Mar 01

The Apartment Association, in conjunction with Community Advocates, Legal Action, Legal Aid, and many others, have been working to create a one-stop resource to help both renters and housing providers weather not only the current economic problems but to encourage sustainable, affordable rental housing.

Let’s get right to today’s big announcement: The Rental Housing Resource Center website is now live at: www.renthelpmke.org

This is THE place for you and your renters to find available financial and other help. Under the latest program up to 12 months, arrearages are covered as well as rent going forward. It is a big deal. The Resource Center is the culmination of many efforts by lots of folks hard at it for years.

I encourage you to take a look around the site and share the link with your colleagues. If you have any feedback about the site’s functionality or features you would like to see, just let me know.

Secondly, and previously announced, the Association in conjunction with the Rental Housing Resource Center partners, is having a meeting at 1 and 6 PM this Wednesday, March 3rd, where you will learn how you and your residents can apply for the Wisconsin Emergency Rental Assistance. To register, go to AASEW.org

Side note: I was a participant on the web design committee. I want to give a shoutout to Carl Cummings and his team at carldesigns.com. He did an excellent job, taking in many different design and flow viewpoints in a positive manner. Having been involved in other web design projects, this was one of the best processes I’ve seen. They also did the new site for Mediate Milwaukee.

Dec 22


https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2020/12/22/landlords-tenants-say-rent-assistance-needed-part-eviction-ban/3932908001/

“I  don’t think a landlord should be expected to shoulder the burden of taking care of a property for several months or a year,” when a tenant stops paying rent, said Dawn Anastasi, a landlord who owns 18 properties on the northwest side of Milwaukee. “It’s not the tenant’s fault, but it’s not the landlord’s fault either.”

Even with the rent assistance, landlords will be left holding the bag for much of the unpaid rent, predicted Tim Ballering, treasurer of the Apartment Association of Southeastern Wisconsin.

“The unpaid rent will never be paid, let’s be honest about that,” Ballering said, noting that even when a tenant is evicted the landlord seldom collects the past due rent. 

As a result, Ballering, who is also a landlord, predicted a spike in the number of local landlords who sell their properties to large absentee rental companies.

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Ballering asked. “That depends on your views. Do you think that the small American farmer being driven out by large corporate farmers is a good thing?”

Heiner Giese, attorney for the association, said the $25 billion in rent assistance will be helpful though he agreed it would likely only last a couple of months.

Giese noted that the federal bill will allow landlords to file for rent assistance, unlike other rent assistance programs that require the tenant to apply

Giese, who is also a landlord, said he has seen cases where tenants signed the required CDC declaration that protected them from eviction but then did not apply for any rent assistance.

“They would just say he’s going to evict me anyway, so screw it,” Giese said.

Nov 25

The Apartment Association is collaborating with Community Advocates, Legal Action, Legal Aid, Mediate Milwaukee, Impact, Hope House and others, working towards finding resources that help renters, and therefore property owners, succeed.

Here is the kick off video that I participated on:

Milwaukee Rental Housing Resource Center Info Session

May 12

The AASEW has done a lot of great things for the industry and sustainable rental housing.

One that benefited many owners was the change to Sheriff moves to eliminate the mover, which is a large portion of the costs.  

Our attorneys, working against their own personal interest, changed the law to allow LLCs to be represented by a member or agent, rather than requiring an attorney. This saves a lot of money as well as making the case less confrontational.

Here are the laws passed through the work of the AASEW in:

2018  https://bit.ly/3bryZ0Y
2016  https://bit.ly/2Lj7NXM
2014  https://bit.ly/3dCRRM1
2012  https://bit.ly/2zx3NQZ

It is important that we work together as an industry for the betterment of all.

Apr 21

The Minnesota congresswoman’s proposal to cancel rents and mortgages during the coronavirus pandemic is both wildly impractical and constitutionally dubious.

And this is why we need to work together as an industry.

Small landlords are often independent and segmented, allowing us ot fall victim to these things.

What can you do? Join a real estate investor group, in fact join a few of them.

Apr 07

Rental housing advocates on all sides must work together, more so today than ever, and it was important back in the BC days. (Before COVID) 

We must work collaboratively with tenant advocates, whom some perceive to be on the “other” side. Advocates and rental owners are more like two sides of the same coin. You would not survive as a landlord without tenants, and tenants need the housing we provide.

There will be legislation and new rules impacting rental housing… SOON. Whether the changes will help both tenants and owners, or whether that legislation causes long term problems, will be determined by whether our voice is heard.

The Apartment Association of Southeastern WI has good people working on our behalf on these issues, Heiner Giese and Joe Murray, plus a dedicated Board and membership.

