Avoid discrimination traps when advertising rental property

Landlords are very careful to follow the letter of the law when it comes to tenant screening and deciding who to accept as a tenant. Nobody wants to be accused of being in violation of Fair Housing laws for rejecting a particular tenant applicant.

But adhering to the Fair Housing Act begins even before the selection process. It begins with the way you advertise the rental property and market it to potential tenants. The Fair Housing Act states that it’s unlawful to publish any advertisement for the sale or rental of a home that indicates any preference, limitation, or discrimination against people who are covered by what are seen as the seven protected classes:  race, color, national origin, religion, gender, disability, and familial status (whether or not you have a child under 18 living with you). 

The biggest trap landlords fall into with regards to advertising rental property is that they go one step beyond describing the unit and also describe the type of tenant they think would be best suitable for the property. Most landlords do this to be helpful, regarding it as a smart marketing tactic to market the property to the type of person you think would be the best fit. But describing a one-bedroom apartment as being “ideal for a single person” places your ad on the non-compliance list for making yourself appear to be discriminating against families.

The best way to avoid any discrimination claims against you is to stick with a straight description of the rental property, highlighting its best features.

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Presence of lead-based paint must ALWAYS be exposed

Another property management company has come under fire for allegedly not disclosing to tenants the presence of and/or their potential exposure to lead-based paint. CRM Rental Management in upstate New York is facing $140,000 in potential fines from the Environmental Protection Agency for 43 separate instances that took place across four buildings that the company manages.

EPA regulations require real estate management companies and property owners who sell or rent housing built before 1978 to provide renters or buyers with a form that contains a warning about the dangers of lead-based paint and discloses information about its presence. Tenants or buyers must then verify that they received the required warnings.

It’s a standard notice that is given to tenants and included with the rental agreement paperwork. It must be signed or initialed by the tenant, typically done at the same time they are signing the lease. Following the letter of this law can save landlords and property managers huge fines and legal troubles. But more importantly, it can save the health and lives of tenants, particularly children, who are most susceptible to lead poisoning. There’s simply no plausible explanation or reasonable excuse for not following the law here.

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Delegate smaller landlord duties so you can focus your priority on profits

Many landlords, particularly accidental landlords, think they should do everything about the business themselves. They think that because they are capable of doing it, they should be the ones to market the property, interview applicants, perform tenant screening, get the lease signed, and take care of any maintenance issues or problems that arise with tenants and/or the property. That’s a long list of chores for someone who might have another job (plus a family, private life and home of their own!).

It’s understandable that you want to save as much money as you can by not hiring someone else to do what you can do yourself. After all, you’re in this business to make money, so you want to position your business endeavor to be as profitable as possible, and that means saving money, not spending it.

But keep in mind that your time is valuable too, and when your schedule becomes jammed with an endless “to do” list, you become your business’s own bottleneck, impeding the flow of work — and, therefore, also the flow of money — simply because there’s too much to do and only one person to do it.

As the head of your business, your most important job is to delegate. You should spend your time doing only what will increase profits. That includes shaping the business’s future and bringing in more money. If you’re spending valuable time fixing leaky faucets and making photocopies of signed leases, then you’re not spending all your time increasing profits. Don’t short-change yourself:  Hire qualified people who can help you with maintenance and repair issues, keep track of paperwork, and conduct background checks and credit checks on tenant applicants. Your ‘to do’ list will thank you!

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Landlords, increase your luck by utilizing a professional tenant screening service

Every landlord seems to have a horror story of a problem tenant who passed the tenant screening process with flying colors but still managed to be habitually late with the monthly rental payment, or destroyed the rental property, or disrespected the neighbors. Does this mean tenant screening isn’t worth it? Is it a waste of time and money hire a tenant screening service, to conduct a background check and pull someone’s credit report? Is it a waste of time to check references?

Absolutely not. Let’s be honest: There are dishonest people out there. There are tenants who appear to be something they’re not. There are also decent tenants with a reliable history who become victims of circumstances beyond their control. The greatest way to shield yourself from this kind of bad luck is to employ the very best tenant screening service, to gather all the pertinent facts about a potential tenant before offering them the keys to your property.

