A property management company takes on three Miami-Dade assets in the same quarter: a 1994 rental apartment building in Kendall a 1999 oceanfront condominium in Sunny Isles a 12-unit condo in Coral Gables Each has a different inspection deadline, set by a different combination of county and state rules. Missing required deadlines can lead to enforcement action, unexpected repair costs and, in serious cases, action affecting a building's occupancy Most buildings in Miami-Dade County must be recertified by a Florida-licensed engineer or architect when they reach 30 years of age and every 10 years after. Condominium and cooperative buildings three stories or taller within three miles of the coastline start at 25 years. Separately, Florida Statute §553.899 requires a milestone inspection for condo and co-op buildings three or more habitable stories tall. Florida Statute §718.112(2)(g) requires those condominium buildings to complete a Structural Integrity Reserve Study (SIRS) at least ...

A property management company runs 40 long-term units across Atlanta. Two owners want to switch a unit each to Airbnb. A tenant has already listed a bedroom on Vrbo. And a new client asks whether the city's two-property limit still applies. All three questions turn on the same local law: Atlanta's Short-Term Rental Ordinance, which the City Council amended in September 2026. Renting all or part of a dwelling unit in the City of Atlanta for 30 consecutive days or less requires a Short-Term Rental License (STRL) from the Department of City Planning. The license costs $150, is renewed annually, and its number must appear on every listing. Under Ordinance 20-O-1656, an owner or long-term tenant may currently license only their primary residence plus one additional dwelling unit. In September 2026, the City Council voted 9-5 to remove that primary-residence-plus-one restriction. The amendment takes effect January 1, 2027. Long-term leases in Atlanta follow Georgia state law, and Georgia ...

A retail centre is being refinanced. The lender wants a signed estoppel certificate from every tenant within three weeks. The property manager pre-fills fourteen certificates from the lease files and sends them out. Eleven come back signed. Three come back marked up: Tenant What the manager's certificate said What the tenant wrote back Restaurant Rent paid through 30 September Rent paid through 31 October. They prepaid, and nobody posted it to the right period Salon Security deposit held: $9,000 Deposit paid: $12,000, including a top-up when they expanded Pharmacy One renewal option, 3 years "Two options, 5 years each. See the side letter dated 2022" None of these is a tenant being difficult. Each is a place where the landlord's records and the tenant's reality had drifted apart, and nobody noticed until a third party asked both sides to put the facts in writing. That's what an estoppel certificate really is: a test of your lease records, run on someone else's deadline. What an ...

A property management company takes over a mixed Nashville portfolio: long-term units in Davidson County, a few condos downtown, and two houses the previous owner ran on Airbnb. The long-term units follow Tennessee's URLTA. The short-term units follow a separate set of rules, and a permit that existed under the previous owner may not exist at all today. Every short-term rental in Nashville and Davidson County needs a Short Term Rental Property (STRP) permit from Metro Codes before it can be listed. The permit is valid for 365 days (one year) and must be renewed annually. Nashville has two permit categories, owner-occupied and not owner-occupied. Eligibility depends on ownership, zoning and location. Permits cannot be transferred, so a sale, or a move from an individual into an LLC or trust, ends the existing permit. Fees, eligibility rules and penalties can change through Metro Council action. Confirm current requirements with Metro Codes before making acquisition or underwriting ...

Take one change. A tenant wants to stay two more years, and the rent is going up. Now make that change in five markets. Where What can stop or complicate the change What makes it official United States Guarantor or lender consent requirements; for residential leases, state and local rent caps and notice rules A written amendment signed as the lease and local law require England Commercial: extending the term or adding premises takes effect as a surrender and regrant. Private assured tenancies: rent increases must follow Section 13 on Form 4A. A deed of variation or new lease (commercial); a valid Form 4A notice (residential rent) New South Wales For most residential tenancies, limits on how often rent can rise, plus a notice period Written notice at least 60 days before the increase Dubai A 90-day notice rule before expiry, and a rental index that caps increases Written notice at least 90 days before expiry, then a renewed contract registered in Ejari Singapore Stamp duty on the ...

