Toledo, OH PASSED New Lead Paint Law

[Adam A.]

Yes, the Toledo city council passed a new lead paint ordinance which will take effect in 365 days.

This is not the end but only the beginning of the new ordinance which applies to rental SFH, 1-4 units and day cares at this time. The city council wanted to pass the new law asap with these but there is already a discussion about adding all apartments built before 78. But because they want to start somewhere and still don't know all the details, the council stated that they needs a couple of more months for the details.

After further discussion with 2 city councils the general atmosphere that the good landlords who cared about how this issue would affect Toledo were already present at the meetings. However, councils were concerned about a huge national and international investors/landlords that don't care about the well being of the Toledo community but only the numbers. Their message was loud and clear that houses were neglected which added to the acceleration to pass the new ordinance.

Attorney Robert Cole of ABLE (who led the coalition to pass this new law) and Mr. Mcnamara (City of Toledo attorney) had a lot of false and misleading statements in their arguments. I argued their statements with facts based on true tested children in Lucas county and not on projected study numbers as they misrepresented. However, nothing would have made a difference because the decision was made up already 2-3 years ago.

So now what?

It's not the end of the world but definitely a learning lesson on how Toledo could be the model city of great real estate investments that could go out of control especially for out of the area investors. Unlike other cities such as Cleveland, Rochester, etc. which adopted similar lead laws, Toledo doesn't have any federal grants to help landlords to offset the cost to remedy this situation. As a matter of fact, the city lost $572,000 in HUD grant in 2011 and 2012 due to incorrect planning by Tom Kroma (Director of Neighborhoods) who was asked to resign. There is a funny drug bust story by the Toledo Blade about this.

Landlords expressed their concerns as some will donate their houses to charities for tax right offs as a cheaper alternative than fixing the problem. Others will abandon them for the city to demolish them which will continue the cycle of releasing lead into the soil. A lot of houses already started to show up on the market $15K-$35K and definitely you'll see a lot more soon once the council figures out the details. However, you have to be careful that most of these houses are either "Lead Loaded" and/or in "D" areas and you need to count your cost to replace at least the windows and paint the house every 3 years as the ordinance calls for inspection. The cost will even skyrocket, if the property exterior is made out of wood which chips/cracks easily in this area. Also, if you're not an involved landlord with at least semi-annual hands on check up with your tenants to take care of the smallest lead issues seriously, then out of the area or state rental investing is NOT the right formula for you. 

I'm still optimistic about the Toledo overall rental/real estate market as a flipper and a landlord. I believe in doing the right thing as a member of this community that I call home for the last 33 years is a long term solution. If you're here for a fly by night, then that's what you're.