lengthy comment, which we certainly support. But I think the more people we can get explaining to the FTC the nuances here, and there are a lot of nuances. If you're in the industry, you'll 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. 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 there's also risk, you know, that's just part of the cost of being a rental housing provider and, 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. 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 and submit your question or concern or issue, and it will be reviewed by Monica. Presumably she'll reach out to you. It's not technically a hotline cuz you can't just call and get her on, on your cell phone right then and there, but it functions the same way. And I think this is a great step forward. Property managers are under a lot of legal heat. We are in a highly litigious society and we're in a highly litigious industry. And so the more help we can get, the better, and the more we can collaborate and just kind of move the industry forward. So I applaud NARPM for that and, and congratulate Monica. That's all the news for this week. We'll see you next week.
