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Since the government has decided that due to Covid 19, tenants do not have to pay their rent and are free from eviction. Can we sue the government for the unpaid rent?For the United StatesYou have a big misunderstanding here. The government has NOT decided that tenants do not have to pay their rent, they have only placed a moratorium on evictions. This distinction is very important. The rent is still due and when the moratorium is lifted that rent will be due and landlords will be able to proceed with evictions.In Colorado, where I operate, the eviction ban is scheduled to lift on February 9th and by executive order, no late fees may be charged through January 31st. The moratorium may be extended, but each extension has been shorter and closer to the deadline. This also does not mean that landlords cannot file, it is just the courts will not hear the cases until after February 9th.There is going to be a tsunami of evictions, not so much for those that are struggling, but for those that have been taking advantage of the situation. The landlords and the courts are going to take a very dim view of those that were able to pay but refused to because of the moratorium.As for suing the government for damages because of the moratorium: Good luck suing city hall or the federal government. I’m sure there are some very enterprising attorneys out there that are trying to find a way that they can take action against the government for interfering with private contracts, but I find it very unlikely that any court will hear the case, so it will be very unlikely that anything will ever come from it. This has set a very, very dangerous precedent in our country.I know of no other time in our history that the government has taken such wide-spread action against so many individuals and companies with absolutely no care for the impact to them or the economy. As a landlord I pump over $100k into the economy every single year. If I’m put out of business, that’s only a drop in the bucket, but if the 100s of thousands of independent landlords are also put out of business there is going to be a problem that the government cannot fix.If the moratoriums do not end soon, the dominos will begin to fall and it will impact lower-income properties first. Landlords are hanging on with their teeth to keep their businesses going. They’re putting their mortgages in forbearance, but the timelines are limited, the interest still piles up, and the payment demands will double when time runs out. There has been no forbearance for income taxes, property taxes, HOA dues, or required maintenance and repairs. As the landlords run out of time, they will fold and the banks will foreclose. This will put 100s of thousands of people in the street.With the 2008 crash, there were 10s of thousands of independent landlords that bought up foreclosures. This softened the crash and provided places for those that lost their homes to rent at reasonable prices. This time there will be very few landlords willing to buy the homes of the ones who have fallen because they will have been burned by the moratoriums and the fact that most will not be able to recover much from the bad actors through the courts.This has the possibility of becoming a tailspin causing both a housing and economy collapse that will make 2008 look like a simple dip.Story Time:The bad actors are beginning to feel the heat and are looking for new accommodations before they are evicted and it shows up on their credit and backgrounds.I have one unit available to rent right now. The vacancy is due to COVID, but indirectly. The 10 month lockdown has been hard on some people’s relationships. My tenants had never missed a payment and I had offered an extension to their lease, but they did not renew because they are getting a divorce. I wished them both well and the unit is available to move into immediately.The interest in the unit has been significant, but the quality of applicant has been less than stellar. One promising prospect applied with great income, credit, and a background check that was clean as a whistle. The couple showed up with their two young children well dressed and driving a Tesla Model Y Performance still sporting temp tags. (a $60k base sticker vehicle). They said they’d have no problem coming up with First, Last, and Security (at a total of $6,600), so all was going well until the rental history verification.The information provided for their current rental was bunk. The telephone number did not line up with the complex they said they were living in and when I looked up the number, they never heard of them. I did notice an inquiry from a rental company on their credit report from 2 years ago and the current listed address on the credit report lined up with a particular rental agency. I contacted the company and sure enough they were currently living there. I sent over their signed background consent form and sure enough. They hadn’t paid a cent of their $2000/month rent for 10 months.Well, no wonder they have plenty of cash for a Tesla and a new rental. I terminated their application based on lying on the application. They were angry and have threatened to sue for discrimination claiming I can’t deny them housing because Trump told them they didn’t have to pay.WTF?I just chuckled and told them that regardless of paying rent or not, they had signed a statement that all of the information provided on the application was true and since they had lied, that was the end of it. I gave them the card for my attorney and told them if they decided to pursue it, rest assured I’d go after them for legal fees.

