Assemblymember Sandra Jauregui called the Realtors’s reversal this session “deeply disappointing,” since the group helped craft provisions of effectively identical legislation two years ago. (Photo: Richard Bednarski/Nevada Current)
The Nevada Realtors Association hopes to kill legislation that authorizes one year of rent stabilization for seniors and puts modest regulations on the collection of rental application fees, despite backing the same bill in the previous legislative session.
Assembly Bill 280, which passed out of the Assembly Commerce and Labor Committee last week on a party line vote, revives a similar effort from 2023 to limit landlords from raising rents more than 5% on tenants 62 years or older or relies on Social Security payments through the end of 2026.
This year’s bill, sponsored by Democratic Assemblymember Sandra Jauregui, also requires landlords to refund application fees if they don’t screen a tenant who applied for the unit.
Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo vetoed the 2023 version of the bill saying the legislation was admirable but “needlessly heavy-handed in its approach.”
Nevada Realtors, who typically oppose expanded tenant protections, backed the bill during the 2023 session.
Keith Lynam, president of the Nevada Realtors during that time, and Jonathan Norman, the statewide advocacy, outreach and policy director for the Nevada Coalition of Legal Service Providers, helped present alongside Jauregui that year.
In 2023, Lyman called the bill “common sense solutions to affordable housing for those who are leasing and renting homes,” Jauregui noted while describing the bill to the committee during last month’s hearing. He gave his full-throated support of the bill, she added.
The bill’s intent stayed the same. The Nevada Realtors’ position changed.
Azim Jessa, a lobbyist for Nevada Realtors, told lawmakers the group changed its opinion because of “market statistics” that showed “the average rental price for a single family home dropped 5.9%.”
Rent prices have soared drastically since 2020, with elected officials noting rents spiked between 20% and 30% within the first two years of the pandemic.
Jauregui called the association’s reversal this session “deeply disappointing,” especially since it was the association, along with legal aid, who worked for months to craft the provisions of the 2023 bill.
When AB 280 was first heard in March, it originally sought the same 2023 provision that limited landlords from increasing rents on seniors living on fixed incomes by more than 10%.
Jauregui said during the March 26 bill hearing that while she thought a 10% cap was too high, the limit was included out of “a consensus” and the language was agreed upon by both the Realtors Association and legal aid groups.
Between that hearing and committee passing AB 280 last week, Jauregui amended the language to reduce the cap to 5% because “there is a party who did not negotiate in good faith.”
Jauregui said the bill is still a pilot program that would allow lawmakers to assess its effectiveness.
“The key is that we take action now rather than allow seniors and those on fixed incomes to continue suffering, face eviction or end up homeless,” she said.
Though Lombardo vetoed the bill in 2023, his message didn’t mention anything about the temporary rent stabilization it sought for seniors and those relying on federal assistance.
At the time, he wrote that the bill “is an unreasonable restraint on standard business activity” and the legislation would prevent landlords “from collecting, and retaining, any fee related to the rental of a dwelling unit.”
AB 280, like its 2023 version, seeks to prevent landlords from collecting application fees even when they don’t use the money to screen tenants.
“If ten applications come in for one unit and the first application is taken, then the fees for the other nine would have to be returned,” Jauregui said. “Any hard costs wouldn’t have to be returned.”
The legislation would also require landlords to include an appendix in the lease listing fees that can be charged.
Ben Iness, the coalition coordinator for the Nevada Housing Justice Alliance, said the bill doesn’t go far enough. The coalition testified in neutral.
“In terms of scope and applicability, we would love to see this applied to all Nevadans,” he said. “A lot of the comments focus on supply and demand and ignore things like RealPage that interfere with the market.”
RealPage, a rental pricing software firm, was accused of colluding with corporate landlords to use algorithms to collect lease transaction data in order to artificially inflate rents via price fixing. The company has denied wrongdoing.
The allegation against the company, as well as other property management companies, has resulted in lawsuits across the country and legislative efforts to rein in the practice.
In the absence of regulation to prevent rent price fixing, Iness said the market isn’t fair for renters.
“Rent stabilization makes sure things stay attainable, accessible and affordable,” he said.