Alaska runs its residential rentals on a single, comprehensive statute: the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, codified at AS 34.03.010 through 34.03.380 and usually just called the Alaska Landlord and Tenant Act. Alaska's rules are based on the URLTA framework, but with their own statutory requirements and exceptions. For a property manager, that's largely good news, most of what you need is in one chapter, with clear rules on deposits, habitability, entry, notices, and termination. The catch is that Alaska's version has its own specific numbers and mechanics that differ from the generic uniform template and from other states. The deposit cap has a dollar-threshold exception. The return deadline flips between 14 and 30 days depending on whether proper notice was given. The willful-withholding penalty is double the amount wrongfully kept. The framework is straightforward, but the specific deadlines and exceptions are what matter, and missing them can create avoidable ...

Quick Reference: Colorado Habitability Rules at a Glance Issue Rule Authority Effective date SB 24-094 took effect May 3, 2024. Lease disclosure duties apply to agreements on or after January 1, 2025 CRS 38-12-505(3)(c) and (d) Contact the tenant Within 24 hours of notice, with intentions and an estimated start and finish CRS 38-12-503(6)(a)(I) Start repairs, urgent 24 hours where the condition materially interferes with life, health or safety CRS 38-12-503(2)(b)(I)(A) Start repairs, standard 72 hours for premises uninhabitable under CRS 38-12-505 CRS 38-12-503(2)(b)(I)(B) Finish repairs Completely remedy within a reasonable time after commencing CRS 38-12-503(2)(b)(III) Presumed failure Condition persists 14 days, or 7 days for life, health or safety conditions CRS 38-12-503(3)(a)(II) Alternate housing Comparable unit or hotel room within 24 hours of the tenant's request, at landlord cost CRS 38-12-503(4)(a)(II) Mandatory lease language A 12-point bold habitability and ...

A screening decision made by software is still your screening decision. That is the single most important thing for a property management company to understand about automated applicant screening, and it is the thing most vendor marketing quietly avoids saying. The appeal of algorithmic screening is obvious: faster decisions, consistent criteria, less staff time per application. Those benefits are real. What does not come with them is a transfer of liability. If an automated system declines applicants in a pattern that violates fair housing law, the housing provider is the one facing the complaint. This article covers what that means operationally, and what a defensible process looks like. A note before going further: this is general background rather than legal advice. Fair housing law is federal, state, and local, enforcement posture changes, and your specific obligations depend on jurisdiction and programme participation. Have counsel review your screening criteria. What the ...

The New Jersey Truth in Renting Act requires covered landlords to distribute the state's official "Truth in Renting" statement to tenants, provide the current version to each new tenant at or before occupancy, and keep a copy prominently posted. The Act also prohibits lease provisions that violate clearly established tenant rights or landlord responsibilities under New Jersey law, and it lets a tenant petition a court to terminate a lease that contains one. That second half is the part landlords underestimate. A New Jersey lease can be professionally drafted and signed by both parties and still contain a provision that conflicts with a tenant's clearly established legal rights. A tenant's signature does not let a landlord contract around rights that New Jersey law protects, so the "as is" habitability waiver, the clause shifting all repairs to the tenant, the provision waiving the right to notice, these don't gain force just because the lease was signed. This guide covers both halves ...

There is a version of this topic that gets written constantly, and it is about retrofits. Heat pumps, envelope upgrades, controls, electrification. All of it real, all of it expensive, and almost none of it the thing that is currently generating penalties. The first wave of enforcement under New York's Local Law 97 was not about buildings that emitted too much. It was about buildings that did not file. That distinction is the whole point of this article, because filing is a property management responsibility and retrofits usually are not. The capital work belongs to the owner. The deadline belongs to you. A note before going further: building performance standards are local law and they change frequently. Treat this as general background rather than legal advice, and confirm specifics with counsel and your local jurisdiction. What Building Performance Standards Actually Require Building performance standards, usually shortened to BPS, are local laws that set enforceable limits on a ...

Insurance used to be one of the boring lines in a property budget. You put last year's number in, added a few percent, and moved on to the items that actually needed thinking about. That approach stopped working somewhere around 2022, and most operators found out the hard way at a renewal. What makes this different from ordinary cost inflation is that the increases are not smooth, not predictable from the prior year, and not evenly distributed. Two similar buildings in the same market can see very different renewals depending on construction type, loss history, and which carriers happen to be writing that risk this year. Property managers do not buy the policy. But they control most of the inputs that determine what it costs, and almost none of them know it. How Large the Increase Actually Is Reliable data on multifamily insurance costs was scarce until recently, partly because homeowner insurance gets tracked closely and commercial multifamily does not. That has changed, and the ...

Most property companies running software they have outgrown know it. The system is slow, the workarounds have multiplied, the team complains, and the reporting no longer answers the questions leadership asks. And yet the decision to leave keeps getting deferred, for a reason that sounds responsible every time it is said aloud: we have put too much into this to walk away now. The years of data, the money spent on implementation, the training, the customization, the sheer effort of getting the organization onto this system, all of it feels like a reason to stay. It is not a reason to stay. It is a reason the decision feels hard, which is a different thing. Almost everything in that list is already spent and cannot be recovered whether you stay or go, and the part that is not, the cost of switching, is a one-time payment weighed against a cost of staying that repeats every single year you remain. The instinct that treats past investment as a reason to continue is one of the most studied ...

Ask most property management companies whether their vendors are compliant and they will tell you yes, because there is a certificate of insurance on file for each one. That answer conflates two different things: having a document, and having the protection the document appears to describe. The gap between those matters most at the worst possible moment. A contractor damages a unit, injures a resident, or leaves work that fails a year later, and the certificate that sat in the folder turns out not to do what everyone assumed it did. This is not a technicality. It is written on the face of the form. Note before going further: this article describes how these documents work in general terms. Insurance requirements and their enforceability vary by jurisdiction and by contract, so treat it as background rather than legal advice and have your own counsel or broker review your requirements. What a Certificate of Insurance Actually Proves The certificate almost every US vendor supplies is ...

"Integrates with over two hundred applications." It is one of the most reliable selling points in software, printed on every comparison sheet, and it lands because it sounds like pure generosity: look how much this connects to, look how much you can plug in, look how flexible it is. A longer integration list reads as a longer list of things the product can do, and more is better, so the platform with more integrations wins the box-ticking exercise. That reading has the sign wrong on half of what it is counting. An integration is not only a capability. It is a dependency, a connection between two systems that has to keep working, that breaks when either side changes, and that someone has to maintain for as long as you run it. Every integration you add is a new place the system can fail and a new standing obligation on whoever keeps the lights on. Counted honestly, a long list of integrations is not only a list of things you can do. It is also a list of things that can break, and the ...

The short answer Most property teams treat insurance renewal as a procurement event: gather quotes, compare, negotiate, sign. Ninety days of activity, once a year. But an underwriter is not pricing your negotiation. They are pricing the evidence you can produce, and that evidence was generated over the preceding twelve months by your maintenance records, claims handling, inspection documentation and valuation data. Undocumented improvements carry essentially no weight in a rate conversation, no matter how real the improvement is. You can replace a roof, install leak detection and go a year without a claim, and if none of it appears in the submission it did not happen as far as pricing is concerned. This matters more in a softening market than a hard one, which is counterintuitive and is the point of this article. Why does a softer market make preparation matter more? Because when capacity returns, carriers compete selectively rather than indiscriminately. The market has genuinely ...