House Bill 315

 By the Mid-Atlantic
Real Estate Investors Association

02/12/2013

Our Elected Representatives Are At It Again!

Courtesy of the Property Owners Association, this is an alert that there is yet another attempt to start the process of rent control and increasing tenants’ power.

House Bill 315 Contains Provisions Harmful to Landlords

This bill has a number of provisions that would change existing law to make it more difficult to be a profitable landlord in the state of Maryland.

The proposed law does the following:

1.    Prohibits a Landlord from requiring a Tenant to have Renter’s Insurance.

2.    A landlord cannot increase the rent more than 5% per year.  This provision applies only to lanlords with more than 4 units.  The provision does allow a landlord to raise the rent more than 5% to account for property tax increases, utility increases, or based on the actual cost of capital improvements to the property.

3.    The Landlord may not evict a tenant, nor refuse to renew a lease soley because the landlord wants to raise the rent more than 5%.

4.    This applies to houses, apartments, mobile homes and mobile home lots.

5.    Prohibits a landlord from evicting a tenant without “just cause”.
Click Here for a copy of the actual bill, House Bill 315.

We oppose this bill as it further restricts our ability to use good business judment as a landlord and see this bill as a first step towards statewide rent control.

Please make the time to come to Annapolis on Thursday.
Even if you do not say anything, the presence of many landlords at the hearing will send a strong message of opposition and will be very effective.

Here is the hearing information:

Thursday, February 14, 2013 at 1:00 p.m.

House Environmental Matters Committee

House Office Building–Room 250

6 Bladden St, Annapolis MD  21401

This entry was posted in Blog. Bookmark the permalink.