The Residential Landlord-Tenant Act (RLTA) regulates the creation of residential tenancies and the relationship between landlords and tenants of residential dwelling units.  Under the RLTA, local municipalities may require landlords to provide a certificate of inspection as a business license condition to operate as a landlord.  A local municipality does not need to have a business license or registration program to require that landlords provide a certificate of inspection.  A local municipality may only require a certificate of inspection on a rental property once every three years.  

Numerous local municipalities throughout the state have exercised this authority in establishing rental housing safety, inspection, or registration programs, with many having a goal to ensure that all rental housing units comply with specific life and safety standards and provide a safe place for tenants to live.  Some local municipalities have implemented a business license requirement for landlords.

The Department of Commerce (Commerce) must convene a work group to make recommendations on creating a statewide rental and vacant property registration program for inventorying tenant-occupied and potentially available rental housing.  The work group must include relevant stakeholders, including, but not limited to:

• tenant representatives;
• multifamily housing representatives;
• housing developer representatives; and
• representatives from cities and counties.

The work group must meet at least three times.  The work must evaluate:

• current local rental property registration and landlord licensing programs, and strategies to synthesize and collect registration information from such programs into a statewide database;
• which property and landlord information should be collected and disclosed in a database;
• the need to implement a rental and vacant property registration requirement;
• the imposition of registration or licensing fees and fee amounts, use of revenue, and appropriate penalties;
• which types of housing units should be exempted from a statewide registration requirement;
• the use of a statewide registration program database to provide rental assistance program information to tenants and landlords;
• the feasibility of requiring landlords to report rent rate data as part of a registration program; and
• any other considerations discussed by the work group.

Commerce must issue a final report with any work group findings or recommendations to the Legislature by December 1, 2022.

The section requiring Commerce to convene a work group expires January 1, 2023.