Aligning Policy and Housing Outcomes
Rental Registry
Phase in Rental Registry and Inspection Process
Issues/Opportunities Addressed:
Timeframe for Action: Rental Registry Process - Mid Term
The creation of a rental registry is an important step in
identifying rental units and holding property owners
accountable for violations to city ordinances and codes.
Without a robust rental registry, the City may lack the
necessary information to identify owners and tenants,
quantify the number of rental units, track property
turnover, and ensure compliance with all residential codes.
A rental registry is, generally, a low-cost way for a city to
track and regulate rental units. The component pieces of
establishing a rental registry are enacting the local
ordinance, defining the registration parameters, delegating
responsibility to administer the program, establishing a
registration fee which covers administrative costs, and
determining the type and severity of penalties for non-
compliance.
Enacting a local rental registry will require working with all
community stakeholders to gain the requisite buy-in
including property owners and tenant rights groups. Since
landlords would be most impacted by this ordinance;
collaboration and consultation on the part of the City is
critical. The City should design the property registration
ordinance in a way which benefits all parties involved and
ensures it not too onerous. A vote by the Board of
Aldermen would be needed to enact the ordinance.
Nashua Housing Study - 68
The rental registry could be designed as a yearly
process whereby landlords register their property at
the start of the City’s fiscal year. This would give
landlords a deadline to comply with city regulations
and allow the City to establish the administrative
procedures to process annual registrations. The
registration process should be designed to be
completed either online or via paper. An online portal
could be linked to a database, while paper-based
registration forms could be processed by City staff
and entered in the database. The City should request
basic information about the property owner,
tenant(s), property location, property status
(rented/vacant), and contract rent.
The responsibility of administering the rental registry
could be given to the Code Enforcement Department
as this department actively monitors real estate
activity across the city for code violations. Currently,
the City Code Enforcement staff is made up of three
officers and one manager who investigate code
violations and issue tickets. Based on conversations
with City staff, capacity in the Code Enforcement
Department may need to be increased to meet the
added demands of a rental registry.
ASSOCIATES INC
The City should ensure the rental registry fee covers the
costs of administering the program, these include hiring
of any additional staff or investment in a rental registry
web portal. To determine the requisite fee, the City
should quantify the annual cost of providing services
related to the rental registry and compare that to the
number of rental units to determine a flat annual fee.
The City could also vary the fee based on unit type, for
instance charge a higher fee for single-family units, while
charging a lower fee for multi-family units.
The failure to abide by the property registration rules
would result in a fine determined by the City. Some
municipalities levy high fees for non-compliance, Boston
for example levies a fine of $300 per month for each
unregistered unit. Punitive fees can help encourage
compliance with the ordinance. The net fees collected,
after accounting for administrative costs, from both the
rental registry program and from non-compliance could
be placed into a city directed housing fund which helps
lower-income landlords address housing deficiencies
and addressing code violations.
