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hello world this is Dennis Biermann I'm the senior vice president of marketing at Redmond property management solutions you have joined us for our third installment of cocktails and compliance with two of the baddest experts in affordable housing i'm joined by our very own roof fox solution specialist here for affordable housing at Redmond and Janelle Ganim vice president at BrightSource compliance we have one of the most exciting podcasts and a long time in this industry so I'm going to be very very over the top you'll want to stay tuned for this whole thing got some really cool things going on here as of course this is cocktails and compliance I would like to introduce our experts and they will introduce the cocktails so let's go to roof first rooo would you like to talk about your cocktail well sure today I am having a truly hard seltzer that is pineapple flavored and it's very tasty yummy it is yes it is also yummy are your career achievements would you mind telling the world about some of the things you've done in and around affordable compliance oh my goodness I have been in the world of affordable housing probably for 23 years I have I have extensive experience with all of the different agencies deep relationships their work with all of the associations as well and I am ChiCom certified and CPA certified shook them certified specialists and housing credit management I like the pronunciation of that actually very good and of course our next expert is a friend of res men awesome gal overall and another amazing compliance expert Janel Ganim Janelle what's the cocktail in your hand at this hour so fun fact about this cocktail this bottle of wine was acquired in a weekend in Seattle where ruined ice a couple of days before a trade show on our own dime in case anybody feels the need to go look at expense reports but we spent some time doing some wine tastings and found a lovely little boutique winery up in Seattle called Sparkman and I am drinking how their Cabernet awesome stuff and Janelle you also have a litany of career achievements and affordable compliance can you please discuss your CV with the audience at hand far more than I although rue and I have known each other probably the entire time we've been in this industry another fun fact so like rue I've been in the industry 20-plus years most of that on the software side and now on the consulting compliance services area which is a super fun place to be I'm very involved in nama and some of the regional almonds as well as multiple working groups with HUD awesome you know this is I said this is a very special podcast we are on the verge of some really exciting news and by the time you guys hear this podcast we will have announced res man's very own end to end complete affordable solution that were of course calling rasma affordable so before you finish listening to this podcast I strongly encourage you to go to my resume com check out the news about our amazing new affordable solution reach out to one of us chances are you're going to talk to roost somewhere along that line and you'll have a great conversation and your affordable compliance with our solution will become easy reliable confidence convenience and it will give you back a piece your life that's we're trying to do here is give these people back a piece of their life right that's right so enough of the plugs let's get to the issues updates from previous podcasts so we've spent a lot of time in the past talking about ecig and East Storage presumably some movement has happened in this space Janell you want to take a stab at this one yes because you know it's my favorite topic in the whole world yes we do have some movement I have talked to some folks at HUD recently they are super close to releasing this notice to the public for some comments it should go out in a couple of weeks and it will be available for public comment which is their normal process however they generally put items out for comment for 30 to 60 days but since we've been working on this for like 73 years at this point they are only going to put this out for a two-week comment period which is great and honestly the reason that they're doing this is because the industry has been so involved through the working group and commenting before it even made it to HUD they feel like they've got a pretty good representation from the industry of what a signature and East sword should look like and how it should function so we're getting close ridiculously excited to see this through to the finish line that's great news Jenelle I got a question for you on that do you foresee any any type of forums review on here like where you know that's holding up the tracks release a bit so is there anything that you foresee on this as far as that I don't and we actually worded the notice very generically to say that any forms that an owner agent or HUD used to run their business where there is an affordable HUD contract on the property is open game for electronic signature and electronic storage so I don't see that holding this up in the same way that it can hold up a tracks release having said that just a reminder that the notice is allowing owners and agents to use electronic signature and electronic storage and not requiring this so all of you guys out there with HUD properties should be dancing in the streets because you are finally going to get be able to get rid of mounds and mounds of paper probably outside paper storage all of those things you're finally going to be able to rely on updated technology whoo nice work Andrew what's the what's the sense for those who maybe have a little bit of consternation about leaving paperwork behind so I got to tell you in the last few years as we've been having this conversation throughout dealings in the industry there's really not any consternation about that everybody is super excited you know there's a big going green initiative and and trying to stop killing as many trees as we are and so everybody is really excited