Old Business
Motion to approve March’s minutes: Kurt 1st, Tom 2nd
Treasurer’s report: we have $1,820.12 currently in our bank account. Outstanding payments are $375 for renting the space at the Elks for the rest of 2024. Outstanding deposits are any dues received tonight.
Dues are $35 per year. Please pay your 2024 dues to Treasurer Katie Erickson – cash, check, or PayPal. Check with Katie if you don’t know if you’ve paid your dues.
New Business
BOI report – Beneficial Ownership Information Reporting – the government’s way of tracking LLCs and who the owner is. The intent is to prevent money laundering. If you have more than 25% ownership in an LLC, you’re required to fill one out. This is required by January 1, 2025. It’s new this year, and they’re still working out details. An individual should be able to fill this out without needing an attorney or CPA. If you establish an LLC in 2024, you have 3 months to fill it out. There is a website for this: https://boiefiling.fincen.gov/. There is a push to repeal the legislation for this, so it may be fine to wait for a bit.
Committee Reports & Discussion
Legislative Update (Tom Miller)
HB 3 Affordable housing tax credit for building low-income housing
HB 50 Housing qualification bill – help stresses on downtrodden applicants with evictions, court cases, etc.
HB 59 Eviction counsel for the destitute
HB 93 Limitation on recovery for liens by municipalities that own utilities – has to do with when tenants move out and leave a utility bill, which is typically tacked onto the property as a lien. This is a good bill that would limit the lien amount.
HB 150 Prohibit income housing discrimination – can’t ask what their income is for prospective tenants
Q: What is Ohio doing about the squatters issue?
Dayton did a local news story where a guy bought a house that he’s working on, and 6 people were living in it! The Dayton police were able to get everyone out for trespassing. They would have had to be there for 11 months to claim tenancy. If a tenant invites someone in, they may be considered a tenant after 3 days. If a property is not under a lease, people in it are squatters. There is an ORC section that addresses this.
Call the sheriff’s office and ask for a peace officer – someone is in your house, and you feel threatened. A peace officer is a police officer acting in a peaceful role, just there to help keep the peace. We’ll discuss this more at next month’s meeting.
SB 76 High volume landlord tax – if you have above a certain number of properties, the income from those could go to taxes after a certain point in the year.
SB 150 Prohibit terminating utilities to certain households and create some kind of repayment plan.
All of these bills could change, even right up until they get voted on.
Discussion: Did last month’s meeting on housing assistance change anyone’s mind about taking those applicants?
If we rent to someone on Metro and they destroy the property, if we document damage within 30 days, that tenant cannot be eligible for the program until restitution has been made. This is not just for Ohio but for the entire nation.
Lease, eviction, etc. are the same process as with a regular paying tenant.
The challenge is that the tenants don’t have much skin in the game, so they leave a mess. We won’t necessarily get paid back for the damage that gets caused.
You can screen Metro tenants just like you screen everyone else. But if Metro is covering their rent, what’s your basis for denying them? If you bring in a Metro tenant, it’s probably going to be charity. Metro is a huge risk. Anecdotally, Hope House has been a better organization to partner with. Hope House has case workers that will help landlords. The VA program is also good, except there’s a lot of paperwork.
Before they get the keys, we need to make sure they have utilities switched to their name. They may not have the money for deposits. If they don’t pay for utilities, that can be a reason for eviction.
Question: Is anyone collecting first, last, & deposit?
Generally, no – people don’t have that kind of money upfront. If you do collect that last month’s rent you have to put it in an account that draws interest, which you have to pay back. And if you give them an eviction notice, you have to give them an extra month.
Question: What about pet fees?
You can’t call it a deposit. Pet fees are a really gray area in the state of Ohio. The pet fee is generally due at the time of the deposit, just don’t call it a deposit. Many people just charge monthly fees rather than an upfront fee. This is the rent with no pets, this is your rent with a pet. It’s a lot cleaner to put it in the monthly rent rather than figure out where the damage came from for what’s covered under the pet fee.
For a service animal, they have to start the lease with it as a service animal. Any additional animals are a violation of the lease. You don’t have to accept any pets after the lease signing. But an ESA could be a “reasonable” accommodation under the ADA. The lease agreement is a legal contract. A month-to-month lease could avoid some of these hassles, as you can get them out sooner.
Immigrants:
Additional people tend to move in based on their culture. You have to have an SSN for a background check through TransUnion. It provides a tenant scorecard that looks like a credit report.
Know that landlords can be liable if INS raids your place.
Many of them are very clean and pay their rent in full and on time.
Establish rules – must have a SSN, have a lease for a year locally, you can’t move in extra people, etc.
Motion to adjourn: Tom 1st, Jamie 2nd
Speaker Topic: Rental Tech
Ryan Moninger and Katie Erickson presented some rental tech options, and the group shared a variety of good ideas as well.
Katie uses a Google Spreadsheet that has different sheets for everything – tracking incoming and outgoing each month, lists for spending and income, and a running tally for each property. You can find a sample version of her spreadsheet here.
E-renter.com for background checks – it’s $21.95 for a basic background check and goes up from there if you want a credit check, etc.
Katie explained how the website form works for rental requests and what that process is. She occasionally puts a comment on a Facebook post, and then we get a flood of requests! She tries to keep it to sending them out twice a day to not flood everyone’s inboxes. If you have any suggestions for additional fields to add to that form, let Katie know. It was suggested to add whether they smoke or vape, which will be incorporated soon.
Apartments.com – you can have the tenant fill out applications, background checks which they pay for, etc. You can have them sign a lease through DocuSign and set up ACH payments. It charges them a $29.95 application fee, but they can use that for any place on Apartments.com if they don’t get approved for your place.
RentCheck.com – phone app for unit turnovers. You set up your properties and it helps you do unit inspections. The landlord and tenant can both do an inspection. It walks them through every room, every appliance, etc. encouraging them to take photos of everything for maintenance. It protects the tenant and the landlord. It stores the photos and reports on a cloud app. The tenant can’t just upload photos; they have to be taken through the app. There is a free version and a paid version, based on the number of units.
Stessa.com – income & expense tracking. You can link your business checking account and credit card. It automatically tracks what comes in and goes out. It can automatically assign that transaction to a property, category, etc. It has reporting features and can generate tax packages, rent rolls, etc. There are some tenant application and screening features.
If tenants aren’t tech-savvy, they often have a family member who can help them.
Credit card recommendation: Visa Signature Business. American Express may be good for an introductory card.
Other potential options:
Rent Redi
Rentec Direct
Tubro Tenant
Panda Doc (for lease signing)
Where to list: Zillow, Facebook Marketplace (direct them to another site like Apartments.com if you have that)
Put it in your ad how much income you expect or any other expectations.
Tip: you can tell a lot about a potential tenant by looking at their car!
When you do all of this electronically, how do you get to know the people? How do you highlight elements of the lease? You can and should still meet them in person and then DocuSign the lease. The state of Ohio recognizes digital signatures as legally binding. It’s not the landlord’s responsibility for the tenant to read the lease, but we still want them to call out important things. You can have them initial certain sections.
Has anyone had an experience with digital signatures in court? Some have, and judges seem to be ok with that.
Need maintenance? Kyle Corbin joined us tonight and would love to get connected with handyman / construction work. You can contact Kyle at 419-721-0591, kylecorbin3579@gmail.com, or on Facebook at Corbin Construction and Renovation.