Property Management During Moratorium Madness

Summary:

During this time of moratorium madness, it’s becoming more and more difficult to enforce leases and do your job as a property manager. Our guests, Tracy Minick and Katherine Swanberg from Real Estate Gladiators know your pain.

In this episode of The Property Management Show, we’ll discuss the way property management’s role has changed over the last year of this pandemic and how to navigate around ever-moving targets, laws, and expectations.

Key Takeaways:

* Due to Federal and local eviction moratoriums put in place by the pandemic, large parts of property manager’s lease agreements are unenforceable. This has dramatically changed property manager’s job descriptions.

* Property managers like the Real Estate Gladiators are communicating with owners and tenants more, assisting tenants with unemployment & helping tenants seek financial support so that they can afford to pay rent.

* Property managers are more valuable to owners than ever. It’s vital that property managers communicate the way that their job has changed to their owners, and demonstrate the amount of work they’re doing to keep their owners compliant.

Property Management During Moratorium Madness

The Real Estate Gladiators team has been fighting even harder for their owner clients than they ever did before. We asked Tracy and Katherine to talk about how they’re using this experience to showcase their true value as professional property managers, even though their hands are in many cases tied because of laws and moratoriums.

COVID Legislation and Eviction Moratoriums

Current legislation is under consideration to extend the eviction moratorium and to implement other laws that will impact both tenants and owners. While Tracy and Katherine primarily manage homes in Snohomish County, Kings County, and Pierce County in Washington State, they’ve learned that anything done in Seattle usually spreads throughout the state. Often, it motivates other states across the country to enact similar laws.

The legislative session in Washington State will include a tremendous number of bills that will impact business owners and property managers and landlords in many different ways. We could see some huge changes coming.

It’s been almost a year since we began living with COVID. Moratoriums enforced on property managers and owners have required a pivot in the way everything is handled, from late fees to notices to evictions. Most of us likely believed that this was simply a response to a temporary situation. Now, it’s looking like the laws and restrictions put in place could become an additional two-year plan.

You should check out our episode about cashflow during the COVID-19 pandemic if that’s another layer that you’re dealing with right now.

Looking at the Washington State Eviction Moratorium

Like many places in the country, Washington State has had an eviction moratorium for a full year. There’s a national moratorium and then there are local extensions of that moratorium. This provides another blanket of restrictions and rules that hold back the eviction process.

In Washington, there are laws in place that impact Real Estate Gladiator’s ability to:

* Collect past due rent

* Terminate tenancies

* Increase rent

* Charge late rent fees

* Charge penalties or NSF fees

Essentially, large parts of their lease agreements are no longer enforceable.

Even asking tenants to pay rent or providing an invoice for the rent that’s due is not allowed.

Property managers and owners in and around Seattle and throughout the state of Washington have been encouraged to ask tenants to pay what they can whe...