about that I think you're gonna see an industry wide adoption pretty quickly super cool so as Janelle mentioned this has been a 73 year process kicked off in 1946 I might have exaggerated a tiny bit it feels like I've worked on this for 73 years that's true in in those regards you know do you do you want to disclose the hand you played in all of this and so I co-chaired the working group to develop this notice and co-authored it with someone else who's actually very hands-on in the industry Mary Ross but we did have a lot of input from owner agents from contract administrators who are very anxious to see this take place so great to have a true champion for the affordable industry working on this I think we're all as an industry really really lucky to have such great leadership so thanks to you both for this is super cool don't you know along those lines tracks 203a we have an update on that this is the one that seems to take a long time as well 77 years maybe it has been in the works a long time and you know I remember the last time we talked about this you know we joked about the sports book and things like that and had I been a betting person I believe I said at one point that electronic signature would get approved before tracks 203 and you did I think I was right I think it is gonna happened before 203 a so there were some delays we were waiting as we said on OMB approval of forms the government shutdown earlier this year did not help us out in that respect so they are playing catch-up still trying to get those approved we have not gotten formal notification that those have been approved but what we are hearing from HUD is they expect implementation to start sometime this summer I'm using air quotes for those of you that can't see that I do anticipate that there will still be a 4 to 6 month transition period as with any big tracts release but stay tuned for quote sometime this summer that's hot off the presses from nama where we just work which transitions that's a beautiful segue answer you good job Roux into the next agenda item for the podcast which is you guys were in DC we were right actually I've had the the privilege of being in DC with both of you also to talk about ecig and electronic storage and that kind of stuff identity theft so I guess there's a little plug in there because we're gonna be all at suami that's right together April 24th check us out there so DC so y'all Retta nama I understand there's a full range of issues to discover starting with react oh boy Wow so what's up with react get your popcorn kids um this was probably the hot topic at nama HUD has made some changes recently as they do from time to time they have concerns that properties are able to pass their inspections and still have poor unit conditions they don't think that the inspections properly identify health and safety conditions and one of their biggest concerns was they thought that owner agents would prep for inspections as opposed to do year-round maintenance so along those lines had decided that they are now only giving 14 notice of an on-site inspection that didn't go over real well they do not go over well at all and literally sent the industry into a tizzy I mean if you think about it if you've got a maintenance supervisor who's got planned vacation or in some cases there are people from the corporate office that will come to the property for the inspections to be there it doesn't really give you a lot of time to plan for travel or absent staff and HUD went so far as to say that if you were to cancel or reschedule you get an automatic score of zero Wow quite the punitive scoring system there if you're on vacation yeah and along those lines too this goes into effect March 20th of 2019 so it really did send the membership into a little bit of a of a frenzy trying to figure out how they were going to react to this and one head was asked about it they said there was absolutely no negotiating in the 14 days no negotiating yeah didn't originally start at 7 and we somehow got it negotiated up to 14 yeah yeah so they are looking at a couple of initiatives and short-term is the reduced notification time for the inspection and also when their short term plans are making sure that carbon monoxide detectors are now mandatory and units with gas appliances which you know totally makes sense I mean we have that in our homes if we've got gas stoves and things like that so they're also looking at some long-term initiatives that go into effect in q3 of their fiscal year which begins in April actually so they're looking at putting a greater emphasis on eliminating health and safety hazards that's that was really the the overarching theme that we saw that was driving this and they're changing the the new model for how the inspections are conducted so previously the unit inspections made up 35% of your inspection score and now that's bumped to 50% because they are so concerned about the quality of the actual unit as opposed to say the building exterior or something like that they're starting a two year demonstration of this in region 3 which covers Pennsylvania Virginia DC Maryland Delaware that area because they have such a cross-section of property types and it's a pretty close geographical area for them to be able to look at this so they're looking at a new scoring model change and like I said the focus of what they're looking at and so they're doing this on a two-year trial basis to see how it goes got it and for those out in the audience who don't get the chance to participate at the regulatory level and that kind of thing you mentioned the process of it being the regulation coming out being seven days and then negotiated at 14 tell the audience how that kind of an interaction works like you know we have visions of this kind of being like house of parliament in England where you know people just yell insults across the the legislative chamber and stuff I imagine it's a little bit more civilized than that but shed some light on that this whole process and how these things is it you know in a