By Aaron Clapper & Alison Goebel
Ohio’s cities have experienced an increase in rental properties over the last decade and many communities have established rental registries and licensing programs in response. Rental property registries and licensing programs are often utilized by municipalities to gather up-to-date information for rental properties and owners, and to ensure properties meet basic standards of habitability. Rental property registries can provide a pathway for legal remedy of insufficient or inadequate rental housing conditions for tenants.
A rental property registry collects contact information from the individuals and/or companies responsible for property maintenance, code violations, and tax payments of the city’s rental stock. A license program issues licenses to property owners to offer property for rent within the city’s jurisdiction. License programs requires a registry component but not all rental registries have a licensure requirement.
State policymakers recognized the value of rental property registries by enacting Section 5323 of the Ohio Revised Code in 2007. Under this state law, individuals and companies that own property in counties with more than 200,000 residents must file contact information (name, address, telephone number of owner) with the County Auditor.
License programs are not intended to be punitive. Instead, they open a communication channel between municipalities and property owners, and provide cities with a legal tool that protects responsible landlords from the impact of unengaged peers.
Effective components of a rental property licensure program include the following:
Clearly assigned department and staff responsible for the management of the license program, which is often the city’s code enforcement/building department.
Registration form for property owner’s information. Effective rental property registries often require a “local contact,” should the property owner reside outside of the county in which the city is located.
Tracking Software to store contact information/registrations, and serve as an internal database for the City’s interaction with property owners and tenants, and any action taken on the property.
Property Inspections. An effective licensing program includes property inspections, which ensures health and safety standards are met. Inspections are the primary opportunity for the City to identify any building or health code violations or issues that the landlord must rectify. At a minimum, exterior property inspections should occur on a regular basis, ideally annually. Some cities include regular interior property inspections as a basis for the rental property licensure.
Annual Fee for registration. All licensing programs assess annual registration fees. This helps offset the cost of administering and maintaining the registry, pay Code Enforcement offers, and conduct property inspections. The annual fee revenue should not discourage registration by being set too high or too low. In many cities, the licensing program covers only part of the cost of the rental licensure program within the City.
Fines for non-compliance. Some rental property licensure programs charge re-inspection fees for non-compliant properties. In addition, some cities charge a fee for failure to register a rental property and/or a fee for a property that is registered and found to be non-compliant.
While each of these components lay the groundwork for an effective rental property licensure program, program operation can vary by city and are customized to the city’s needs and capacity. This is especially true with property inspections/schedules, the annual fee, and fines, which range in costs and timelines.
Utilizing a rental property licensure program is another tool a city can implement in their housing work to provide safe, quality housing to all residents.
Examples of rental property registry/licensure programs can be found in the following cities, which is not an exhaustive list of Ohio’s cities: