All Forum Posts by: Walter Moneypenny

Check your local laws, you may be required to consider vouchers. Several cities in Arizona such as Phoenix and Tucson have passed ordinances that say that a landlord must consider a voucher. The voucher would take the place of the income requirement, for example our criteria is 3 times the rent as gross household income. If the voucher did not cover all of the rent then the applicant would have to have 3 times the income for the portion they are responsible for. The other requirements in the listing such as credit score, rental history, etc would remain unchanged. 

The criteria has to be the same for all applicants, and not different for just one group. You need to follow all Fair Housing guidelines. 

Hi again,

The management company can definitely do that to assist the Board in lease enforcement. I worked for companies that had full time people that did aspects of this. As mentioned by another reply, there is a specific law ARS 33-1806.01 speaks to the matter. I would check to see if the $150 is too high based on the wording of the statute. The statute also uses the word "notwithstanding" which would mean whatever the CC&R's say, the law overrides it. In my experience, the Board is looking to get rid of the STR's. They also may want to get a handle on how many rentals in general there are.

Note: this is not legal advice but an interpretation as an HOA manager for more than 20 years before becoming a Realtor. I can say that what they are doing is good and bad. I believe I located the CC&R's on the Recorder's website. I would read your CC&R's under sections 7.2 and 7.8. It looks like rentals shorter than 30 days are prohibited under 7.8. The Board cannot just change the leasing requirements by themselves to allow STR's. The CC&R's would need to be amended, and per Section 10.2 of the CC&R's I located, it is nearly impossible to amend the document.

It looks like the Board outsourced part of the enforcement to a 3rd party company. A few management companies I worked for in the past had full time employees just dealing with leases and trying to obtain information from owners. I would imagine that the company they hired can monitor all of the STR websites for listings. I looked at airbnb and found a listing in the neighborhood that has a nightly rate, obviously in violation of the CC&R's. I suggest you read the entire Section 7 about Use Restrictions. It looks like the Board can adopt rules about enforcement.

The good part is that they are giving tenants the ability to see things. Most management companies will not deal with tenants.

In Arizona, the buyer must honor the lease until it ends.

The property happens to be close to my home in Moon Valley. Check the Assessor's info at https://mcassessor.maricopa.gov/  You will have to dig to see if you can find an address. Hint: check the recorded documents linked to the property. Reach out to me, I did find a Chicago address. 

You have many things to consider. Obviously you want the rental to cashflow, whether it is STR, MTR or LTR. The short term market is seasonal. The "snowbirds" are usually gone by April and won't come back until October or November. You may have considerable vacancy time. And, as a previous commenter mentioned, so you want to manage an STR? He is also right about the HOA's. As with any Real Estate purchase, you need to read the documents carefully. I was an HOA manager for 25 years and have seen the hostility toward STR's grow larger.

My primary focus is Long Term Rentals. You need to find a brokerage that specializes in LTR's and can also handle the property management. Get an estimate of what the property will rent for and see if it will be profitable. There are a lot of areas in the Phoenix metro area that are great for LTR. We have a lot of industry coming here and the jobs will pay well. Those workers will need a place to live! 

Feel free to reach out to me and I can run some numbers for you. 

I would employ a property management company that can handle this for you, like the one I work for as an agent. I am not an attorney, so this is not official advice, but I will comment on what I know.

You need to register the property as a rental with Maricopa County. You can do it online or with a paper form. You will need a local contact (Statutory Agent) to list that can be served with any legal documents. The local property manager would be listed as that contact. 

At this time you need to get a TPT license. The TPT on rentals of 30 days or more is going away effective 1/1/2025. I would check to see if you still need to register. 

If you use a property manager you will need to fill out AZ Form 285-PMC which allows the Property Management Company to be a limited Power of Attorney in order for them to talk to the State of Arizona about TPT matters.  Once again, I am not sure if this will be required after the TPT goes away. 

Reach out to me as I do rentals and sales in Peoria. 

No, not a retirement community. It does have some 55+ communities in it, as most cities do. There are retail areas at Verrado, which includes a new Costco and near Sundance at I-10 and Watson. It used to be a long way from shopping, etc, but Goodyear, the city next door, has also blossomed. 

I can speak about Buckeye and the west Phoenix metro area. Buckeye has a ton of potential. It is a huge geographic city, almost 400 square miles. In the past 20 years it has gone from less than 6,000 people to more than 90,000. Granted, a lot of the city's geography is undeveloped desert, but the potential is there. With the completion of Loop 303 in Goodyear that connects I-10 to I-17, it opens up quicker access to the industry and jobs that TSMC and many other projects in the west valley have created. There is still talk of SR-30 (former proposed SR-801) that would connect L-303 to L-202. That would make the existing development north and south of I-10 more appealing. 

The proposed 100,00 home Teravalis development north Buckeye has broken ground. This project is south of Sun City Festival. There was an issue there of having enough water, but I have not heard anything about that in a couple years. If Teravalis is successful then I suppose that other developments, businesses, schools and everything else would sprout up on land that could be developed. Water and infrastructure will be the big issues. Similar to Mariciopa, where SR-347 is the only way in and out, there could be similar issues in north Buckeye if the only road in and out is Sun Valley Parkway. 

Hi, 

To add on to the previous responses, you definitely need to look at the CC&R's. If you are purchasing in Maricopa County, the CC&R's are on the County Recorder website. Many HOA's do not have public access to their documents on their websites. Since the CC&R's are a recorded document, they are available at the County. Other documents like Rules and Regulations, Bylaws, Design / Architectural Guidelines are usually not recorded. Changes to the rental status of a unit, such as restricting rentals would be in the CC&R's. There are a lot of variables that make up the HOA dues. Condos and townhouses usually are higher because the HOA owns more of the common areas.

In Arizona there are laws that limit the percentage increase on HOA dues for planned communities to 20% per year, unless there is a majority of the HOA that votes for more than 20%. (ARS-33-1803.) No similar statute for condos. (I am not a lawyer, just a 20+ year former HOA manager).