meeting room is it over email and phone calls like how does this whole thing work it is handled through all of the above and a lot of times when those decisions are made those decisions aren't made including the owner agents those are made at agency level and then a lot of times they just get pushed down to owner agents which is one of the reasons why they've got a demonstration period which is how to speak for a trial period to see how it's really going to work out and that's one of the reasons they do those sorts of things is to see if what they think is gonna happen is really gonna happen or if this is just gonna cause more problems in it then it creates solutions and they also say that this is not really designed to hurt the good guys they know that that most of the people are taking care of their properties this is really designed to ensure that they're not giving you an an extra amount of time - quick hurry up and go address issues because now you know you've got an inspection coming so yeah I mean the intent really is making sure the property is well on a year-round basis and not just a oh my gosh I've got an inspector coming so let's hurry up and do all these things at once so I understand that there was there was quite a bit of discussion and and some of it was quite heated but that is what we came away with so we actually sat on the front row for that session exciting did you get hit with any of the tomatoes or rotten egg no I was actually really surprised because it was relatively calm the react team did a great job of responding well you know they they want to they understand some of the dress that it's causing as well and they want to they're they're wanting to be a partner so very cool okay we have an agenda in front of us provided by our awesome guests so permission to move on to the next topic permission granted the next topic on the list is there you go there we go income averaging whoa big topic this is new and exciting for tax credit properties so we're all used to minimum set asides of you know 20% of your units at 50% median income or 40% of your units at 60% medium income so the way this came about as part of the consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 so relatively new but the bill allows for you to move in residents at the 20 30 40 50 60 70 or 80 percent median income and the goal here is that any combination of units can be identified as intended to satisfy your minimum set aside as long as the average affordability of the units is 60% so the thing that's great here for tax credit properties is if you have a higher applicant pool to choose from right so I can instead of being limited at a sixty percent income now I can move somebody in at at 80 percent and maybe the next one I'll move in at 40 because I'm still going to average out to 60 right so that means sometimes when they have market renters in the units maybe they qualify really at 80% so now those are suddenly tax credit units because you're still going to serve the lower-income population as well but again it increases your applicant pool and it also allows you to charge higher rents for the 80 percenters since the tax credit rent is calculated off of the income limit so it just makes a property overall more viable and is a great option for tax credit developers yeah I agree many times depending on the market where a tax credit property is while you think that because we talked about it being affordable housing that it's easy to occupy some of those buildings but in many instances it's not always in a favorable location to occupy and so you're competing sometimes with with market properties down the street so this should give everybody an opportunity to have much better occupancy levels at their tax credit properties right and you know where it is a new program that comes with its own challenges right and tracking it obviously is a little bit difficult so software vendors have had to kind of make some adjustments there to accommodate and be able to show that your property averages now to this new income as opposed to the way we've done in the past to track a minimum set aside or you know that so it's also a challenge to report this data up to state agencies and syndicators and some of them are literally asking for spreadsheets that show this information and and show a way to track it because they don't have a great way to report that data up as well gosh rue I hear asking for spreadsheets and things like that and I say to myself gosh there should be a technology out there that can do this there should be um we have started working on it at res Minh I know it's challenging we are up to the tasks so I think everybody can look forward to having some really great ways to manage income averaging as it starts rolling out across the country through the resident product excellent permission Janelle to move on to the next topic Percy the next topic is crime-prevention Janelle what's the update on crime prevention so this was interesting at the Nama meeting we have an affiliate breakfast so the affiliates are the vendors and they are allowed to present a topic at breakfast and you know the topics range and we try to keep them to something that's timely with things that are going on in the industry but I'm not gonna lie sometimes it's hard to come up with topics but this one was really interesting in that we haven't talked about crime prevention before at nama and everyone thinks oh my gosh I got to get security cameras it's gonna be expensive and so it was a way to share with the membership ways to reduce crime on your property that don't really have a huge budget implication by all means pop the top on your next beverage let's hear the noise ready are you watching calories that's your drinking Light beer calories Janelle proceed with your update things there are different ways to look at this one is designed so it was interesting to think about as you may want to develop a new property looking at something that has a natural barrier like a pond or something like that that was an