You
For the opposing view point, we're joined by
Chris Mokler, Director of Legislative Affairs for the Wisconsin Real Estate Investors Association.
Thanks for your time today.
Thank you for having me on.
So what would be the impact of this rule change for landlords?
Well, the biggest thing that this does is it creates more work for the landlords and it also harms other tenants,
other good tenants.
I'll explain the second one first.
If this rule were put into effect, good tenants who pay their rent on time are now going to be equal in their footing on their applications with tenants that have had evictions.
A landlord for the first part of my of my answer was landlords going to have to do more research and try to figure out because a landlord owns a duty to not only other tenants in the building but neighbors to the buildings in the cities because if there's a problem with those are the first people that are going to be upset,
which is going to be police calls. It's going to be problem with city leaders and have to be dealt with and nobody likes that.
What percentage of landlords use Wisconsin's electronic case search to research perspective renters? Is it nearly all will do some curse research?
I would assume that there's no way for me to have a number, but it's a available service to help make it determined just like a bank does when it's giving you a loan.
They look at your credit report. This is one of the best ways a landlord can look and make sure that they're going to be putting a good tenant in their building.
Do you think all of those landlords understand that some of those eviction notices may have been filed inaccurately or weren't actually resulting in a full eviction and that there's a difference between that and a full eviction.
And should there be a different promoting that?
We've been promoting that to our landlords. Just don't look at the first page that looks at evictions and dig into it. Look at it. Some might have a stipulated dismissal where the tenant and the landlord came to an agreement and that agreement is put in writing and signed and the judge agrees to it.
That could be lots of reasons. But you know, we certainly teach to dig into it. A lot of landlords will still rent the people with evictions, but they want to know what the situation was with the eviction.
So with this tight housing market, what are landlords facing right now in terms of the number of people applying for an apartment or a unit somewhere?
Well, obviously they're getting a lot of people applying for units. It's maybe slowing down a little bit now. Rent's are becoming a little bit more leveled off.
And obviously there's been more apartments built in the last couple of years. Obviously not enough.
You know, we still need housing in Wisconsin, not only single family homes, but apartments.
So it's been working out in, yeah, landlords get a lot of applications showing the apartment a lot of times. When I leave here, I'm going to be showing an apartment two times.
So the tenant advocacy groups are saying that these records should be treated differently because they believe that housing is a human right.
Should that play into this argument with before the Supreme Court?
Housing is a human right, perhaps, but it's up to some tenants that have evictions and unfortunately repeated evictions. Again, landlords aren't going to automatically not take you just because you have an eviction.
They're going to look at the scenario, but when you have several evictions owing a lot of money and no effort from what we can tell to pay it back.
Therefore, that gets to be a problem. Why should you rely on a mom and pop operation that may only own a couple of units like most landlords in Wisconsin do to risk their financial future.
Oftentimes these landlords have another job and they're doing this on the side and they're going to make a big payment.
When we go to the National Apartment Association, only about 7% maybe a little less for small landlords of every dollar of rent, assuming that the rent is paid in full, actually goes to the landlord.
So one little hiccup and the landlord's not making any money. They got to pay the taxes, the utilities, all that stuff.
This rule change is looking to make a pretty considerable timeline change.
In the past 20 years for a record following someone online versus just one year.
Is there a happy medium or like how valuable is an eviction record for 20 years ago versus one from two or three years ago.
Well, an act 317 from, I believe it was 2021 2020.
I'd have to go back and look, we actually proposed the rule change that the state is not currently currently following and I can't get into.
It, which we don't have time for, but there's a two year limit on certain evictions that can be removed from the circuit court automation program.
You know that we actually proposed and they want to change that to one year. We just think that's too tight.
So we have about a minute left here. One of the county clerk of courts said that the amount of renters asking judges to expunge these records immediately as soon as after.
An eviction is filed or closed is on a dramatic uptick that more and more people are doing this.
So what a more uniform policy makes sense if some people are more easily able to get their personal eviction records erased when some people aren't.
As to more uniform policy, you see this happening a lot in Milwaukee and perhaps in Madison. Obviously, there's a lot more tenants there.
When it comes to getting it, I think the current law should be followed, which in some cases, we don't think it is as far as expungement.
There's certain cases where expungement is good and there's certain cases where expungement is not open records for all to see like we do here in Wisconsin.
All right, Chris Mokler. Thank you very much for your time today.
Thank you. Have a great day.
Very much. I appreciate your time. That was good.
Okay. Anytime.
Good luck with the apartments.
Yep. And then I'm leaving on vacation after that.
Even better.
Yep. You betcha. I've been a long time. You have a great day.
Thank you.