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Compliance Update: Legislation Related to Fee Transparency

Federal and State legislation is targeting deceptive fee practices across industries, the rental housing industry being one of those affected. This includes the White House proposal for a Renters Bill of Rights (discussed further below) and weighing in heavily on the discussion of Junk Fees with the FTC’s proposed rule on “Unfair and Deceptive Fees”.

At the state level these measures are taken even further with California being among the loudest and most active. Additional states include Minnesota SF 2909 (discussed in our Q3 Compliance & Legislation Update blog post), Virginia HB 967 and HB 1519, and pending legislation with Illinois HB 4629.

Below we discuss the active and pending state level legislation in California and Virginia, as well as the federal level legislation as it applies to housing and the important legislative actions taking

Compliance Update: Legislation Related to Fee Transparency

From the Summit: The Elite Approach to Training Your Site Teams

At first glance, you might not think your employee training program has a significant impact on your business, but if you fail to invest in properly onboarding new employees there is a trickle down effect on lease renewals. Presenters in a session at the 2023 Entrata Summit indicated that research shows that the makeup of the US workforce is in a big transition period. Currently, 39% of the workforce are millennials, but 10,000 individuals are hitting retirement age every day and exiting the workforce, meaning there are hundreds of thousands of new employees that need to be trained every year.

Resident Screening: Is more better?

When it comes to screening potential residents, it’s not enough anymore to run a simple credit check and call it a day. While a standard credit check can provide important data about the applicant, they only provide a narrow view of the risks that may be associated with the lease. With the wealth of accessible data available today, properties can do much more to avoid bad debt risk and reduce fair housing liability.

How to Lose a Resident in 5 Ways

Feedback we’ve seen in the ResidentPortal app is providing unique insight into some of your residents’ biggest pet peeves. The bad news: if you’re not meeting expectations you may soon be dealing with an unnecessary vacancy. The good news: often a simple settings adjustment can resolve the issue and keep residents happily in place.

FinTech Solutions for Growing Multifamily

A group of friends goes out for the night, but one of them forgets their wallet. One good soul in the group decides to pick up their expenses for the evening, trusting the friend to pay it back in a timely manner.

Customer Service: The Conversation Factor

A quick review of standard customer service tips, (smile, make eye contact, use the customer’s name, match your tone of voice with your words, offer solutions) make it pretty clear that excellent customer service is, at its core, a communications issue. While it’s vital to provide the service or product, the heart and soul of customer service is communication. Regardless of whether you are educating potential residents on your property or responding to a resident’s complaints about an on-going maintenance issue, maintaining an open, two-way dialogue is essential to providing excellent customer service.

Ode to the Maintenance Man

Since I have recently been working on our new product video for MobilePortal™ that includes a tool for maintenance managers, my thoughts have been turned to these invaluable members of our industry. Having a happy and skilled maintenance and grounds team will help with resident retention, make your property more attractive to visiting prospects, and possibly even help your online ratings and reviews. Maintenance workers are often an overlooked group, so on behalf of the stalwart individuals working behind the scenes Property Solutions held an internal contest to see which employee could write the best maintenance manager poem. The response was great as many PSI employees jumped at the opportunity to sing maintenance man praises, but after much deliberation we were able to pick a winner. Congratulations, Lance Halladay, and thank you for so eloquently expressing the feelings that are in all of our hearts.

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Compliance Update: Legislation Related to Fee Transparency

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