Storytime: Detroit Blight Court Karen and the Obstinate Owner with All the Unnecessary Tickets
/What happens if you do not understand the process to have a legal rental in the city of Detroit? It can really cost you! In this video you will learn:
The 101 version of what that process is
How this Obstinate Owner is hurting himself by not following the process
How we ended up in Detroit Blight Court
How a Karen totally embarrassed herself in Blight Court
Blight court lessons learned
The 101 Process to acquire a legal Detroit rental
Certificate of Compliance
Step one is to register the rental property so the city has the address of the owner and/or the property manager. After you register, you are allowed 60 days to submit the lead test and schedule the city inspection. Here is my link I use to register:
Step two is to have a lead paint test done. The lead test is around $500. Always do this after you are sure there is no chipped paint inside or outside the house. Our guy Kevin will treat you right: kjmcneill@msn.com. Tell him Monique gave you his information.
Step three is to have the property inspected. We use Detroit Inspection Group. They are contracted by the city but they are an outside company that follows basic safety requirements; such as, GFIs, handrails, chimney caps, door seals, etc.
I then email the city at pm@detroitmi.gov with the lead test and I request a Certificate of Compliance. They never reply to my emails, but eventually the Certificate of Compliance shows up in my email and then in my snail mail. In three years, it all needs to be repeated. But the lead test is a renewal lead test for $100 less typically. Use the same person though (Kevin!) to get that lower price. And MARK YOUR CALENDAR. The city doesn’t send reminders.
What Happens if the 3 Steps are not followed
Failure to get compliant results in blight tickets:
No registration = $250
No lead test = $500
No Certificate of Compliance (meaning you never had the city inspection) = $250
If the owner received any of those tickets, all they had to do was register, get the lead paint test, get the city test, appear in blight court to show those were done, and the judge will dismiss the tickets.
If the owner ignores those three tickets, they get another wave of tickets. The ticket prices just went up:
Second no registration ticket = $305
Second no lead paint test ticket = $580
Second no Certificate of Compliance ticket (meaning you never had the city inspection) = $305
I was told those tickets can escalate up until one house has received a maximum of $10,000 in tickets. I have not seen that happen though.
If you want to see how many tickets are on any house in Detroit, here is the link to look at it. Find the little + sign and click that to input the address. It’s a SLOW working website so just sit patiently as it pulls up the tickets per that address.
The Obstinate Owner
Back in 2020 I sold my property management contracts. The timing was perfect in many ways. One of the ways was that the city was just starting to come after us investors for not having a Certificate of Compliance.
I find it interesting that as of 2022 still only 6% of landlords in Detroit have their properties in compliance.
The property manager who bought my contracts understood that he had to follow the three steps for pretty much the whole portfolio. This was a good income maker for him. He was happy to do it. He charged each owner something like $500 to register (5 minutes), to schedule the lead paint test and city inspections, and then coordinate the contractors to do the repairs the city required. Then he made something like 15% on top of whatever the contractors charged. Cha-ching!
A few months after I sold my property management contracts, I started receiving tickets for a property on Barlow Street that we had flipped to a new owner for not having had the lead paint test done or having a certificate of compliance. The tickets should have gone to the new property manager unless the new property manager did not register it. I kindly took the tickets and forwarded them to the new property manager and the owner. I let them know to hurry up and get these things done (lead test and city inspection) so the tickets could be dismissed.
That’s not what happened though. I started getting other tickets on top of those tickets. The type of tickets I received come when a tenant complains to the city so the city sends their own inspector out who finds all kinds of things wrong. The tenants were even calling me to let me know that the new property manager was ignoring their maintenance requests. I took the tickets and forwarded them to the owner.
Instead of the owner calling his property manager to get these things handled, the owner decided my husband Pat and I sold him a bad house. Pat was very confused because it was a lovely house when we sold it to him. Here is the video.
Pat kindly offered to go to the house and assess what could be going on. When Pat got there, it was quite obvious what was happening. The tenants I chose were supposed to be a grandma and her sister living in the front big house. The adult daughter and two little kids were in the cute little back house. But Grandma moved in her entire bloodline into the front house. She even used the dining room as what looked like a bunk house with mattresses on the floor.
