Welcome back to another week of Candid Conversations with Colorado Realty and Property Management. I’m Renee Marzoff here with Taylor Hawes and Tuni Kabir. And this week we have some very special guests.
We have Ryan Bauer, one of our maintenance coordinators, and Samantha Santee, one of our accounting coordinators. Today we’ll be talking about some of the upcoming proposed legislation. So Sam and Ryan, tell us a little bit about the proposed bills that landlords should be aware of.
Okay, so I will go first. I’m overwatching quite a number of bills this year that will impact either the sales market, our property management industry that we all know and love, or just other adjacent industries or fields that we feel could impact us. The one that I feel all of our clients should be mostly aware of is House Bill 24-1098.
We refer to it affectionately as 1098. This is what’s called the Cause Required for Residential Evictions Bill. Essentially what it does is it eliminates in Colorado the option to non-renew a tenant for any reason or for your internal reasons as a property management company.
This was also put in place or introduced last year as the Just Cause Eviction Bill. It got a little rebranding, got updated a little bit, and so this year it is the Cause Required for Residential Evictions. Basically what it does is it sets out a list of the reasons that you can take a tenant to court and evict them, and it breaks down a list of reasons that you could go through what’s referred to as a no-fault eviction.
If you wanted to sell your property, if you were moving yourself or a family member back in, if you wanted to demolish the property, remodel it, things like that. You would have to provide your tenant with, right now it looks like a 90-day notice. There’s all sorts of updated requirements, including language requirements, updated timelines as far as what constitutes a legal posting, things like that.
But the main thing that it does is it no longer gives us the option to renew a tenant. If they have paid late a couple times, if they’ve had some payments that were rejected, if they’ve just kind of been a nuisance or hard to work with, we no longer have the option to non-renew them. So we are watching this one, we are fighting it every step of the way.
We’re trying to make sure that if it does pass, that it passes in a much more palatable form than what it was first introduced at. So that’s kind of my update.
Well, thanks for having us. We appreciate it. We’re happy to be here, kind of get to discuss a little bit of what is kind of coming down the pipeline over at the house floor and all of that.
So one that I wanted to go through, we obviously have a lot that are on kind of the monitor board. The one that Sam just went through, 1098, as well as 24-094. This is safe housing for residential tenants.
So this kind of relates to more of the habitability situation that goes on and that we deal with as a company, as CRPM does all the time. We’re kind of dealing with these things day to day. The main idea behind this one and the issues here are really centered around communication, communication timelines, and how long landlords have to act on certain situations when there are maintenance emergencies that arise.
And this is what we deal with in our department all the time and consistently, and it’s one of the main items and situations, really disasters that can happen at a property that can really give landlords and property management companies a hard time. So we have a heavy monitor on this one. We’ll go through it a little bit more just throughout the process, but ultimately, it’s the days that you do have to act on certain things.
Right now, we do have all those situations dealt with. We handle it. Our team does day to day, but ultimately, we’re looking to get a better sense of what they’re looking for, what they’re trying to enact with this, and trying to give landlords a little bit more flexibility through the legal system to actually have more time to deal with certain things and not give tenants as quickly of an out of a lease when these disasters do inevitably happen at a property.
So we’re monitoring this one closely, and we’ll keep everyone updated.
Awesome. Thank you. Thanks for that, both of you guys.
So I know that both of you guys have had some experience with testifying at the Capitol, either virtually or in person. Can you guys tell us a little bit more about that?
So yes, definitely. We have both had a little bit of experience, whether virtually or in person. The situation over there, it’s very, very, I guess I would call it enlightening.
So you get to see many, many different perspectives. And I think that’s the biggest part of it for us, and the biggest part that we can learn to respect as a property management company. You get to see the neutral version.
You get to see people that are opposed to the situation. You get to see people that are in support of it. And that really is a good testament to the democratic system and how it works.
And everyone has their chance to give their opinion. And ultimately, it comes down to what they decide in the end over at the house and just at the Capitol in general. But it really is a very enlightening and eye-opening experience to be able to see all those sides, all those perspectives, and get everyone’s testimonials, all the versions of that.
And the fact that we have our opportunity, not only at CRPM, but through the CLLC as well, to offer all of that information and offer all of our expertise through what we’ve learned over the years is an exceptional opportunity. And it’s just very exciting.
Yeah, I completely agree. The first time that I sat in on a testimony, even through Zoom, it was sometimes. And the committee chair, either chairman or chairwoman, just depending on the committee that you’re involved in, they will decide or they will allow the bill sponsors to decide sort of what testimony you hear when.