The answer is that it is 100% possible and legal. In your specific situation they may be able to enforce.The following generally applies to common-interest developments in the United States. Local, municipal, and state laws may impact the restrictions in your area.How can they do this?You willingly agreed to it. A Home Owner’s Association (HOA) can have a say on anyone who lives within the property and the conditions under which they may remain. Whether or not this can apply to you and your adult child is unclear as we don’t have any detail on the covenants, conditions, and restrictions (CC&Rs). These are terms that you legally agreed to when you joined the HOA via purchasing the home.I’m and owner! I can do what I want with my property!You are right, you are an owner, but do you understand what you own? You own a piece of property in a common-interest development. This means that you have to agree to get along with others and legally enforceable rules have been put in place to help you all get along. This means that you have voluntarily turned over a number of rights that impact how you use, keep, and even sell the property you own.This is DISCRIMINATION!Nope.It is becoming more and more common for HOAs to require credit and background checks on the people wanting to purchase a property and join the HOA. You can put in a 100% cash offer to purchase a property in a common-interest development and have $10mm in the bank, but if you have bad credit or a troubled background you can be blocked from purchasing. Courts have ruled that HOAs are not discriminating against anyone as long as they are providing Equal Housing Opportunity and are following the Fair Housing Act. It is not discrimination to reject someone based on their credit and criminal history, just like you can when leasing a property to someone.This can’t be legal!It can and it is.Every HOA I belong to requires that I provide a current copy of a Lease to the HOA for any tenant. 75% of them require that I have terms that allow them to directly take action against the tenant in the case of violations of the CC&Rs, By-Laws, or rules. One, similar to your situation, requires that any tenant submit to a credit and background check by the HOA. If the tenant is unwilling to submit or the HOA doesn’t approve, I can’t lease the unit to the applicant. It is all legal. This may all boil down to whether or not your adult child is legally considered a tenant.Tenant or non-tenant: A couple key questions.Are requiring your adult child to pay you rent to stay with you?Do you ask your adult child to help out with costs around the house, even pitch in $20 a month for groceries or utilities?If you do, you may very well have made your child a tenant under you local laws, regardless of whether or not he is your family. Put simply, if someone lives in your property and you have accepted any form of compensation from them for that tenancy, they are now your tenant and are protected under local tenancy law. (Yes, parents have had to go through the legal process to evict their own children.) If the HOA is aware of this and have tenant stipulations in the CC&Rs, they would have every legal right to enforce these stipulations. These stipulations would commonly include exactly what has been demanded of you: Signed Lease (and they can dictate some of the terms in it), Credit Check, References, and Background check.What can you do?Well, first and foremost, talk to the Property Manager and have them direct you to the specific terms in the CC&Rs that require you to submit to the credit and background check. I’d focus on gaining an understanding of the rules you agreed to and the perspective that the Board of Directors (BOD) has that they would even want to get this information.Since you stated that the governing documents state that family members are not tenants, I would focus on this area in your discussion with the Property Manager and/or BOD. It is much easier to negotiate with the HOA than to start saber rattling about a lawsuit. Remember, if you do sue the HOA, you are suing yourself as you are a member of the HOA.Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer, nor am I pretending to be one. Nothing I have ever written in my life is legal advice, including this article. You may need a lawyer, so get off of Quora and go find one.

