By Grant Brissey
From budget-friendly rentals to pet-friendly policies, these home characteristics are among top priorities for future tenants.
What can you do to minimize vacancies? The first step is knowing what features renters want. Then, identify which of those features your property offers and highlight them in your listings. Our survey data from the Zillow Consumer Housing Trends Report shows that renters are pretty specific about what impacts their home decision. If your property can boast any of these most-desired features, make sure to call them out in your listings.
More so now than ever, affordability is key.
1. Staying within budget
Hands down, rent prices that keep them on budget is the top concern for most renters: 80% say it’s highly important.
2. Pet-friendly policies
Lots of renters acquired pets during the pandemic. Since 2018, the percentage of renter households that reported owning a dog has risen to more than a third, and those reporting a cat rose to almost 30%. Overall, 59% of renters in 2022 reported having at least one pet, up from 46% in 2018. Breed restrictions, whose efficacy has been questioned, may be barring a cohort of high-quality tenants.
3. Online rent payment
Demand for online rent payment capabilities has steadily grown over the last few years. In spring of 2019, 57% of renters said they’d prefer to pay rent online. By summer of 2022, that percentage had increased to 68%. Meanwhile, only 56% of renters reported having the ability to pay rent online in 2022.
4. Cost-saving amenities
Shared amenity features have taken a backseat to affordability issues for many renters. Emphasize the cost-saving factor instead. Remind tenants that a community gym means they’re saving money on membership at the fitness center down the street. A rooftop deck or garden space means they can entertain instead of going out. Appealing to the ways your property can help reduce their spend in other areas of their life could increase your perceived value.
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5. A walkable neighborhood
With outdoor spaces among the safest spots to gather over the last two years, it’s no surprise to see that 57% of recent renters valued a walkable neighborhood when searching for an apartment.
6. A short commute time
How Americans work has changed since 2018, but the desire to be close to work or school has remained fairly constant. 56% of renters surveyed in 2022 said their commute to work or school was highly important, similar to 58% in 2018.
7. Number of bedrooms
Also important to renters is finding a place that has their preferred number of bedrooms. A full 68% of renters say this is at least a very important factor in finding the right place to live.
8. Layout
Having their preferred floor plan or layout is highly important for 48% of all renters. It may be that after a few years of increased indoor time with family or roommates, the right number of walls and doors is now a growing concern.
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In People vs. Commons West, LLC, the Cortland County New York Supreme Court ruled the New York Source of Income Antidiscrimination statute (“SOIA”) to be unconstitutional. The New York Human Rights Law (Executive Law article 15) was amended in April 2019 to make it an unlawful discriminatory practice to refuse to rent or lease housing accommodations to any person, or group of persons, based on their “lawful source of income “
As defined in the Human Rights Law, “lawful source of income” specifically includes “any form of federal, state, or local public assistance or housing assistance including … section 8 vouchers … whether or not such income or credit is paid or attributed directly to a landlord” Pursuant to section 8 of the United States Housing Act of 1937, the federal government operates the Housing Choice Voucher Program that provides housing assistance to eligible low-income families by giving subsidies to landlords who rent apartments to them
Respondents own and operate numerous residential rental properties in the City of Ithaca. The New York State Attorney General (“NYSAG”) commenced a proceeding alleging that respondents’ refusal to participate in Section 8 constitutes impermissible source of income discrimination in violation of the Human Rights Law, and seeking (1) a permanent injunction enjoining respondents from refusing to rent or lease apartments to recipients of Section 8 housing assistance; (2) restitution for consumers injured by respondents’ conduct; and (3) the imposition of penalties and costs. Respondents moved to dismiss the petition or alternatively, for an order granting discovery.
Respondents first contend that SOIA is unconstitutional because it compels landlords to participate in Section 8 — which is a voluntary program under federal law — thereby impermissibly requiring landlords to waive their rights under the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution. A landlord cannot accept a Section 8 housing voucher as payment for rent without agreeing to participate in Section 8 by entering into a Housing Assistance Payment (“HAP”) contract with a Public Housing Agency (“PHA”) .The HAP contract must be in the form required by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The HAP contract requires a participating landlord to consent to inspection of “the contract unit and premises at such times as the PHA determines necessary,” and to provide the PHA, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Comptroller General of the United States “full and free access to the contract unit and the premises, and to all accounts and other records of the owner that are relevant to the HAP contract,” which includes access to “any computers, equipment or facilities containing such records”.
The “premises” are “[t]he building or complex in which the contract unit is located, including common areas and grounds”. Respondents contend, therefore, that SOIA violates a property owner’s Fourth Amendment rights by giving the owner no choice but to consent to these inspections by entering into a HAP contract.
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NYSAG agrees that Section 8 is a voluntary program, but contends that the Human Rights Law does not mandate participation in Section 8 because the law “merely prohibits [respondents] from denying an applicant for an apartment based on their source of income, which includes Section 8 vouchers”
In 1967, the United States Supreme Court established the principle that administrative searches of buildings to ensure compliance with a municipal housing code are significant intrusions upon the interests protected by the Fourth Amendment The New York Court of Appeals specifically held that laws which authorize inspections of residential rental properties without either the consent of the owner or a valid search warrant violate the Fourth Amendment, and specifically noted that a property owner cannot be indirectly compelled to consent to a search.
