Rental Certs In Grand Rapids

[Mitchell Luban]

Good Afternoon Bigger Pockets, 

I am wondering if any of you are experiencing the city cracking down on you or your clients if you're an agent or manager for your rental certs? I know they technically only transfer if the cert was done within 90 days of the sale. However we have had a couple instances in which the property got purchased registered and then we took over management and in one case two years later the city is now wanting us to get it certified. Now I have always had my issues with the rental cert not running with the property but it seems like if when the property is sold and the new owner registers the property with the city as a rental shouldn't that be enough? The city then comes back 2 years later and wants a re cert done. Of course they are blaming it on covid and lack of staffing and catching up. I have talked to a few other investors who have had this thing happen with properties so just thought I would see what you guys are seeing. 

[Tim VandenToorn]

Mitch, this is new in the last year.  Previously if a property sold and had a few years left on the certification the City wouldn't immediately contact the new owner for a recertification.  I suspect that is because the City was behind on getting all the single-family homes certified since it was a new requirement passed around the year 2014.  Now that they are caught up and most rentals have been inspected and certified they are on top of it.  We recently had a property with 5 years left on the certification sell-off market to a new investor who already had properties under our management and the City notified us within 2 weeks of registering it to the new owner, that it needed to be recertified.  The City is starting to enforce the requirement to have a property certified prior to placing an occupant.  This means if you start to manage a new single-family home that was previously owner-occupied, before marketing it and placing a tenant, the City wants to inspect it.  This was never the case before.