Is it good business sense or greed that causes landlords to raise rents in already expensive rental markets?Greed? No, I don’t believe it is greed at all. Is is all good business sense and smart financial decisions. Markets go up and markets go down and the rents go with them. When the housing market fell in 2009, the rents went into free-fall. Many landlords found themselves in dire straights and lost their rentals. Others had to buckle down, cut their rents, and weather the storm. I don’t see anyone crying about the landlords that went to razor-thin margins or even operated at a loss during the downturn. That was business too.Now that there is a housing shortage in many areas, rents have returned and in some areas surpassed what they were at the peak in 2006. Some landlords are still recovering from the downturn. Rents, unless in a rent-controlled area, are at free-market pricing. The rents are dictated by the function of supply and demand.As an experienced landlord that did successfully weather the downturn, I do not just raise rents because I can on incumbent tenants. I only raise rents when my costs increase, but here’s the bad news. Expenses are increasing at unprecedented rates. Property taxes in my area have gone up 50–125% since the bottom of the market in 2011–2012. That is a huge increase. My insurance costs have risen about 40% in that same time period and HOA dues have risen about 20%. These costs have been passed on to the entire real estate market everywhere, not just for rentals.I generally only apply these increases when a tenant vacates. At this time I move my rent up to just below the current market. Why just below? Because I can rehab most of my units in 7–10 days (paint, repair, carpet, etc) and I want it rented at the first of the next month at a minimum. If I can get someone mid-month, it’s even better. If other units in the complex are renting for $1500, I price at $1400 so I rent out before they do. I’d rather not have a unit vacant for an extra month vs squeeze out an additional $100/month and lose that month of rental income. Do the math, it’s a better deal for everyone.I rarely raise the rent on my incumbent tenants, but it does happen. My average renter stays over 5 years and this trend is only getting longer. As an example, I purchased a REO property in 2013 and had to spend $10k to get it ready to rent. In 2013 the rental market was very soft in the Denver-Metro area. I rented the unit out at market for the time for $1150/month. I rented it 5 days after I put it on the market and the renters have been there for 6 years. Since 2013, the property taxes have increased from $1200/year to $2200/year. The HOA dues have increased from $173 to $225. Insurance has increased from $140/year to $220/year. My costs increased, so my profit margin has gone down. I needed to correct it, so I increased the rent this year by $100/month.The renters could have declined this increase and moved out, but their options to move to an identical-sized unit in the complex aren’t very good. This condo’s market price is about $1500/month now. I’m maintaining my profit margin and my renters are renting $250/month under market. It is win-win. I do this because they have been there 6 years and are great renters. They take care of the place, always pay on time, and never have “issues” that suck up my time. I covet my great renters and would rather pass on making a few extra bucks than risk getting a bad and/or high-maintenance renter in their place. In addition, since they’ve been there for 6 years, I would have to invest money to update the unit to re-rent it. Probably just paint and a few maintenance items, but that wipes out a number of months of profits from the new rent.This would not be my posture if my tenants vacated. If they did, then I would have moved the rent up to close to market price. I need that increase in rent to cover the costs to turn over a unit, it costs me thousands. First off, I normally lose one month of rent and always the costs to get it ready to rent again. Those costs get made up through the increased rent.I plan for this type of activity in my annual business plan and budget. In an average year I will have approximately 20% of my units turn over. That means that I will also rehab 20% of my units each year. I plan 1 or 2 will be a full remodel, the rest will be touch-up. It’s all about smart business decisions to be successful.It is all simple economics. If the price is too high, the renters just don’t rent. If they don’t rent, the rent prices go down. If the price is too low, the landlord is inundated with renters offering to rent their property. Since late 2016 the Denver-Metro market has returned to a state where renters are competing to get my units. I put a unit up for rent and will have a dozen or more calls in the first 24 hours. 3 or 4 will schedule viewings and my average list to rent time is 10 days. Some applicants will arrive with a pre-filled general application forms and their checkbook so they can make a deposit to show their commitment. I will even get applicants offering to pay over what I am asking just to ensure they get the unit over others.Why? Because I’m not greedy, I’m not overcharging for the market, and I only own the right properties. I maintain my units to a level of excellence - White-glove clean, Updated with modern conveniences, Fully-featured complexes. I only buy units in the right locations - Right school district, close to transportation and highway access, close to shopping and entertainment.Here is the crux of it all, I am unable to charge over market for my rentals. Period. I can’t because no one would rent them from me if they were kept above what the market dictates and I would go out of business with empty units generating no income and large expenses. I have no control over market at all. Much the opposite, the renters have all of the control over market price.I’m not greedy, I’m just making smart business decisions. Period.