It’s true, there is a little bit of luck involved with picking the right tenant. There’s a healthy dose of gut instinct, too. But that instinct should be backed by solid facts supporting your decision, whether it’s to say yes or no to a potential tenant. Selecting someone to sign a lease might seem like a giant leap of faith; while there is a bit of trust involved in the decision, that trust is made much stronger when you have all the knowledge necessary about someone’s criminal record, employment, credit and landlord history from which to draw. 

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ATS has solid experience, longevity in a crowded field of start-ups

With the upswing in demand for background checks and the increasing need for criminal records checks and credit reports during the tenant application process, a whole new crop of tenant screening service companies has popped up in recent years. Their websites are filled with tempting promises of cheap reports in record time. But do you know anything about them? How much experience do they have? Which databases are they checking? How thorough, and really how cheap, is the service?

American Tenant Screen has been around since 1988. Long before many of today’s landlords were in the real estate business, ATS was establishing a reputation based on sound guiding principles and exceptional customer service. We pride ourselves on the thoroughness of our background checks: We pursue verifications to completion or until you tell us to stop...whichever comes first.

There are no hidden charges associated with our services; our clients always know the fees up front. And our customer service continues to be second to none. Our guarantee is that a phone will be answered by a live expert within 1 minute of your call during business hours. And we never charge for customer support.

Tenant screening may seem like a necessary formality to some, but it is a serious business. It’s your property, your reputation, and your money on the line if you select an unqualified tenant. Only trust the most experienced professionals to screen your tenants and give you the peace of mind you deserve. 

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New Year is a Good Time to For Routine Maintenance

Landlords, when’s the last time you called your tenants? When’s the last time you stopped by to check on the property? When’s the last time you went through their tenant file to make sure all paperwork was up to date and the lease had been properly renewed?

January is a great month to get paperwork housekeeping items out of the way and to perform some routine annual maintenance on rental properties. That might not mean a surprise inspection of the place, but a quick and cordial phone call to wish the tenants a Happy New Year and ask whether everything is going OK. Chances are there could be some minor things that need to be fixed or at least looked at. In the hustle and bustle of life, many tenants will overlook small things — a broken kitchen drawer, a cracked window, a leaky faucet — that they don’t have time to fix but don’t seem like a big enough deal to call the landlord for. But sometimes those small, seemingly inconsequential issues can turn into big problems if left unchecked.

So use the start of a new year as an excuse to get in touch with your tenants and see whether they need anything taken care of in the home. You’ll also want to find out whether they’ve made any changes to their household that aren’t reflected on the current lease. (For example, did anyone get a puppy for Christmas? Are there new family members on the way, or has an adult child come back home to live with his parents after failing out of school?) Start the new year off right with your tenants, and your property.

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California court minimizes liability risk for landlords offering amenities

There was a time when simply providing a clean, comfortable and safe living space was all that was required of landlords. That was before the advent of community pools, common recreational areas, on-site laundry facilities and fitness facilities became the norm at apartment complexes across the country. Now tenants expect a host of extra amenities in addition to their rental unit.

But do all those amenities leave landlords vulnerable to lawsuits and other legal trouble? Should landlords be liable for injuries sustained by tenants or guests while using such amenities? A state appeals court in California has recently narrowed a tenant’s ability to sue landlords for negligence in such instances, thanks to their ruling on a case involving a tenant who fell off a treadmill and injured his shoulder in an apartment complex’s fitness room and sued the landlord for negligence.

According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Fourth District Court of Appeal in Riverside, CA, said a 1975 California law that prohibits rental agreements that try to excuse the landlord from any legal liability when it comes to personal injuries applies only to “core functions” of the residence and not to amenities like recreation areas.

The law was intended to protect “a tenant’s basic, essential need for shelter” and leaves a landlord free to demand a waiver of liability for “a nonessential matter of personal improvement or enjoyment” like a gym, the court majority said.

It’s good news for landlords in California who want to offer their tenants the best in amenities, but don’t want that generosity and good business sense to come back to haunt them later on.

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