New Rules In East Hampton Would Protect Summer Rentals, With A Hitch

East Hampton Town will create a new category of its rental registry for seasonal-only rentals to allow landlords to collect a full summer season’s rent up front — but also requiring them to make new disclosures about who tenants are.

A 2019 state law had made it illegal for landlords to require more than one month’s rent be paid in advance before a tenant moved in. But the law was created to protect long-term tenants of rental housing in urban areas from towering up-front deposits, not seasonal renters in resort communities.

State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. pushed clarifying legislation through the State Legislature last year that allowed rentals of less than 120 days to be freed from the deposit limitation.

The law requires, however, that the rentals be closely tracked to ensure they comply with the short-term allowance. All rentals must be registered with the municipality and each rental agreement must include information about the length of the rental term, who the tenant is, by name, and proof that they have a permanent residence elsewhere to return to.

“Wow, that’s a lot more paperwork,” Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez said, after Assistant Town Attorney Jennifer Nigro explained the new registry requirements to comply with the state statute.

The town already has a rental registry requirement, imposed in 2016 over vociferous push-back from homeowners who rent their house, or several houses, for income. But to keep the registry less onerous the town only required that the landlord inform the town’s building department when a new tenant would be moving in to their house, without identifying who the tenant was or the term of the stay.

Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said that the new requirements would also up-end a policy of not requiring tenants to be identified because some “high profile” renters may not want their tenancy at a specific residence to become public.

Nigro noted that some other municipalities that have already enacted new rules to meet the state allowances impose even more restrictive limits on the seasonal rentals, like constraining them only to the summer season between Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day, she said.