So do you want all of the proponents first? Do you want all of the opponents first? Are you going to switch them back and forth?
And so going through that, you do listen to all of the people who are either for a bill or against the bill. In our case, most of our housing bills, obviously, we are against because they are seeking to put crazy sort of wild regulations on our industry or things that we feel are just above and beyond what should be allowed within our state or our industry. But when you sit there and hear all of these emotional stories from tenants who have obviously experienced something very unusual, beyond the pale, you do kind of feel a very big empathy for them.
But the thing that we have to consider is a lot of what they’ve experienced is already illegal. And so it’s hard trying to combat those truly emotional, heart-wrenching stories with our sort of business-oriented, well, we don’t want this, and here’s why. And that emotional appeal is so hard to overcome.
But it is what is in our best interest. I agree that you can really learn a lot by even just sitting in or listening to all of those committee hearings. You’ll be able to learn a lot just by how the bill sponsor introduces the bill, how he or she defends the bill, and any questions that the committee members ask any panel of people who are testifying.
It’s really an, I wouldn’t call it interesting experience. It is a good experience for someone who’s interested in the legislative process to attend.
So when you’re hearing testimonies of people that are in favor of bills, do you find that it’s a mixture of tenants that have been, or tenants that have been managed by professional property management companies versus self-managing landlords? Or is it kind of like an even spread?
I don’t know that I would be able to put a number on that just because they don’t go and say, when I was in this property managed by a management company here or managed by the owner, it’s just that they go and talk about their bad experience. I remember one, she was talking about how, you know, she and her kids, they were kicked out. You know, they were given a notice and then told to leave, those kind of things.
There are some where I was listening and it was obviously illegal activity. You know, the locks were changed illegally. Their stuff was left in the property.
They weren’t given proper notice. Things like that where I would hope that it’s not a professional management company who is acting that way or even, you know, an apartment complex. So things like that make me think that it is an individual owner and that particular case, just because there’s not as much regulation.
There’s not as much oversight on individual property manager or individual owners who are self-managing. Whereas in the management company, you know, we have to be licensed, we’re regulated. We have to follow DORA rules and regulations and the real estate commission.
And, you know, there’s all sorts of additional things that we have to deal with. And that larger apartment complexes also have to deal with. So I would hope that no management company is acting that way.
But I mean, there’s bad apples everywhere.
Yeah, that’s, I would say a similar thing to that. Ultimately, it did seem like there was a good portion of people that were, the way that they were hinting at certain things, it seemed like it was smaller, smaller companies. But I think there were some certain, a couple of property management companies involved as well.
And like Sam said, there’s bad apples everywhere. But those, you don’t tend to see those things from people that do tend to know the law a little bit better as we do. So I don’t, I didn’t seem to find that as much.
A lot of it was larger property management companies, but it is a little bit hard to tell. I don’t necessarily believe that anyone’s out there to directly incriminate whoever they were working with or speak ill about them. I think they’re more just trying to get their point across and you hope that everyone takes it with a non-biased grain of salt up there.
So I guess follow up question to that. So with testimonies, are like evidence and exhibits submitted with testimonies or is it really just taking, you know, verbatim, per word, what that person is testifying? Is there any sort of fact-checking on any of that?
There is sort of like a cross-questioning that people who testify can undergo. So if you go, you’re part of a panel, you’re given anywhere from one to three minutes to give your testimony. And then when your entire panel is done, so if there’s like five up there, five of them are Zoom or a mixed match, the committee members have a chance to ask you questions.
And so they can push back against things that you’ve said, they can ask for more information, they can respond to you just directly, things like that. I was actually cross-questioned once. It was the most terrifying thing I had ever experienced and it was about this bill actually.
And what I had said, well, it was last year, so last year’s bill, and what I had said was that there was going to be a disparate impact on our military families, specifically in Colorado Springs, because there’s such a large, you know, pool of military community or military families who do buy a property here and then manage it and maybe they want to move back. And with last year’s bill, there was a relocation assistance built into the bill. And so all of these servicemen and women would have had to, who were coming back, maybe they were out in the field, maybe they were PCS, maybe whatever it was, they were on deployment, they were coming home.
And so they would have had to pay two or three months worth of rent to move back into their home. And we felt that that was unfair to these men and women who were, you know, out risking life at the month of their country. And that was part of my testimony.