The court ruled that the NYAG’s argument is fundamentally flawed for the simple reason that, a landlord cannot accept a Section 8 housing voucher as payment for rent without agreeing to participate in Section 8, which, in turn, requires that the landlord authorize warrantless searches of the rental property and the landlord’s records. The NY Appellate Division has expressly held that similar SOIA statutes adopted by municipalities prior to the April 2019 amendment of the Human Rights Law required a landlord to accept Section 8 vouchers, effectively compelling the landlord’s participation in the otherwise voluntary program Thus, although Section 8 is a voluntary program at the federal level, the source of income protections provided by the Human Rights Law would necessarily compel a landlord to participate in Section 8 to obtain reasonable rent for an apartment rented or leased to a person who is eligible to receive Section 8 assistance.
A law may not coerce property owners into consenting to warrantless inspections in derogation of their constitutional rights by conditioning their ability to rent real property on providing such consent, which is precisely the effect of the source of income antidiscrimination statute. Thus, by requiring landlords to accept Section 8 vouchers, SOIA necessarily compels landlords to consent to warrantless searches of their properties, in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
Similarly, SOIA further violates the Fourth Amendment by compelling landlords to consent to warrantless searches of their records. The NYSAG has not identified any law or regulation requiring respondents to maintain specific business records, and renting residential, Accordingly, SOIA is unconstitutional to the extent that it makes it an unlawful discriminatory practice to refuse to rent or lease housing accommodations to any person, or group of persons, because their source of income includes Section 8 vouchers.
Based on the foregoing, respondents’ motion to dismiss was granted, and the NYSAG’s petition was dismissed, with prejudice.
Source: Friedman & Ranzenhofer
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By Jason Sorens
The Washington State House has passed a bill to cap rent increases at 7 percent a year. The Senate has yet to vote on it, and the governor has not taken a position. If enacted, this law would hurt renters, including low-income renters.
Advocates of the legislation call it “rent stabilization” rather than “rent control,” because “rent control” has gotten a bad name over the years (and for good reason). But in practice, it works the same way.
Capping rents means lots of people will want to rent at the capped rate, but fewer units will be available to rent, creating a shortage. After all, owners of apartment buildings can put their units to alternative uses, selling them off as condos, converting them to office spaces, occupying the units themselves, or simply leaving them vacant.
In the long run, rent caps encourage apartment owners to skimp on maintenance as well. So fewer units are available, and they are of lower quality
The Washington legislation exempts apartments built in the past 10 years. But the law could still discourage new apartment construction. After all, builders have to keep in mind the possibility that 10 or 15 years from now, those new units themselves will be added to rent stabilization. This is precisely what has happened in New York over and over again.
Once a place adopts rent caps, it’s very hard to un-ring the bell and make investors feel safe again about building new apartments.
Advocates of rent stabilization say that “vacancy decontrol” — letting rents adjust when a tenant moves out — makes the legislation less harmful. But rent stabilization makes tenants less likely to want to move out. That makes it harder for young people and workers moving to an area to find a place to rent, and keeps people locked into locations where it might not make sense for them to live anymore.
In markets that have had rent caps for many years, there’s even a well-known scam, described in Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities, whereby a renter pretends to still occupy a unit, while subletting it to someone else, to avoid vacancy decontrol.
Advocates of rent stabilization also say that a high rent cap, like one that limits a one-year increase to 7 percent, is less harmful than traditional rent control. But it’s no defense of a policy that it might cause only a little harm. And in any case, a 7-percent cap could cause a lot of harm.
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Why might a housing provider need to raise rent more than 7 percent in a year?
First, inflation might run above that rate. We just went through a year in which inflation topped 9 percent. It could happen again.
Second, even if inflation doesn’t run that high, rent inflation could run that high if land-use regulations have choked off housing supply and demand is growing. Again, the recent pandemic is a case in point: Americans’ demand for housing went up because people were spending more time at home, but a lot of places did not let property owners build lots of new units. Last year, annual rent growth topped 10 percent in several markets that have limited the supply of new homes.
Third, repairs and renovations can be costly for housing providers, and the value of these improvements, especially after a tenant has stayed several years and if building codes change, could justify a rent increase of much more than 7 percent.
Fourth, the city of Seattle requires a court order to evict a tenant. For instance, if the tenant is involved in drug activity, the housing provider has to prove it in court. But a housing provider might prefer not to get the police involved. Sometimes a rent increase is the only realistic way to get rid of a problem tenant. In this way, just-cause eviction laws and rent stabilization laws interact to make it extremely difficult to remove tenants who are damaging the property, annoying their neighbors, or engaging in illegal activity.
The economic research on rent caps shows unequivocally very large economic losses, even for tenants of those units themselves. A recent study of San Francisco rent caps shows that after adoption, corporate housing providers reduced supply by 64 percent, while individuals reduced supply by 14 percent. Perhaps the definitive study of the welfare effects of rent control in New York, published in Journal of Urban Economics, found that even tenants in rent-capped units suffered from the policy.
Thus, it’s no surprise that only 2 percent of top economists agree that “ordinances that limit rent increases for some rental housing units, such as in New York and San Francisco, have had a positive impact over the past three decades on the amount and quality of broadly affordable rental housing,” while 81 percent disagree.
Rent caps also have unintended consequences in other markets. Rent caps reduce the value of multifamily properties, because owners and investors expect to earn less. In New York, a recent tightening of “rent stabilization” drove down multifamily properties’ values by more than 30 percent, leaving some housing providers with negative equity and encouraging foreclosure. As a result, a major housing lender has incurred large losses, and investors are worried it could go bankrupt.
Instead of rent caps, cities and states can make housing affordable by letting people build more of it. That’s just what has happened in the last year in several Sunbelt markets. Investors are even complaining that multifamily has a “supply problem,” meaning too much supply, resulting in rent declines.
Just about the worst way to “help” renters is by punishing property owners for providing rental housing, which is just what rent caps do, regardless of whether they call them “rent control” or “rent stabilization.”
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