HOAleader.com - Tip of the Week - November 17, 2017
Published: Fri, 11/17/17
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Tired of Playing Whack-a-Mole with Owners on HOA Rental Rules?
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This week’s tip should help you rein in those ever-more crafty owners who are doing an end run around your HOA rules prohibiting short-term rentals.
The newest trick? Some owners are following their association’s rules to require tenants to commit to, say, six-month or year-long leases and then also including a lease provision that says for, say, a $10 fee, tenants can breach that provision.
Let’s first start with a caution from Jeremy Clark, PCAM®, AMS, chief financial officer of Excel Association Management Inc. in Plano, which manages more than 100 condos and HOAs in north Texas. He just wants boards to avoid battles they don’t have to, or that aren’t the smartest to, wage.
“I haven’t seen this sort of rule skirting, but short-term rentals are a growing concern,” he states. “In both condos and HOAs, the trick here is that your rules are one thing; the enforcement is another. Passing the rule and coming up with the rule is the easy part. But coming up with a way to monitor or determine if a violation exists is proving to be much more challenging.
“In this case, you at least have an owner who’s submitting a rental agreement to the board with a $10 penalty,” states Clark. “Most of the time we see this, we don’t see owners contacting the association at all; they’re not asking for permission. Then you’re relying on neighbors, and you get mixed results based on what’s being reported.”
Clark’s advice is to start with a request. “Something may look like a short-term rental but may not be,” he notes. “An owner may have guests or family members visiting. We approach these things as if we’re doing an investigation. We contact the owners and ask them for information, saying something like, ‘We received a report, and it looks like there might be a short-term rental situation; if you have information that would prove otherwise, please submit it.’”
“It’s an approach of, ‘We don’t know; it looks like it, but we don’t know what’s going on,’” he explains. “You’ll get better results. And if you take a harsher tone, you may end up picking a fight with good owners or residents who have their sister and brother-in-law in for a week, and those aren’t the people you want to start a fight with.”
Oh, but you should pick a fight with owners who are violating your rental provisions. And we know just how to do it. Find out in our new article: https://www.hoaleader.com/members/3632.cfm
Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President
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