Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels NEW YORK — For more than a year, Vanie Mangal, a physician assistant at a Connecticut hospital, called relatives to tell them that their loved ones were dying of COVID-19, watched as patients gasped their final breaths and feared that she would get sick. Mangal found no respite from stress when she went home. She is a landlord who rents the basement and first-floor apartments at her home in Queens, and for the past year, conflicts with her tenants have poisoned the atmosphere in her house. The first-floor tenants have not paid rent in 15 months, bang on the ..read more

By Brittani Brodt Sure, you can text them about your upcoming Pizza in the Clubhouse – but should you? Key Texting’s Tips to Maximize Engagement Recent stats show that 90% of the US population prefers to text with a business over a direct phone call. But does everyone want to receive the texts you’re sending? How do you make sure your residents are receiving your messages, and more importantly, that they don’t choose to reply STOP and opt-out of the communication once they receive it? Before you hit that SEND button consider these 4 texting etiquette tips: It’s all about your audience: Is t ..read more

Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop plans to tighten building safety rules after the collapse of a Florida high-rise, the city announced Wednesday. The mayor has proposed rules that would require more frequent inspections of Jersey City mid-rises and high-rises in an effort to avoid a disaster like the structural failure of the Champlain Tower in Surfside, Florida, last month. “Jersey City has the most high-rise buildings than any other municipality in New Jersey, with various building structures and ages, and so our goal is to strengthen our policies in order to provide the best protection for ou ..read more

Congresswomen Ayana Pressley, D-Mass., Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., on July 7 reintroduced legislation in the House to ban facial recognition use in most Federally funded public housing. The No Biometric Barriers Housing Act of 2021 would “prohibit biometric recognition technology in public and assisted housing units funded under the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).” Additionally, it would require HUD to submit a report to Congress that researches: Any known facial recognition tech usage in public housing units; Emerging technology impact o ..read more

With a road to recovery in sight, multifamily investment activity regained some steam this year. According to Yardi Matrix data, between January and May 2021, transaction volume nationwide surpassed $30 billion. This represents a 33 percent increase from the prior year when $22.5 billion in deals closed over the same period of time. In the Northeast region, multifamily deals amounted to more than $3 billion, nearly on par with the $2.9 billion recorded between January and May 2020. The transactions included more than 14,300 units, and assets in major multifamily metros such as Manhattan and ..read more

Attention, landlords! You may soon be financially responsible for your building’s greenhouse gas emissions. In 2019, the New York City Council passed Local Law 97, a building ordinance designed to reduce the city’s carbon emissions drastically. The ordinance takes aim at New York City’s buildings, which account for 71 percent of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions. If this ordinance proves successful, cities across the United States could use it as a model for similar regulations. Local Law 97—or LL97, for short—works by setting emissions caps on ..read more

Asiaha Butler is on the front lines as her community battles gun violence, food deserts and a battered public image as president of a civic group in one of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods. Like many cash-strapped neighborhoods across the country, Englewood, on the city’s South Side, is preparing for what experts say could be a deluge of evictions by the end of July, when the federal eviction moratorium is expected to end. “If you’re savvy enough to be online or savvy enough to check for it, you might get that assistance,” said Butler, whose group, R.A.G.E., short for Resident Association of ..read more

Maybe you never thought to ask your tenants if they were smokers. Maybe you could tell that they smoked cigarettes but assumed they would be courteous enough to do it outdoors. Whatever happened, your rental now reeks of cigarette smoke, even months after the tenants have moved out. The smell is pervasive and it’s hard to tell what area(s) you should target first. The odor infecting your rental is known as thirdhand smoke—the residual contamination left behind from use of tobacco products like cigarettes and cigars. The smell/presence of thirdhand smoke isn’t merely unpleasant, it’s ha ..read more

Renters in New Jersey are still protected against lockouts through the end of the year, but starting this month, courts will require mandatory settlement hearings for landlord-tenant cases — and some tenant advocates are worried about the potential impact. Through such hearings, tenants and landlords meet — primarily online, at a time scheduled by the court — and discuss ways to resolve their cases. The estimated 14,000 cases that have been pending for more than a year will be prioritized, as well as newer cases involving a year’s worth of missed rent. There are consequences if ..read more

What can you do if you are a landlord and you have a hoarder who owes over a year’s worth of rent? Nothing, says Carl Haglund. Haglund took video of one of units at the Admiral Apartments, which he says he works hard to maintain for working families. He said his carpenter, who was replacing doors at the 23-unit building in the Rainier Valley, called him and told him he better come have a look. “He’s a hoarder,” Haglund said of the tenant. He said there was dog feces everywhere and dozens of boxes of tennis shoes. “He owes over $25,000 in rent,” Haglund estimated, adding that even be ..read more