Brandon Nelson

Will Bellingham Landlords Need a License?

This e-mail, pasted below, hit my inbox early this morning, sent by one of my colleagues at RE/MAX. If you own rental property in Bellingham, you’re not going to want to miss this meeting on December 7th. Here’s the e-mail:

“Over the past several months RHA (Rental Housing Association of Puget Sound) has been in contact with Bellingham City Council, as well as other groups, in discussing options available to the City in lieu of mandatory inspections to help the City in cleaning up some chronic nuisance rental properties in the city of Bellingham.
 
On Monday, December 7th @ 7:00 pm, the Bellingham Council is set to hear a 15 minute presentation from city staff regarding options to clean up rental housing. Among the tools highlighted are mandatory inspections of all rental housing.
 
The draft reviews licensing programs in other cities with universities that are currently licensing rental property owners. The draft mentions previous rental problems and efforts by the city to institute a licensing ordinance. Comparable cities used as a reference have institued licensing fees, which may be as much as $1500 for an initial license with annual inspections of rental units at $150 per unit. Penalties for failure to license could be as much as $1000-$5000 and up to 90 days in jail. Inspection for repairs may require 30 days compliance (inspections based on the International Maintenance Code i.e. egress, regress, venting, railings, habitable space) with added city verbiage requirement that a description of permitted bedrooms be posted in each rental unit. Nuisance calls (i.e. loud parties) up to 3 may result in revoking license and condemning the structure as a ren tal property.
 
RHA is encouraging all rental property owners in Bellingham to attend the Dec. 7th meeting and voice their concerns about the effect this ordinance will have on tenants and rental property owners. Rental property owners have thus far been left out of this process. Now is the time to voice your opinions on rental owner licensing/inspections and make suggestions about possible solutions to the main problems listed above.”

Here’s a link to the Bellingham City Council members. Get in touch and voice your concerns…

Do not miss any future articles, subscribe today!
Just enter your email address below or Subscribe in a reader  

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 at 2:16 am and is filed under Other Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1. glenn wrote on December 1st, 2009 at 8:45 am

   This is a bit scary but I think common sense (IMHO) will prevail … an ugly cumbersome answer searching for a problem. Would definately affect the value and climate of investment property in Bellingham and especially up towards the College and York neighborhood, which I believe is a large part of the nimby support for this, and make criminals of more than a few landlords ….

   Nuisance rentals … and how to get payback if your a neighbor ….. well I guess you could just call the cops 3 times, and condem them as a rental unit … can’t imagine the city and the city cops really want to play this game …

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Email (will not be published) (required)

Website