CHARLOTTE — Many homeowners say corporate landlords buy so many homes in their neighborhoods that it hurts their property values. Now, North Carolina lawmakers are considering a bill that would limit how many rental homes a person or company can own.
Jen asked not to use her full name. She didn’t want to upset her landlord, but she did want to speak about her frustrations.
“It’s just not been a great experience,” she said.
She says she’s had HVAC, electrical, and runaround issues. “We were getting ready in the pitch black in showers, trying to get ready for work, for school, for everything,” she said. She says the company did knock $300 off her rent.
A company rents the house to her. In fact, companies own a lot of the houses in her neighborhood. Some people who live in neighborhoods with a lot of corporate landlords have told Action 9 investigator Jason Stoogenke in the past that they worry it hurts their property values.
Stoogenke asked Jen if she would be concerned if there were a ton of rentals in her neighborhood if she were a homeowner, especially if one company owned them all.
“I would because I don’t think that a lot of these management companies screen properly,” she said. “And I had an experience in a previous neighborhood that I lived in where we had a lot of renters, but the renters didn’t take care of the property. They just kind of left it in disarray.”
The bill lawmakers are considering would limit how many homes someone can buy to rent. N.C. Senate Bill 199 applies to counties with more than 150,000 people. It would outlaw people from buying 100 or more single-family homes to rent. The penalty would cost up to $100 per day for each home.
“I do think that’s smart,” she said.
“We always want just to urge a sense of caution when you add regulations,” said Robert Dell’Osso with the National Association of Residential Property Managers. “I just worry that a bill like this could open a Pandora’s box down the road so maybe it’s 100 doors per entity now, but a future legislature could shrink that to 50 or 75 or 10 or five. And then you really start to affect individuals.”
“They’re not all bad, right? Some of them are actually pretty good,” he added.
If the bill becomes law, it would apply to any landlords after that. Anyone with more than the limit now would be grandfathered in.
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