I let the owner know that he should not do any repairs until these people move out. What’s the point? It’s all tenant-caused damages. Get these tenants out. It’s easier anyway to have a lead paint test and city inspection on a vacant property.
Instead of the owner saying, “Oh, thank you so much for assessing this for me FOR FREE when my property manager is ignoring the problem. I will have them evicted.” No, that’s not how he replied. He demanded that it’s all my fault for moving these bad people in, so my husband and I should pay for all the damages. Oh, and all the tickets too that his property manager should have handled. We should pay for those too.
Now every few months I receive between 10-15 tickets for that house. Since mid-2021 I’ve been forwarding them to the owner only to be met with his hostility. I’ve pretty much decided it’s not my problem anymore. I’ve let the owner and the property manager know and they’ve both stuck their heads in the sand. I don’t understand how this property manager could have let this happen. But I’ve gotten to know the guy as time has gone on. I wonder if the property manager’s goal is to let tickets like this happen, then swoop in and “save” the owner from this terrible house and offer the owner a ridiculously low price for it. Then the property manager builds his own portfolio or he flips the house to the next owner and burns and churns again. I don’t know. I don’t like to think anyone is that evil, but it is a business plan for investors to be aware of.
Detroit Blight Court Karen Story
My prior blog goes into why we were even in Blight Court, so I won’t go into that here.
Detroit Blight Court is now on Zoom, which is so nice. In the past I would lose an entire day sitting around waiting for my case. It was a place of pure misery and unfriendliness.
You really have to watch my video to get the gist of how this property manager came off as a total Karen. And I apologize to my friends with that name!
Karen’s mistake was not understanding that when she took over the property she was managing, she needed to get it registered so the tickets would get to her on time to comply with them and get them dismissed.
Somehow Karen knew to be in court though. First, it came up that Karen hadn’t registered as the new property manager. Karen did not at all understand that piece and the judge didn’t really explain it to her either. The judge just reeled off where the tickets were being mailed. Karen declared that that’s not her address so she shouldn’t be liable for these tickets because the city has the wrong address. It just doesn’t work that way though. And the judge wasn’t hearing it. The judge ignored Karen’s argument instead of explaining the point of registering properties when management changes.
When the judge asked Karen if she had complied with at least the lead paint test, Karen said that she sure did, but she did not know where to send any of her information.
In Karen’s defense, it took me some work getting that email address pm@detroitmi.gov. And to submit anything on the BSEED (Building Safety Environmental Engineering Department) website practically requires a degree in computer science. It is not the least bit user-friendly. I’ve given up totally and only email them. And to call BSEED is like talking to a brick wall after sitting on hold for an hour with a recording that isn’t even music, so it’s not like you can work while you’re on hold. The people who answer the calls are the farthest thing from helpful. They may or may not answer what you ask and they absolutely will not offer anything helpful as they listen to you struggle to comprehend their process.
The judge must know it’s hard for people to submit their lead tests and city inspection reports. So she asked Karen if Karen could just do a screen share so the judge could see the lead test and maybe dismiss it. Karen got all huffy and said she did not have that prepared.
The judge went ahead and started to issue Karen tickets for not having done the steps; $580 for no lead test, $305 for no Certificate of Compliance. This is when Karen lost it, “EXCUSE ME! EXCUSE ME! Um, I haven’t been given a chance to make my case. I NEED TO SPEAK TO YOUR SUPERVISOR!”
And that’s when poor Karen learned that the judge was a judge and there is no “supervisor” above the judge and that was a hearing and she did make her case. She should have come to court prepared and she should have understood when she was sworn in that it was a hearing.
Blight Court lessons
Not getting the tickets is YOUR fault if you don’t register the property with your address
Get the lead test and city inspection DONE before your court case
Be ready to do a screen share
Do not argue with the judge. Excuses Excuses Have No Uses!
Do not expect to “make your case”
Be polite and to the point
Understand they just want you COMPLIANT
And I would say not to trust that your property manager knows the process. Follow up with them A LOT! It could cost you if you don’t. Property managers are busy. These things fall through the cracks and end up costing you while the property manager finds another way to add fees to you. Don’t become your property manager’s burn and churn.