interesting way that they talked about limiting the access to your property we've all seen properties with those gates that have you know four entrances and maybe the gates are broken and you're constantly having to fix the gate or whatever so the suggestion was made to maybe just have one gate that works and have one access in and out of the property to control the element that is coming onto your property and increasing the visibility so you know we always think about the dark mailbox area where you know who knows who's hanging out your mailbox right so the lights at the back of the property and their lives back of the property things like that so these are you know easy ways to watch what's going on it was interesting to know then from an mor perspective that you don't get dinged for having crime on your property Lauro means management and occupancy review management and occupancy review thank you learning something new every single podcast thank you so much so there's no finding for having crime on your property what they're looking for from an mor perspective is what do you do when there's crime on your property do you ignore it you know what steps do you take to prevent it so this panel also offered up some really low cost ways to prevent crime on your property things as simple as you know walking your property but they said you know change it up don't always walk right in the front where you see you know go to the back corner where the lights always busted out because something's going on in that part of the property right making sure that your property you know you want to have great curb appeal anyway but making sure that your windows aren't broken and you're repairing things so that you know if people know you take pride in your property basically what they said was make it hard for the criminals right if it looks like you don't care about your property odds are they're gonna come and visit so one of the things that I thought was really cool was using Google Maps to use the street view take us take a shot of your property and make a circle of anywhere where there's crime on there and start looking what is going on in this back corner and the lights always broken out you know like I said so really tracking that they talked about building relationships with law enforcement what else rue budget anything did we have a budget topic so the budget is doing things like watching your lighting one thing that was interesting to you was inventory your high-value assets they mentioned a/c units they said sometimes those tend to walk off in the winter and you don't realize it until the summer when all of a sudden your building has no a/c and now everybody's like what's going on and then it's expensive and it's kind of hard to file a police report when you don't know when that thing walked off so again some some low budget item inexpensive ways to prevent crime yeah I thought that session was really great and informative um I actually started off thinking it wasn't gonna be that big of a deal but it there was some really great pointers for four properties and you know there's not a lot you can do as far as watching how people can access your properties today if you're already an existing property but just the pointers that they gave about the lights at the back of the buildings and watching you know where a light continually gets busted out and things like that I think that was really really helpful information those all the updates from Donna the big ones awesome sanam is a great organization obviously res minh sponsors and supports that organization as well as all of its regional affiliates we care very deeply about nama and our friends there well and one of the reasons why we care very deeply about mama is nama facilitates setting up visits to the hill and I gotta tell you this time they had over 60 visits to the hill scheduled on Tuesday afternoon which is a lot considering the number of people that are there because it's it's a much more kind of an intimate setting where you've got about a hundred of the the owners and agents around the country that participate and so I would encourage everybody to consider participating you're able to attend your first meeting that you've never attended for free and they will help schedule meetings on the hills so they're very good about that and they're very good about lobbying for things that impact the affordable housing industry yeah that's true they have a great staff they'll give you talking points if you're not familiar with it they'll really walk you through the whole process I figure we should do one more plug for res men's most amazing announcement in the world which is of our freshly launched affordable product res Minh affordable go to my res mint.com to learn more we're eager to talk about it and eager to provide you guys with a terrific solution long overdue this industry is new to something like this for so long so we're very very happy to be a part of that Janelle Dennis you do affordable compliance consulting how can the people reach you they can reach me at jeg annum at rites force compliance calm awesome rooo you're always open for conversation oh my gosh you can reach me root Fox at my res man calm you can find me on LinkedIn you can find me on Twitter I am all over the place I love this sector of the industry I love to talk about it and I would love to have the opportunity to show off our fabulous new affordable product sounds good stay tuned next podcast we have more updates oh I see what you did there so there is another working group with HUD it is the MOR working group and we are working on updates to that forum as well as the scoring model we are having calls every other week to talk about this that is has their own working group that we are funneling them some information from the industry so we should have lots of updates sounds good we promise we'll have some new cocktails new happy hour new updates affordable everyone roof oxygen Oleg Adam I am Dennis Biermann we are Redmond property management software [Music]