And then one of the committee members who had been previously in the armed services or in the armed forces did question me about that and push back against that. And I don’t remember exactly what I said. I do know that I responded once and then they used it as kind of like a, you know, kind of like turn it around and, you know, say, oh, but I was also when I made sure that this bill wasn’t going to impact them, but I think it did.
You know, it proves that they are listening when you go and testify and that when you strike a chord or they feel that there is something wrong in what you said, they do push back.
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I don’t really have too much follow up on that. I think for the most part, what people are, what people are really trying to get across is obviously the emotional side of things, their personal experiences, obviously.
It’s a testimony. So you’re giving your testimonial of things. So how things have gone for you personally, how you’ve seen things go for other people.
It’s very limited time wise, two minutes per person. So you have to be fairly concise, have your points under your feet very well, have everything straightened up. But yes, there can be cross questioning.
I think for the, for what I saw, the hours that I spent or hours that I have spent, I’d say it was closer to the 5% range to people that were actually asked questions. So it’s not overly common, but as Sam mentioned again, it’s very good to see that they’re actually on top of things, that they’re on their toes, ready with questions. It’s very refreshing.
So at least you know that the time is being spent, they’re putting their thoughts into it as well. So yes.
Awesome. I have no doubt that there are people out there taking advantage, which is never good as licensees and of course the duty of the Real Estate Commission is to protect the public. So definitely understand why these come about, although sometimes their unintended consequences can be difficult for us that have to abide by them.
But what resources would you say are available to owners that want up-to-date information on what’s going on in legislation or ways that they can get involved?
Yep. So the first one that I’m going to plug is our own company’s website. If you Google Colorado Laws for Landlords, one of the first resources that it will give you is our page.
We have a whole part of our website that is dedicated to these issues, you know, new bills, how it affects us, and that is free for everybody. You know, you don’t have to be a current client of ours to access this and use it and use it to educate yourself. Ryan and I are both part of, as he referenced earlier, what’s called the CLLC.
It’s the Colorado Landlords Legislative Coalition. One of its founders was actually our president and CEO, Lyle Haas. He and a couple other people got together and decided that they needed to do something that, you know, we needed as property managers to be more active in this legislative process.
And so they came up with the CLLC. It’s you can be a member, you donate money, you donate time. We use that as kind of a we use that as a way to interact directly with legislators, with our staff.
We are part of stakeholder meetings. You know, we do have conversations face-to-face with all of these bill sponsors. We use it to come up with testimony to educate legislators and also educate the landlords in Colorado.
That’s really our purpose as the CLLC is to offer this education. You know, if you are not a client of ours, maybe you are a property owner who is also self-managing, please look out, you know, look at either our website or the CLLC. We exist to kind of make sure that you have all of the resources that you need and you can educate yourself and make sure that you are staying in compliance.
Another really good resource is the National Association of Residential Property Managers, NARPM. There’s a Denver chapter, there is a Colorado Springs chapter, there’s also a Western Slope chapter in Colorado. This is for property managers, it’s a property management networking group, we’ll call it, but they also do a lot of legislation and on a national level that you also advocate for the rental management industry.
But if you are a property manager, you’re licensed, you’re kind of wondering how to go about getting all of this education, check out your local NARPM chapter and then we’ll be able to help you out.
That’s a hard update to beat. So yeah, she covered most of it, Sam covered most of it there. A couple of just the other ones, I think something that we’ve been really trying to get a little bit more traction on, and I think this is a big part of the reason why we’re trying to be more involved as a company in this organization called the CLOC, would be so that owners can ask us personally.
So I feel like us as CRPM being a resource for this going forward is just going to be absolutely pivotal throughout this process with owners getting trust in us and us being able to provide those answers to them directly. You can always feel free to reach out to Sam or myself with any sort of questions, updates, anything like that. Last one would just be going directly to the website, just the legislative website, just the leg.colorado.gov. If you have the bill title, you can just type it right into the top search bar and see the recent bill text that’s been implemented. You can see any sort of fiscal notes that are being added and any sort of just basic updates, where the bill stands, if it’s passed through the House, passed through the Senate, third reading, all those updates are within that as well. It’s very easily accessible, but all of those sources would be good potential options going forward if you’re ever looking for more information.
Very good. Awesome. Well, thank you both so much for your time today and for going over this.
I know that these are heavy, big topics and they’re changing constantly too. I know Ryan’s going to be learning more this week, so I think we’ll be reconvening for a part two to go over some different things in more detail and we’ll certainly keep you updated. That’s all for this week and we will see you next time.
Thanks, guys.
