Legislative Session - Final Update - 4/1/24

Monday, April 1, 2024

At the 2024 Utah Legislative Session RHA protected the rental housing industry from more regulation and reduced the burden from governments and HOAs.

Each year Utah has a 45 day legislative session starting in January. This year approximately 1200 bills were proposed and 600 were passed. Following are three ways RHA protected the industry from new regulations that would have increased our cost, risk and administrative burden

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1 - One of the scariest bills the rental housing industry faced was one that might have required more disclosures when we rent units. A friendly legislator from St George proposed legislation requiring more disclosure during the leasing process in reaction to a fear that landlords might not be disclosing information about defects during the leasing process. While transparency and providing quality housing and good service are important to us, there are already protections for renters in state law. RHA was able to show this legislator how current tenant protections were sufficient, and create a voluntary disclosure for defects. That form is included in this publication and also is on the RHA website.

2 - There was a bill this session that would have given the state Division  of Consumer Protection authority to regulate real estate contracts. Real estate contracts are already regulated by the Division of Real Estate and the courts. This would have been duplicative and created double jeopardy for us. We worked with the sponsor to exempt real rate contracts form this legislation and she did.

3 - There was a bill that would have added requirements concerning dealing with renters pets for rental operators doing evictions and sending renters pets to animal control. We were able to educate the sponsor about evictions and convince her that new regulations were not necessary for landlords but just for animal control.