HOA vendor selection is defensible when the association can show five things: who had authority to approve the contract, whether bids were required and obtained, whether any director had a conflict and how it was handled, how each director voted, and that the signed contract matches what was approved. Price matters. The record matters more when the decision is challenged. The repainting bids come in. The lowest one is from a company part-owned by a director's brother-in-law. Everyone agrees it's the best value, so the board approves it and the work gets done well. Eight months later, an owner asks to see the minutes. Nobody is arguing about the paint. The question is whether the association can show that the director disclosed the relationship, stepped out of the vote, and that the rest of the board approved the contract the way the law and the governing documents require. If the minutes say "approved, 5–0," the answer is no. When a vendor decision is challenged, the record is what ...

Equipment warranty tracking means recording each asset's warranty terms (start date, term, what's covered, the conditions for keeping it valid, and how to claim) and checking them when a work order is triaged, before a vendor is sent. A warranty that hasn't expired can still be wasted if nobody checks it before paying for the repair. A heat pump fails in a unit at one of your properties. It was installed four years ago. A technician diagnoses a failed part, replaces it, and the invoice is approved the same week. A month later, someone finds the installation paperwork in a shared inbox. The part was still under warranty. Nobody decided to pay for a covered repair. The work order simply had no way of knowing the warranty existed. That's the gap this article is about: not whether you own warranties, but whether anyone can see them at the moment it matters. Warranty terms vary by manufacturer, product, model and jurisdiction, and change over time. The examples below come from ...

On Friday afternoon, an approved applicant pays a holding deposit on a two-bedroom unit. You take the listing down and turn away two other enquiries. On Tuesday, the applicant emails to say they've found somewhere else. Can you keep the deposit? Most teams go and look up the law at this point. But the answer usually depends less on the law than on something that happened on Friday: whether anyone wrote down what the money was for, how long the unit would be held, and what would happen if the deal fell through. A holding deposit is paid before there's a signed lease. Unlike an application fee, it isn't meant to be spent: it's meant to come back or to become rent or a deposit. So nearly every dispute about one comes down to the same thing: what was agreed when it was paid. This blog is operational guidance for property management teams, not legal advice. Holding deposit rules vary by country, state, province and city. Check the current rules where each property is located. The short ...

On 22 May 2026, HUD's Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity rescinded its 2020 assistance animal notice and its 2013 emotional support animal memorandum, and issued new enforcement guidance directing FHEO to find reasonable cause and recommend charges only in cases involving animals individually trained to perform work or tasks directly related to a person's disability. That is a significant enforcement change, and it is being widely misread. What changed is federal enforcement posture. What did not change is the Fair Housing Act itself, state and local fair housing law, Section 504 obligations in federally assisted housing, or a resident's ability to bring a private claim. A manager who reads the headline and starts declining requests across the board could create new compliance problems rather than resolve them. This covers what the memorandum actually does, what it leaves untouched, and how a pet policy should be reviewed in light of it. What the Memorandum Does The ...

Most screening guidance answers the question "what can I screen for?" A complaint asks a different question: did you apply the same criteria to this applicant that you applied to everyone else, and can you show it? Those are separate problems. Criteria can be entirely lawful and still indefensible, because they were never written down, were applied differently on different days, or produced a decision nobody recorded a reason for. This covers the evidentiary side: writing criteria before you advertise, applying them in a defensible order, documenting each decision, and handling the exceptions that create most of the exposure. For what you can and cannot screen for, and the process itself, see the tenant screening process guide. Why Written Criteria Come First A criterion that exists only in someone's judgement cannot be shown to have been applied consistently, because there is nothing to compare against. Written criteria do three things: They make consistency possible. Two leasing ...