HB 1064, introduced by Reps. Bacon and Smith, would provide that tenants, and not the owner of the real estate, are responsible for municipal sewer fees in rental properties and that the unpaid sewer fees do not become a lien on the real property. Currently, I believe, the default is that such unpaid fees do become a lien against the property though the municipality is permitted to adopt an ordinance that would specify that the renter is liable and unpaid fees don’t become a lien.
I’m not in favor of this. The sewer hook up clearly provides a benefit to the real property. Landlords are going to have trouble renting property with an outhouse. Since a municipality is providing a service that benefits the real property, it’s reasonable to impose a lien on the property when the fees for that service are not satisfied.
The bill assumes that the renter is suppose to pay the sewage fees. There could be arrangements where the rent covers everything — sewage, water, electricity and so forth. Especially in converted homes the sewage and water are often not split among the different units (since it is technically hard to do).
I can see the desire behind the bill — why should a landlord have a lien put on his property just because a tenant does not pay the sewage bill — but frankly this is a the cost of being a landlord and having a bad tenant. I had this almost happen to me once. A tenant (single unit, single house) falling behind on rent, not paying the utility bills, hard to get her evicted in a reasonable time. Guess who had to mail the checks to city hall? That was a bad situation all around.
Anyway it seems to me that the bill is not needed or, at the very least, will cause more problems than it solves.
Is this why every apartment I rented paid the water (err, well we paid them they paid water)? To avoid the risk of delinquent tenants and possible property liens?
I have some landlord clients and they require that the tenant put the city water into the tenant’s name. We end up evicting a lot of tenants for not doing this.
It would be nice if the landlord had a clue that the account was over 60 days delinquent and the utility had been shut off… then when the Tenant is gone… surprise and no one will tell you where they went or will the town even try to collect. So where is the problem? With the tenant who paid the rent but pulled the meters? With the municipal government? threating sandbags? leeches. We can deal with renters but City Hall? Any sugestions?