The Wisconsin Apartment Association has good people working on our behalf on these issues, Gary Goyke, and Chris Mokler, plus a dedicated Board and membership. 

All four lobbyists work collaboratively with each other and with the other stakeholders regardless of political affiliations. 

Legal Action and Community Advocates are working to find help for tenants so they can pay rent. Amazingly, their messages have been that tenants still must pay rent even though they cannot be evicted until at least May 27th.

These efforts to be heard and understood at the statehouse take time, energy, and, sadly, money.

You can do your part to help us help you by joining one or both groups. Not only are you supporting the industry that helps support you, but you will be in the “know” sooner than those who are not members of apartment associations.

I’ve been a member of the Apartment Association of Southeastern WI since 1989, and a board member for nearly all of those years. As of today, I am also a member of the Wisconsin Apartment Association. 

Links to join:

Apartment Association of Southeastern WI

Wisconsin Apartment Association:

https://www.waaonline.org/account/create-account.php

Don’t do it for me. Don’t do it for the associations. Do it for you.;-)

Jan 31

Here s something that we as an organization had spoken of over the years.  Joe (Yusuf) Dahl, the former AASEW president, has made it a reality out east where he runs a school of entrepreneurship at Lafayette.  


Milwaukee needs this as well. Joe, are you coming back anytime soon?  😉

First-of-a-kind program aims to help people get into real estate

ALLENTOWN, Pa. – City Center Allentown and Lafayette College are coming together to launch a first-of-a-kind program to help people get into real estate. 

Yusuf Dahl’s life story took him from prison in Milwaukee to Princeton University, and now he wants to help others do the same.

“The goal of this program is to create a pathway to real estate entrepreneurship for people who have historically been excluded,” Dahl said.

Oct 19

YahooGroups is shutting down.   There will be limited email access allowed after 10/28/2019.  It appears on 12/14/19 everything gets deleted.

https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/16/yahoo-groups-to-shut-down/

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/10/16/yahoo-groups-shutting-down/

I run the ApartmentAssoc@YahooGroups and WiRentalCoalition as well as a group for our board of directors AASEWAdvisors.

Our lists are valuable enough that I did not want to let them die.  I wanted to share with you my findings as I feel the same about your list.

Replacement choices are Google Groups,  a FaceBook Group or Groups.io.  Smart people recommended the latter.  My subscribers all hated the FB idea. After much reading and research, Groups.io was my choice as well. 

https://lifehacker.com/how-to-save-and-migrate-your-yahoo-groups-data-before-i-1839172243

Group.io costs $110 for an annual premium subscription.  You need the premium annual subscription to import your Yahoo archives. Attachments are not imported. If you just want to manually import users you can do a one month premium for $10.  

Info on Group.io import (no attachments):
https://groups.io/static/transfer

To download the full data via Yahoo – At least that is the thought.  I started this two days ago and am still waiting they say it can take a month.

https://help.yahoo.com/kb/download-data-privacy-dashboard-sln28671.html

Third party tools:
http://www.personalgroupware.com  (I use a Mac, so this is unavailable for me to try, but highly recommended)

http://yahoogroupedia.pbworks.com/w/page/93006447/Chrome%20Application%20To%20Download%20Messages A Chrome Extension, but the result file is not 100% what I expected.  No attachments

https://www.jefftk.com/p/archiving-yahoo-groups a Python script

A lot of work, but the ApartmentAssoc list has been a passion of mine since it was 20 people on AOL in 1995.

Tim Ballering
Tim@ApartmentsMilwaukee.com

UPDATE: The Python script produces much better results than the Chrome extension once you get the dependencies correct. The output is one JSON file per email. These can fairly easily be parsed into any format you need.

Oct 19

Due to the impending shut down of YahooGroups we have moved to Groups.io.  Groups.io is highly rated by others and in my experimenting seems  much better than Yahoo in many aspects. 

I invite you come along with us to our new home so that you can continue to get the benefit of the knowledge shared here.

Groups.io Email Addresses

Update 11/4/2019:

All prior YahooGroups messages have been successfully transferred to our new Groups.io account.  You can now search old messages that were originally posted to this list when it was on YahooGroups or even eGroups.  

There is a treasure trove of landlording information here, going back to the year 2000.  Spend the time reading these post and you’ll have an MBA in rental real estate. 😉

Tim Ballering
Tim@ApartmentsMilwaukee.com

Sep 21

If they are being honest, every landlord will tell you they have had days of despair.

However, if you run it like a business you can do well.

If you don’t run it as a business; don’t enforce your rules; don’t know the laws; let problems affect you personally instead of approaching them logically; or don’t calculate for expected costs, you will fail.

The best way to find the path to success is to actively participate in local landlord groups.

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