Villages across the East End that had not previously enforced any registration requirements for homeowners who rent their homes in the summer are now scratching together new, mostly bare-bones registries so that their residents can take advantage of a new state law that allows them to collect a full season of rent in advance.
The state adopted the new statute last fall, freeing homeowners who rent for just a few months from having to comply with the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act, adopted in 2019, which prohibits landlords from collecting more than one month’s rent in advance.
But in order to take advantage of the allowance, landlords must be registered with a municipal entity — which involves attesting to the rental being short term, naming the tenant and providing proof that they actually have a home elsewhere which they will return to at the end of the rental period.
Both East Hampton and Southampton towns have had rental registry requirements on their books for several years, but some local villages have not. For homeowners in those villages to legally collect full season rental payments at the start of the summer, those municipalities must create registries that comply with the state code.
To prove that a rental is seasonal only, the state law, which was drafted and shepherded to approval by State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. of Sag Harbor, requires that a rental be no more than 120 days, and that the tenant, who must be named, have a permanent residence elsewhere that they plan to return to at the end of the term.
For the villages that had nothing on their books regulating rentals, creating a new registry has been a delicate balance of meeting the new requirements without instituting a complicated new process that has been avoided thus far.
East Hampton Village has proposed a registry code that requires little more than filling out a single sheet of paper attesting to the rental being less than 120 days and identifying the tenant. There is no fee proposed.
“I wanted to make it very clear that we are not doing this to butt into your rental business,” Mayor Jerry Larsen said. “The town did a full-blown rental registry, and I don’t want people to confuse it with that. My goal in government is to stay out of your business as much as possible. I go on the assumption that people are going to follow the rules, and that you get punished if you don’t follow the rules — not starting out by assuming that people are not going to follow the rules.”
The Southampton Village Board had initially introduced a plan for a rental registry that essentially mirrored Southampton Town’s — the most demanding in the region — requiring full compliance with the latest building codes, certified by official inspections. But some officials, including Mayor Jesse Warren, balked at the proposal, and Village Administrator Charlene Kagel-Betts said the village is withdrawing the initial code amendment and “going back to the drawing board” to draft a pared-down proposal.
“The feeling was that it was a little too cumbersome,” she said. “It was 12 pages, modeled after the town, and the mayor and the engineers working on the update to the Master Plan said that it was too extensive, and there were things in it we don’t need. So we’re going to dial it down.”
The mayor said that requiring Southampton Village homeowners to jump through more hoops than their neighbors, just because they rent out their homes for a few months, is unfair to those who have been renting for years, even decades. He said he wants to see a code that only requires the most basic information to comply with the state’s requirements.
“I want a less intensive process, nothing too cumbersome,” Warren said. “We don’t want to be making it difficult to do this. A lot of folks rely on renting for the summer for income. I know there are a lot of people who get by just because they rent their homes.”
The Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 was adopted by the state to protect long-term residential tenants from punitive deposit requirements that hamstrung many financially, or kept otherwise affordable rentals out of reach because of the need for several thousand dollars paid in advance.
Freeing seasonal landlords from the fair housing restrictions allows many to return to the longstanding policy of requiring that a summer renter has paid the full amount in the lease agreement, plus the common security deposits up front, before moving in — a key protection against tenants failing to pay, or vacating mid-season, leaving the landlord in a lurch to find a new tenant.
The requirement in the code that demands the tenant be identified by name and permanent address has introduced a new wrinkle to even the town rental registration requirements, which had typically not required such a thing — a point that had been seen as sensitive to those renting to high-profile tenants who prefer to remain anonymous.
East Hampton Town recently introduced a new filing requirement, parallel to its existing rental registry requirements — which only required that a landlord inform the town of when a tenant was moving in — that now asks for the name and permanent address of a tenant and attestation that the rental period is less than 120 days.
As with East Hampton Town, villages like Sagaponack, Quogue and Westhampton Beach — which already required those renting their homes to notify the village and file for a rental permit — simply had to add provisions to their existing rules to meet the new state statute.
Both Sagaponack and Quogue had already mandated that landlords renting their homes for any period of time had to name the tenants. Quogue had required that the village have a copy of the lease on file and Sagaponack recently adopted an amendment to its rental permit requiring that condition, as well.
Quogue adopted an addendum to its permit requiring proof of the short-term nature of any seasonal rental, allowing landlords to collect their rent up front, and both villages already charge $250 for their rental permits.
Westhampton Beach officials said that it would take just a few simple tweaks to their existing rental permit requirements, adding the 120 day maximum and requiring the submission of a copy of the lease, to meet the new state requirements.
But village lawmakers said it may serve the village well to at some point update the seasonal rental requirements to mandate inspections of the property for compliance with building codes, at least semi-annually — down the road.
“The property should be inspected every two to three years before they’re allowed to have a seasonal rental — just to make sure the pool enclosures are in working order and anything else that needs to get checked on,” Mayor Maria Moore said at a recent discussion with the Westhampton Village Board. “That’s something that would be different, that would change the fee. There are other things we need to address in a broader scope. So let’s try to do this first little step administratively.”
Michael Wright on Mar 22, 2022