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Forms and FliersNorton Cabell is a principal in several rental businesses, including Junco Company and Fifth & Blair LLC. He has developed some of the forms below for those companies. You are welcome to borrow from them as you will. Screening Guidelines: If you charge an application fee (whatever you call it), Oregon law requires you to have written screening criteria and to make them available (so post them or hand them out) to applicants. If you don’t charge an application fee, you should still have written criteria (a strong defense to a fair housing complaint, as long as you follow them). The Screening Guidelines used by Junco Company might help you think of the sorts of elements that should go into your own guidelines. We caution you not to use these verbatim (the exact wording is copyrighted, anyway). Each property management company is different. You may prefer not to rent to people that Junco Company does rent to, and vice versa. If you’re looking for other examples of screening guidelines, Oregon Rental Housing Association sells a brief, simple form. MultiFamily Housing Council offers one as well, more complicated and with more options, so better suited to a larger property manager. Tenant turnover: When you learn that an apartment is going to become vacant, filling that vacancy as quickly as possible is an important part of a manager’s job. I use a Move Out/In checklist to remind me of what tasks need to be done to accomplish that. I don’t always do everything on the list (for instance, for some of my property, I rarely advertise since signs and word-of-mouth usually get me applicants), but being reminded that it (advertising) is something I might do is useful. Mold: This is a hot topic these days. While anyone can be sued for anything, we believe that educating tenants on the dangers associated with mold accumulations and telling them what to do about it can be a terrific defense in a lawsuit. That’s what our Mold Agreement does. This form has been adopted in large part by Oregon Rental Housing Association. Other trade groups also sell a form that helps, but the approach of each is different so read carefully. Domestic Violence: Another hot topic these days; and the Oregon legislature recently passed new laws giving rights (and responsibilities) to victims of domestic violence. We, working with Legal Aid Services of Oregon, developed a flier that helps tenants who are such victims to understand their rights. We hand this Domestic Violence Flier out to tenants when we hear they may be victims. We all benefit when everyone understands the law. So you might think about handing this to tenants when appropriate. A very similar flier is addressed to Landlords. Property Flier: When we have an apartment for rent, we market in a variety of ways. One is to have a one-page flier that describes the property. We sometimes fax it to interested people. We also put out a flier box alongside the FOR RENT sign. It answers most of the pertinent questions people will have about our apartment. You might think about developing a Property Flier for your own rentals. The one here is just a sample of what we do. Insurance: Renters Insurance is a terrific deal for tenants; it’s cheap, too. But most tenants don’t think about it and some don’t even know it’s available. When we rent to folks, we give them a Renter’s Insurance information flier that explains the benefits of insurance to them. You might consider doing something similar. Rules: Generic Rules don’t work very well. After all, what works in your laundry room, parking lot, or hallways won’t work for everyone else. But rules are important. Still, they’re only legal if they “promote the convenience, safety or welfare of the tenants in the premises, preserve the landlord’s property from abusive use, or make a fair distribution of services and facilities held out for the tenants generally.” (ORS 90.262). Further, several attorneys who work in the fair housing area have told me that it is rules, not leases or other forms, that most often get landlords in trouble with fair housing law. The Rules we use for one complex might at least give you things to think about as you develop rules for your own rentals. Roaches: We regularly get complaints about cockroaches. The presence of roaches is usually due to tenant behaviors, but that doesn’t stop the complaints. So we give a Cockroaches Information Flier when they move in, and send it along if later they complain. Fair Housing Poster: Did you know that fair housing laws strongly encourage you to post a Fair Housing Poster. Having such a poster helps in a defense against a fair housing complaint. If you have an office where you do business with tenants and applicants, you must have such a poster displayed. It’s harder for landlords who work out of their homes or who do not have a public office. Our solution is to hand out a copy of the fair housing poster with every application (we also hand out a copy of our Screening Guidelines and a Property Flier describing the property). Trade GroupsIf you don’t belong to a landlord trade group, you should. The major ones in Oregon are:
Some others, less local, are Clark County Rental Association (across the river in Vancouver), the National Apartment Association and the National Multi Housing Council (the biggie umbrella groups in Washington DC), the National Association of Rental Property Managers (with a branch in Portland), the Institute of Real Estate Managers (also with a branch in Portland). Other Resources(this list is a work in progress; tell us [email works best] who you thinks should be added) Legal Aid organizations sometimes represent tenants in disputes with landlords. In Oregon, there is one such organization, Legal Aid Services of Oregon (sometimes called LASO, with offices in Portland, Hillsboro, Oregon City, Woodburn, Salem, Albany, Eugene, Roseburg, Newport, Bend, and Pendleton). Another similar organization, Lane County Legal Aid and Advocacy Center (based in Eugene) operates without federal funding. The Fair Housing Council of Oregon provides education and outreach services explaining fair housing laws (and there’s more than federal law, remember. State law and local ordinances protect such classes of people as sexual orientation, age, gender identity, and source of income). Their web site has useful information on the rights of tenants to fair housing. Landlords who aren’t intimately familiar with fair housing laws should use this site as a beginning. Mr. Landlord must be the best-known trade newsletter in the country. Subtitled “the survival newsletter for landlords & landladies,” this 8-page monthly focuses on marketing, tenant retention, maintenance, but runs the gamut of landlord topics. The inimitable Jeffrey Taylor, a/k/a Mr. Landlord, speaks around the country, and listening to him is an experience you won’t forget. They publish a catalogue of booklets—i.e., ”How to Buy Rental Cash Flow Streams,” “How to Handle Tenant Problems & Tenant Tricks to Watch Out For,” “How To Keep Residents Longer & Happy”—that are middlingly useful. Diamond Productions publishes On-Site, a monthly newspaper aimed at the property management industry in Washington state. It’s free; and quite informative. Housing Connections is a Portland service that attempts to connect landlords and tenants of specialized housing. It’s sponsored in part by Portland’s Bureau of Housing and Community Development. It allows landlords to list places “for rent” for free, though it focuses on the Metro area. Under “Other Resources” it has a bunch of contacts in the greater Portland area.
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