Discrimination Testing - Park City Property Management
A recent article I read has brought to light the need for anyone involved in Park City property management to be aware of discrimination testing and know some of common pitfalls that landlords and property manager can fall into when it comes to Park City long term rentals. Discrimination testing is performed by the Disability Law Center (DLC) which is a "private, non-profit organization designated by the governor as Utah’s Protection and Advocacy (P&A) agency" and is set up to "enforce and strengthen laws that protect the opportunities, choices and legal rights of Utahns with disabilities."
The DLC conducts discrimination testing using two testers, a control tester who is not in a protected class and a second tester who is in a protected class. I have previously written about Fair Housing laws in my post "Fair Housing And Park City Property Management: Are You At Risk?" but briefly protected classes are race, religion, sex, color, national origin, age, citizenship, pregnancy, familial status, disability, and veteran. The two testers contact a property manager or landlord and inquire about housing. Problems occur when there is a difference in treatment between the control tester and the protected tester. Let's take a look at some of the common mistakes made in it comes to protected classes in Salt Lake City property management.
Service Animals
Asking for a pet deposit or pet rent for a service animal is illegal. A companion animal also falls into this category. If you have a person applying to live in your rental property and they have a service or companion animal you cannot charge pet rent or a pet deposit for this animal. The tenant is still responsible if the animal does any damage to the property but a deposit cannot be taken in advance. Once an animal is identified as a service or companion animal you can ask for proper documentation on the animal but the questions should stop there.
Disability Questions
You should never ask, in any way, what the nature of a person's disability is. The person is not obligated to tell you what their disability is and you are not allowed to ask. Even in casual conversation you can't ask this question in Park City property management.
Availability
Never ever ever tell a person that you do not have any availability when in fact you do. You should already have in place a procedure for reviewing whether a tenant is qualified to rent a property through your application process. If you don't already have something in place to property screen tenants you should take a look at my blog post "5 Ways Tenant Screening Helps - Park City Property Management." Just looking at a person and telling them you don't have anything available is a definite red flag.
Incentives
If you are currently offering some type of move in incentive to get your property rented you had better make sure you offer the incentive to everyone who inquires. Discounts and the like can be very discriminatory when they are only offered to a select group of people.
If you would like more information on how to not discriminate when handling tenants, or further information about Park City property management in general click the link below for a free consultation. You will receive valuable information specific to your property that will help you make an informed decision. You will also receive a free, no-obligation quote on our property management services. At CC Realty we specialize in making investment property ownership a trouble free experience. Please contact us today for your free consultation.
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